Still Telling Stories

Students from Strathcona Elementary School and Britannia Secondary School visited Telling Stories: a visual art exhibition for a gallery tour led by Best B4 Collective Artists. After their visit to the On-Tak Cheung Gallery in the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum, artists visited classrooms to work with students and teachers to extend storytelling into writing, photography and ceramics projects. 






Students in Annie Simard's Grade 4/5 Class at Strathcona Elementary School returned to the gallery to interview Strathcona Elders
who in turn told them stories during group interviews. In their classroom, they worked with Alison Keenan and Phyllis Schwartz to write about elders and their observations about changes in Strathcona over the years. 


Students in Ariel Boulet's Ceramics class worked with Debra Sloan, Alison Keenan and Phyllis Schwartz to explore slip casting and experiment with sculptural forms. Edward Peck spoke about his Berlin graffiti project, and photography students explored the Strathcona and Commercial Drive Communities to find graffiti art as subject material for their digital photography. 



Student work is currently on display in the foyer at the Vancouver Schoolboard (1580 West Broadway) until the end of March.  These projects were partially funded by the City of Vancouver, the Best B4 Collective, the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver and Vancouver School Board District Fine Arts.  

Looking Back at BestB4 Collective Community Events — artist salon with Daphne Harwood and Debra Sloan

BestB4 Collective Salon featured a conversation between Daphne Harwood and Debra Sloan on Sunday, 06 December in the On-Tak Cheung Gallery at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver. 

Daphne Harwood was one of the originators of the Imagination Market, a non-profit organization that promoted the reuse and repurposing of usable industrial discards. Now the building site where the Imagination Market was has been transformed by Vancouver City Council's approval of a 52-storey tower. Harwood spoke about how she has been documenting this transition in photography, journaling, quilt-making and assemblage.

Debra Sloan is a Vancouver-based ceramic sculptor and the 2015 recipient of the Mayor's Design and Craft Award. Her slip cast dogs, horses and baby figures challenge and surprise viewer assumptions and attitudes. Sloan's work has been exhibited locally, across Canada and internationally, and most recently awarded the Vancouver Mayor's Art Award and biannual Hilde Gerson Award by the Craft Council of BC. She spoke about her recent ceramic residency at C.R.E.T.A. in Rome.

Both artists discussed the influence that the environment had on their artist practice and bodies of work. Debra Sloan works in ceramic residencies that offer the opportunity to research both techniques and ceramics history. Daphne Harwood works from a documentary perspective, using journaling and photography as a starting point; her current work continues as Vancouver house progresses from the demolition of the original Imagination Market site to construction and eventually occupancy. 

Telling Story/a visual art exhibition continues in the On-Tak Exhibition Hall at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum of Greater Vancouver (555 Columbia at Keefer) until Saturday, 19 December. The gallery is open Tuesday- Sunday (11 - 5 pm). The limited edition exhibition catalogue can be purchased for $20 at the Chinese Cultural Museum. 

Looking Back at BestB4 Collective Community Events — an artist tour and exhibition catalogue launch

BestB4 Collective artists Jim Friesen, Daphne Harwood, Alison Keenan, Sophi Liang, Colette Lisoway, Edward Peck, Phyllis Schwartz, Debra Sloan and June Yun guided visitors through a  tour of Telling Stories: A Visual Art Exhibition at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum on Sunday 29 November. Artists told stories that enlivened their photography, painting, ceramics, fibre and installations and engaged viewers in dialogue about contemporary issues that weave together their collective exhibition. 


Telling Story/a visual art exhibition continues in the On-Tak Exhibition Hall at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum of Greater Vancouver (555 Columbia at Keefer) until Saturday, 19 December. The gallery is open Tuesday- Sunday (11 - 5 pm). The limited edition exhibition catalogue can be purchased for $20 at the Chinese Cultural Museum. 

Looking Back at BestB4 Collective Community Events — Tea and Storytelling

Sophi Liang, visual artist exhibiting in Telling Stories, organized an afternoon Tea and Story Party for the BestB4 Collective at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum on Saturday, 21 November. The first of three community events included presentations by Ben Fong, tea specialist and Jim Wong-Chu, historian and poet.

Ben Fong explains the purpose of two types of tea bowls

Fong demonstrated and narrated tea preparation techniques. This included several styles of tea brewing accompanied by a samples. A generous assortment of tea cakes and treats were shared along with stories about the history of tea and tea culture.

Wong-Chu read poems about Chinatown from Chinatown Ghosts, published by Pulp Arsenal Press. These poems prompted stories about Chinatown history and culture.

Jim Wong-Chu reads from Chinatown Ghosts

Well attended and well documented, Liang's Tea and Story Party lingered until late in the afternoon. Telling Story/a visual art exhibition continues in the On-Tak Exhibition Hall at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum of Greater Vancouver (555 Columbia at Keefer) until Saturday, 19 December. The gallery is open Tuesday- Sunday (11 - 5 pm).

Telling Stories in the Community

Colette Lisoway: Printmaking Demonstration at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum

June Yun's Calligraphy Workshop
at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum of Greater Vancouver

Telling Stories/a visual arts exhibition invited community to extend the exhibition through participating in workshops offered by BestB4 Collective artists Colette Lisoway (printmaking) and June Yun (Calligraphy). Both workshops drew sizeable crowds for afternoons of skill building and story sharing. 

Colette Lisoway explained the different techniques of transferring an image through a screen onto fabric or paper and also a discussion on colour. Very quickly the students loaded paint onto their screens and then the magic began. Everyone eagerly participated and at the end of the session each had an art work to take home.

June Yun's Calligraphy Workshop introduced the four treasures: rice paper, writing brus, ink and ink slab. Her hands-on teaching approach offered participants an opportunity to learn and practice calligraphy techniques with helped to better understand Chinese art and culture.

Telling Stories/a visual art exhibition continues through Saturday, 19 December in the On-Tak Cheung Gallery at the Chinese Cultural Museum (555 Columbia Street at Keefer), 11AM - 5 PM.

Sunday's Salon — two artists telling stories about their stories (Part 1)

Join the BestB4 Collective Salon for a conversation with Daphne Harwood and Debra Sloan this Sunday, December 6 (2 - 4 pm) at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum (555 Columbia Street at Keefer). 

Clay Model of Imagination Market (1989, artist unknown)

Daphne Harwood was one of the originators of the Imagination Market, a non-profit organization that promoted the reuse and repurposing of usable industrial discards. Now the building site where the Imagination Market was has been transformed by Vancouver City Council’s approval of a 52-storey tower. Harwood has been documenting this transition in photography, journaling, quilt-making and assemblage.

Harwood's work for Telling Stories is about two projects in her neighborhood. One project was The Imagination Market that was housed in 1435 Granville Street between 1986-89. The other project is happening right now: the building of a 52 story condo called Vancouver House, designed by Bjarke Ingels.  The installation pieces by Harwood look at the land and the transformations that have taken place on this land from 1850 until the present.  It maps the transition from virgin forrest near a tidal inlet, to a large land-clearing lumber operation, to a zone for light industry that gave way to homeless people, then to a complete razing in preparation for erecting a dramatic building and a new neighborhood complex.

Photo Essay of the transition
from Imagination Market to Vancouver House

In her own words:

I look at these neighborhood projects through several lenses: Impermanence—of buildings & land allocation & communities. Re-use—of materials that are generated by humans. This was a key feature of what Imagination Market did by collecting scraps from industries & business that could be reused for art, craft & play. And re-use is vividly shown in the demolition, excavation, & construction in the block where Vancouver House will go. The Non/Traditional Quilt in the show is made from scrap material. Mapping—my memories are often held in maps that I make of where I went, what I did.  Finally, people often say of quilts, “If the patches could talk what tales they would tell.” I wondered about all the occupants of 1435 Granville Street which was built in 1942. The building is now deceased and its body dispersed, but I did want to think about the “life" of this building. This is the lens of Honoring. The workers, engineers, architects, occupants,  tools, sewer line diggers, & new technologies and old.

Jim Friesen — Poet Photographer

 

Jim Friesen: Pitt Lake — Insuflation

Jim Friesen’s photography reads as a metaphor of oncoming disaster or the release of tension, implying the cyclical nature of storytelling. Having studied both literature and photography, he is interested in the dynamic between words and images and how the imagination is stimulated by their collaboration. Friesen's landscape series in Telling Stories is an experiment in that direction. His titles are doors to works of art, invitations to dwell in the visual space and contemplate. The sky, particularly, becomes a character in his photographic narrative.  The tension, meteorological and emotional, awaits a rapid pressure drop. 

In his own words, Photographs are an exploration. Photographers explore the world, and through their choices they explore themselves. The viewer enters the process which creates a narrative. Insufflation was the word that triggered the idea for the four-photo series in this show. It describes a process in both forensic sciences that has to do with revealing fingerprints. It also describes an arcane practice in the exorcism ritual. I hoped for titles that added a layer of meaning and inspired the imagination without limiting the responses of the viewer.

Best B4 Collective Artist, June Yun
speaking to Strathcona Elementary School visitors
about her appreciation for  Jim Friesen's Pitt Lake — Insuflation

School Tours Begin ~ Strathcona Students Visit Telling Stories — a visual art exhibition

Daphne Harwood welcomes students from Strathcona Elementary School

Students from Strathcona Elementary School visited Telling Stories—a visual art exhibition in the On-Tak Cheung Exhibition Hall on Friday 13 September. Grade 4/5 students in Annie Simard's class were  toured by visual artists Daphne Harwood, Alison Keenan and Phyllis Schwartz.

Questions about Imagination Market Quilts

Daphne Harwood challenged students to consider the story about impact of neighbourhood change in her quilts documenting of the demise of the building that housed Imagination Market. Alison Keenan posed questions about her series Avian Fables, paintings about the territory shared by avian and human inhabitants. Phyllis Schwartz asked students to consider the back story of food production and industry in North America, showing photographs of resultant environmental devastation.

Best B4 Collective artists will work with these students and their classroom teachers to learn interviewing and story writing skills for a project about Chinatown Elders. These students will return to the Chinese Cultural Centre to meet these elders to  interview them so that they can write stories about their lives. These interviews, along with photographs, will appear in subsequent blogs.

Looking for stories in Edward Peck's On the Wall Series

Students notice camouflage and landscape features in Debra Sloan's Rider to the Coast

Alison Keenan listens to students telling stories 

Out of the Mouth of Babes

As part of our BestB4 Residency at the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum (Vancouver) during the run of the  exhibition. Tree: Literal and Figurative, Pauline Doyle, Alison Keenan and Phyllis Schwartz welcomed students from Britannia Secondary School and Lord Strathcona Elementary School into the gallery and museum classrooms. Student from both schools were quickly engaged with the art work in the gallery and responded with perceptive and knowledgeable observations.

When standing in front of Anna Ruth's inverted graphite drawings of trees, they speculated on why the tree was installed with roots at the top of the drawing and leaves on the ground: perhaps forests were being destroyed or the artists wanted us to take a more careful look at the entire tree. Looking at Edward Peck's three large scale  photographs, their comments indicated that they had an instant understanding of the raw industries that make up the economy of British Columbia; they quickly made the connections between raw materials being converted into building materials, pulp and paper.

Pauline Doyle leads a discussion about Edward Peck's photographs

Students discussing Anna Ruth's inverted tree drawings