Artists

Geophilia, Summer 2015
		Karen Abel is a Canadian artist and naturalist based in Toronto. Her site-sensitive installations and public art works consider, engage and accommodate 21st century urban ecology and biodiversity. Concerned with ephemera and ‘slow art’ processes, Abel is interested in contributing to a culture of ecology through research-intensive, season and time based practices. She holds an interdisciplinary Master in Environmental Studies from York University in environmental art practice, cultural production and community art. Abel has realized art gardens and permanent ecological art projects through public art initiatives with the Ontario Science Center and Walpole Island First Nation. She received the 2013 Ontario Association of Landscape Architects/GROUND Award for GeoGarden {A subterranean symphony in C}, a landscape-themed project about geological time and the musicality of natural processes. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Jury’s Choice Award and Ontario Association of Landscape Architects/GROUND Award for Vernal Pool, a participatory art project about water, place and precipitation.
		Heather Vida-Moore, Canada My process involves making investigations into psychology, consciousness and identity through research, experience and experiments. While I am motivated by engaging with concepts, my ideas are transferred into my work intuitively, as I try to stay receptive and let the piece inform me of its needs. I sometimes use my own life experiences to fuel my practice and interrogate things like the abject, fragmentation, transformation, and the value found in both suffering and healing. While I often feel the impulse to treat my pieces as problems to be solved, my method of resolving a piece is usually through the disruption of comfortable preferences, and I enjoy the tension created by ambiguity or displacement. The act of making art is for me both meditative and intensely stimulating, and I hope for such a response on the part of the viewer as well.
		Andrew Godsalve, Canada My work is an exploration of human perception and landscape, within the context of geologic and digital-photographic processes. By using photography and the geological record in referencing space and time, and collapsing the boundaries traditionally imposed by these dimensions within the digital canvas, I explore new ways of envisioning the earth within the image. Geological formations are the focus of my work; I am drawn to the contrasts and surprising similarities between processes of geology and digital photography. Rocks which have undergone millions of years of transformation translate into forms of digital information and light in a fraction of a second, both events carrying equal degrees of intangibility for the human observer. My work is inspired by the unexpected results of collisions I create between these “inaccessible” processes, on opposite ends of our temporal spectrum. My practice involves choosing a location of interest and photographing it extensively, building an archive of images which are subsequently used as material in creating a digital collage. The photos are fragmented and “recombined” into radical new forms in the digital canvas, eschewing conventional landscape reference points. The completed forms challenge the viewer with new depictions of geologic time and human space, provoking a re-appraisal of the substance of our world and our own presence upon it.
		Thea Fridman, Israel I choose to imitate nature but the result is not necessarily mimesis: By following and observing nature I am stimulated to create new figurative and nonfigurative shapes that echo my inner self. My biography and my connection to other circles around me find expression through the use of objects and impressions that I collect in both the natural sphere and in urban spaces. Dialogs between one and the many, the active and the non-active, the observer and the observed, play an interesting and significant roll both in nature and the urban arena. I find that the most significant moments of my work is when the border between the object and my self-awareness blurs. The object becomes an extension of my consciousness. Art as a way to metamorphosis Most of my work is produced over long durations of time. The work as a whole and as a fragment of a larger whole, changes through time. The fragment is a whole: Through observing or using pieces of nature, a joy of creativity is awakened in me and I feel one with the universe. Through my art I find focus and understanding of new concepts by seeing the fragments as a whole. *The text is the medium It can appear as a word, an image, a gesture* or a sound. My text is the appearance of my existence. My biography comes into the frame of the work, as a substance and as a way to celebrate life and facing its challenges. The work of art Is my way to give and find meaning, to appreciate life and except death. A.Vi* – Art Virus In its way to impact life – the work of Art should act as a Virus : in every possible space or time.**

Geophilia Fall 2014
		Anna Carr Kodama, USA Geophilia. The word's new but I know the feeling. A few years ago, I couldn’t look on life, so I turned to the earth itself. It felt right to pull apart an old stone wall, to haul the stones and lay them out in an ancient pattern with a compass and string. It felt right to walk the path I’d made, twisting round and round, but always ending up in the center of things, always coming out. A man repairing the roof asked, What’re you doin back there in the woods? I showed him this sea of stones. Took his breath away. He got started on the path and couldn’t get over how lost it made him feel and then, when he made it to the middle, how found. The next day, he brought a stone to add. Then others came, friends and strangers --- more stones, more stories, more footsteps. Many nights now, I sleep in the labyrinth. Though it's not a living thing, it’s not exactly nonliving either. These stones brought me back to life. They are witness to the mystery of creation---earth’s own big bang and our human small ones…. all of our making and being.
		Gabrielle Giordano, USA Final Dance universal energy connecting all living things opening up your senses to discover the natural rhythms of the universe molecularly inter-woven into the environment being moved floating upon qi we exist Creation is an inseparable part of my nature. I believe art accesses our inner most places and helps one discover its true nature. It is an unfiltered response to our existence to our gender, culture, class, society, geography, and sexuality. All of these forces push and pull us to develop ourselves further. A visceral understanding of human experience creates sharing. The human body is a vessel for communication; the poetry of the body is understood as emotion. Dance, movement, and gestures express our humanity using archetypal images connecting all people and inviting them into the work. Expanding your possibilities of dynamic through using imagination and imagery to increase understanding of body and mind. Art is a gateway to unanswerable questions. It helps to see our deeper connection with the rest of the universe. We dance and life is our subject.
		Katherine Valkanas, Canada *Muladhara* In attaining my masters certification in Mikao Usui Reiki I have developed a deeper understanding of how healing the metaphysical body also positively affects the physical body. Reiki is a bioelectromagnetic-based therapy that affects the surrounding and inner body. It focuses on balancing the electromagnetic fields in the body to bring individuals to a tranquil state. This type of healing therapy has inspired the creation of my lithographs, specifically the series of organ structures. These sculptural prints represent the seven main chakras, which are signified through the chosen colours and crystal forms for each organ. Throughout my time working in print media I have been drawn to creating work that is inspired by my personal spiritual practice. From graining the stone to the final stages of lithography printing and paper assemblage, these series of repetitive actions act as their own mantra. Sculptural works such as Unstruck focus on the exploration of crystal formations through texture, shape and colouration. These works reflect my curiosity for understanding the origin, environment, elemental formula and metaphysical properties of crystals. Through exploring a variety of art mediums I strive to represent both the physical, metaphysical and healing qualities of crystals.
Alyson O'Malley, New Zealand		**Up in the Air Somewhere, Flipping White Pages with out Poems** 2013, onopordum acanthium My practice is based on a formal exploration of materiality as metaphor. The idea of materiality as a metaphor contributes a renewed interest between the object and the spectator in the question of being, transcendence, and the social by way of its physicality. A recurring theme throughout my practice is the focus on the romantic unity and underlying tension between humans and nature. Temporal installations underline the fragility of nature in man’s world, yet appreciates the beauty of organic objects. Zen is a departure point throughout my research, as it resonates with the use of organic forms in contrast to the artificial. Poetic gestures allow a moment to be mediated by a physical directness with an interactive event. Modern industrial material in juxtaposition with organic form offer a threshold for transformation, surpassing everyday identity to become a bare material presence in itself. Playing with permanence versus impermanence explores this idea of a fleeting moment. Cut-continuance articulates the experience of this passage of time, the moment of the in-between, where one becomes aware of the pause between exhalation and inhalation. The contrast of movement and stillness, impermanence and permanence, flow and cut-continuance speaks of the space as infinite.
Sarah Gillett, England *I think I am an Ominous Decoration*, 2014, Tapstry, 300mm x 170mm		I am a 'draw-er', collecting stories from folklore, history and science to create new work that sites our own lives within the epic narratives of earth, sea and sky. My influences include The Pennines (mountain range in the North of England), 18th Century engravers, dictionaries and radio drama and my multidisciplinary practice reflects these interests in text, image, sound, film and performance. From starting points of imagination, memory and mythology my work examines our expectations of narrative, through a breadcrumb trail of objects, actions and landscapes that uncover the symbolic power of stories in society, politics and communities. From the Aboriginal Dreamtime works to standing stones such as Stonehenge and the statues of Easter Island, from the disasters of Pompeii (natural) and Hiroshima (man-made), our relationship to land, its geology and cultural / mineral value results in rich and complex stories. As my work starts with physical objects including rocks, fossils and corals, the material process of making-by-hand is very important, and as a consequence I make lithographs on stone, etchings on copper, monoprints using textured wallpapers. I record sound outside or in a natural space rather than in a studio, as I want to hear the air. My current body of work focuses around the idea of ‘visitations’ – events that are ‘visited’ upon us beyond our control, and the physical / invisible after effects. In 1954 a meteorite crashed through the ceiling of Mrs. Ann Hodges’ home in Alabama and though she sustained only minor injuries her life was changed forever. Taking the meteorite as a signifier for ‘the end’ I am playing out different stories to present a set of unexpected outcomes. The opportunity to take part in the Geophilia residency fills me with excitement - to experience an epic landscape’s geology and react to it directly is a unique chance to develop my artistic practice.
		Elizabeth Zvonar, Canada Channelling I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, the bedrock of which is predominately Amethyst. It was a strange and beautiful place to begin and sympathetic to creative youth. The Coast Mountains surrounding my home today in Vancouver are largely composed of Granite. In 2008, I spent a very transformative moment at the Banff Centre, the area composed largely of Limestone. I’m interested in geology and how it affects humans emotionally and creatively. Admittedly, I am an armchair enthusiast. I would love the opportunity to explore and work alongside seriously engaged geophiles who are open and willing to share their knowledge. In exchange, I can offer my novice insights and enthusiastic engagement. My practice incorporates sculpture and collage while citing a diverse range of references from popular culture to historical events. Using humor and seduction made slightly strange as tools that draw a viewer in for closer contemplation, my work employs metaphor as a form of abstraction and as a way to talk about metaphysics through a feminine perspective. I am interested in using my work as a catalyst for thinking in a social and cultural climate where indifference has become de rigueur.