EAU:2021
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Online Student Exhibition | March 13 – May 29, 2021
Every year, ASA offers students with the opportunity to exhibit works in a student exhibition called Emerging Artists Unleashed (EAU), along with the chance to win a $1,000.00 scholarship. Scholarship winners and EAU participants are selected through a blind jury process based on innovation, creativity, and academic achievement.
How to Navigate
This page is divided into two sections:
1. Gallery
2. Artist Bios + Statements
To view artwork in the Gallery, click on a thumbnail and the full image will pop up. Clicking on the full image will toggle the caption to appear. To remove caption, click on the image again. The link in each caption will take you to that artist’s bio and statement. To return to the Gallery, simply scroll back up.
Questions and concerns? Contact Reeny Koh, Program Coordinator: coordinator@albertasocietyofartists.com
ASA Scholarship Awardees
Eden Redman, U of A
Leia Guo, AUArts
EAU Artists
Camryn Carnell, AUArts
Elise Futoransky, U of A
H.B. Fenna Kort, AUArts
Ishnoor Dhillon, U of C
Jennifer Danvers, AUArts
Kira Fowell, AUArts
Maddi Mulla, AUArts
Megan Beland, U of A
Timothy Koslik, AUArts
Vivian Smith, AUArts
gallery
artist bios + statements
Scholarship Awardee
Eden Redman
Surreal Processor. Watercolour and acrylic on textured double weight somerset 22⅛” by 24½”
Exploring the false dichotomy of mind and body, here they are treated as equal parts of an integrated and reciprocal system. Witnessing the spectrum of unconscious elements to which we are each ingrained, I probe at how they spontaneously interact with conscious elements. Exploring the inherent difficulty in merely defining the point at which the unconscious gives rise to the conscious, I question whether consciousness itself is illusory.
Liquid Mountains. Watercolour and pigment liner on double weight somerset 22¼” by 29¾”
The dark cellar void invokes a preoccupation with intangible existential matters. The consistent outlining of spontaneously formed shapes comments on the human need to categorize everything in an indifferent universe.
Reality as a Collective Hallucination. Watercolour and pigment liner on textured double weight somerset 22⅜” by 30″
A disembodied brain-form acts as a focal point of negative space amongst a chaotic and mildly disturbing scene. Tentacles probe the brain, appearing simultaneously both a source of sustenance in a turbulent backdrop and a constraint to freedom. The disconnection of the brain form from the body suggests an unawareness of just how far removed from reality we may be. Suggesting reality is merely the collective appraisal of the majority.
Biography
Born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1996, Eden Redman has lived in both rural Saskatchewan and urban Alberta for nearly a decade each. With the loss of two immediate family members marking his beginnings, his fascination with the experiences of his friends and remaining family continues to grow and inform his practice. Their subsequent challenges with mental health would inspire a lifetime of seeking to further understand the human mind. A practicing attentional neuroscience researcher, Eden describes his artistic process as the following, “My work represents an investigation into self along a transection of the forefront of scientific knowledge and that of art-based philosophical inquiry”.
With his artistic works having been described as “vaguely diagrammatic”, Eden gravitates towards painting in semi-abstract and abstract styles, working in ink, watercolour, acrylic, and oil. Recurring themes of tension, ranging from entropy versus complexity to balance versus imbalance, evokes a methodical, almost formulaic presentation to each work. In exploring the characteristics of mental illness, Eden comes into contact with the ideas of autonomy, free will, and the malleability of experience and perception.
Eden seeks to bridge the gap between the typically disparate artistic and scientific communities in his artwork and beyond while using his passion for crafting and driving impactful initiatives. As the President of NeurAlbertaTech and Director of Edmonton Strategy for NeuroNexus (2020) Eden has emerged as a leader in the realm of applied neurotechnology innovation across Western Canada, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration across Alberta and beyond.
Scholarship Awardee
Leia Guo
As a first generation Chinese Canadian, I believe that home is not the place you are born, but the place that you love. This body of work is a love letter to the Alberta landscape that I recognize as the home of my heart not only for its sublimity, but for also being the keeper of my fondest memories. The relationship between myself and the landscape is a dialogue in which the meaning I add to a location is just as important as the effect it has had on me. My glass pieces are mementos; a part of home to take with me and a declaration of belonging. Glass is the vessel that holds not just an element of the familiar, but also the bittersweetness of coming home again. My more recent work utilizes glass as a mark-maker on photosensitive surfaces to visualize the feeling of homesickness. Impossible phenomena captured in my prints come not from the landscape, but from a heart that wishes to return to a place that does not exist anymore. In other words, in my work I see the landscape is the catalyst, the photograph is the vessel, and the glass is the intangible.
Each of these unique pondering stones are inspired by unique phenomena in Southern Alberta. They are vessels capture a small piece of what defines this place as my home into soothing, interactive stones that I can take with me on my travels. The layering of colour and texture invokes a sense of infinity found within the prairies: an ever-expanding limitless landscape that is conjured by the imagination from the minutest details, such as the rhythm of ice flowing on a river to the particular colour of the horizon line.
The set includes: January (blue) – Reminiscent of the Bow River flowing lazily under a layer of sheer winter ice. June (gold) – Inspired by the waves of golden summer wheat on the prairies. August (purple and white) – Influenced by the dancing clouds created by a late spring storm in the foothills.
Field Studies. 7″ x 11″ unframed, 12″ x 15″ framed, silver gelatin print, glass stringers. 2019.
The scene in this photograph is one that is familiar to those who live in Alberta: an empty field on the prairies with a gradated morning sky. It is something that can seem mundane and be taken for granted, but it is also a view that has ingrained itself within my memories as one that represents home. The punctum of the image for me are the tracks left by vehicles as they cross the fields. There are the standard even tracks of tractors plowing, but also the organic tracks of people who have presumably taken joyrides or footpaths through the landscape; a record of life being lived juxtaposed against the uniformity demanded by agriculture. It was this expression of rural living that struck me as important to highlight with the glass stringers I collected.
Caducous. 4″ x 6″ unframed, 6.5″ x 8.5″ framed, silver gelatin print, glass stringer. 2020.
Another exploration in mark-making with glass on a photographic silver gelatin print. Caducous visualizes the invisible marks and narrative left by people of the past. The sublimity of abandoned spaces in the prairies is defined by the presence of the past in the present experience. The definition of the word Caducous is: a premature collapse or falling of something before its time. Signs of previous inhabitation in an abandoned place, whether ominous or curious, are the catalyst for reflection and exploration. This particular barn spoke to me because I felt that despite its decay, it still held more secrets and stories yet to be told before it could truly be forgotten. The ghostly glass trail embodies the place’s potential to hold untold stories and turns an inconspicuous abandoned barn into a meaningful place that remains sublime through the passage of time.
Biography
Leia (Shi Jie) Guo is an interdisciplinary artist currently pursuing a BFA in Glass and a subsequent BDes in Photography at AUArts in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary, AB). As an emerging artist, she has exhibited at several group shows and exhibited regionally and internationally with the Exposure Photography Festival and the Glass Art Society. Leia is passionate about working in a variety of mediums and has a diverse artistic practice spanning commercial photography, experimental analog photography, stained glass, and glassblowing. She is also a student representative for the Glass Art Society, the Glass Art Association of Canada, and currently works as the AUArts Show + Sale Virtual Coordinator. When she’s not in the glass studio or the darkroom, you can find her cruising in the Albertan countryside with her camera in hand and the windows down.
Camryn Carnell
Gut Health
My practice is a mirror of my personal and psychological healing; therefore, the artwork I have been producing is quite broad in its range of material exploration to allow for a freedom of self. By playing with such materials as paper, selfies, glitter, paint, and pastels, I hope to develop and reflect a personal resonance and candour in my work. Through fragments of words, abstraction, and articulation of my body, in combination with the previously stated materials, I seek to question the shame I am made to feel for wanting to participate in femininity, sexuality, and popular culture. Additionally, I attempt to work intuitively in combination with text, so that I can avoid self-censorship. If I am not completely honest with myself, it feels as if my making becomes a dull task or a place to enable my unhealthy thoughts. By taking ownership of my emotional experiences through honesty in my creative practice, I aim to cultivate a body of work that shamelessly represents my femininity, sexuality, and mental state. Moving forward, I will continue to be critical of my inner narrative in my artistic process and how it is informed by patriarchal bias.
Elise Futoransky
Biography
Elise Futoransky is an artist living and practicing in Edmonton, Alberta. She is expecting to graduate from the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the spring of 2021. Her work is sourced primarily in printmaking and painting, and she draws on her Eastern European background for inspiration. Her practice often references folk practices, the narrow delineation between art and craft, and material culture, as well as utilising religious elements as visual shorthand. The tension between tradition and the contemporary is highly of interest to Elise, as such her practice is not only a celebration of her heritage but also an investigation of how culture is filtered through the passage of time and distance.
Ishnoor Dhillon
Forgotten explores the slow decay and deterioration of an individual’s memory and the impact of this loss. This work is part of a three piece series titled Memory. Created after suffering three concussions, the series explores the process of remembering and the process of forgetting with a central theme of preservation.
Biography
I am currently in the third year of my Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Calgary and during my degree I have gotten the opportunity to explore many materials and methods. Lately I have ben exploring ideas of collective consciousness, decolonization as well as my personal relationship with the process of time and memory. The artworks I have chosen to submit exemplify the core ideas I am currently engaging with in my practice. Spending the majority of twenty-twenty at home has influenced my practice greatly, I believe that my focus has turned inward. Rather than doing external research about topics such as climate change, I have started focusing on themes surrounding my ancestry, family and relationships. This year has also marked a shift in the mediums I use in my practice. Only a year ago, I primarily consider myself as a sculptor; however, recently my practice has taken a shift towards more two-dimensional methodologies such as drawing, digital compositing and printmaking. Being a student in the process of defining my practice, my work is heavily based in art history and contemporary art research and I hope to continue the expansion of my practice through many different avenues.
H.B. Fenna Kort
Solid Methods (fibre, 2020) investigates both the material qualities of the ceramic medium, and methods of care for the vessels of our bodies. Through the crocheted form’s softly rippling surface and presentation in different shapes, this work brings to mind the opposing states of the soft plasticity of workable clay and the material’s transformation into an unyielding fired ceramic vessel. These same qualities of the form are also evocative of flesh, of its folding motions, of its fragile capacity to contain. Solid Methods asserts the existence of interrelationships between flesh and clay, between their material natures and the processes we exert on them.
Biography
My work investigates interrelationships of body, identity, and place, often using visual strategies that blur physical boundaries between subjects. I am interested in how these sites relate to concepts of enacting care and love.
My practice is influenced by my previous studies in human geography and my relationship to my identity as a queer woman and a settler in this land. My recent work explores questions of engaging in responsible land relationships as a settler, especially in regards to the ceramic medium. I began to conceptualize my use of clay as using the flesh of the earth. If clay is flesh, how may I responsibly use flesh in my work? Questioning my relationship to clay encouraged me to explore new methods in my practice, such as using my own body as material and employing video in my work.
I am presently investigating linkages between femininity, mental health, and water, primarily using depictions of my nude body. How do I enact care towards my own queer body? How does my positionality as a settler impact my relationship with water? What entanglements are present between caring for my mental health through caring for my physical body, and caring for the land? Through the public display of these personal lines of inquiry, I aim to collectively explore the intersections between identity and place, relationship and responsibility.
Jennifer Danvers
The Burnt Project is housed within the larger exploration The house is like a body… which reflects on the influence of heritage on one’s environment and social surroundings. The full site can be experienced here. You can view a video walkthrough of the site below.
The Burnt Project came from the observation that I seem to have a container perpetually lingering amongst my items with the note “to burn” scribbled on the outside. This began as a collection of items that carried details, or were in connection to, personal information that I didn’t want anyone other than myself stumbling across. Then, the container shifted to hold papers of a significant value that I didn’t feel comfortable recycling but were a burden to hold onto. This is what the project has become. A vehicle to purge objects now deemed burdens because of their emotional weight in conjunction with memories of events remembered out of context. I never remember anything else other than what I assume must have been my poor behavior.
Biography
Jennifer is a multi-disciplinary, text-based artist. Her practice is rooted in process and material-based methodologies. Life experiences and heritage have become predominant investigations within Jennifer’s practice. Her ancestors were Doukhobors, they were hard-working people and good with their hands. Jennifer has inherited these traits. The execution of work is not just a means-to-an-end. To her, process and execution are expressions. Jennifer views the movement of the hands and body in her practice synonymous to maintaining a relationship. She has begun to view her practice not just as a physical practice but as something intangible. How searching and asking questions are materials within her process, and how that movement has begun to represent ideals of home. It is the seeking that drives her practice, and she realizes that this constant search is connected to her heritage.
Kira Fowell
Rip Apart
Handmade Paper, Thread.
The conversations between us tear into me from the inside out. Every word rips deeper and deeper. More vulnerabilities shine through and rip me apart.
I focus on the torso of the human body, where vulnerability is located, internally from the shoulders to the chest, to the heart, to the gut, and the stomach. The deep internal places with our bodies are where I feel it is located and is the strongest, where we are the most aware of the vulnerable feelings. By confronting emotional vulnerability within myself through my art, I break into many emotional states of vulnerability. Such as pain, trauma, hurt, opening-up, gut and heart feelings, and the visceral qualities to the physical human body. My art becomes a raw, visual representing of what vulnerability looks like and how fragile it can become when faced in many situations and relationships. By using handmade paper and thread to depict the visceral qualities of the human body and the reactions of the needle and thread to the delicate paper expressing vulnerability. Revealing deeper, raw, softer, intuitive feelings that lay beneath the surface of the insecurities that follow from what is perceived.
Biography
“I turned vulnerability into art. I took the internal insecurities and struggles within myself and my relationship, turning emotional vulnerability into something visual.”
I am an artist & photographer; located in Calgary, AB. I am a 4th-year student at Alberta University of Arts (AUArts). I major in drawing and will graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in May 2021! I do not stick just to one discipline since I draw and shoot photography. I love exploring various materials and finding ways to express different emotions within my work. Recently my focus has been on exploring vulnerability and creating poems that coincide with my art. As an artist I like to write poetry as it allows me to explore the mental states of my mind in my artwork. This allows me to create a deeper connection to the idea of vulnerability and the human body. I have always wanted to be an artist and it is all I have ever known; it is how I connect and speak. I find deeper connections and bring stories to life through visual juxtapositions of drawing, poetry, and photography.
Maddi Mulla
Woodburn Octopus
Being an artist isn’t only about making the piece of art. Its the idea behind it and being able to pour all of your emotions and feeling into that one piece. To express yourself and share your beliefs and values to those around you, without even having to speak. Art is a strong form of communication and that is what I love most about it. I am currently enrolled at Alberta University of the Arts working towards a painting major and illustration minor. With this I want to paint murals and make illustrations with a focus around my love for the outdoors. It is important to understand how crucial it is to keep our planet clean and pure and know how to care for it. Throughout my submitted pieces I share my quirky personality, my values and beliefs in caring for the natural world and my exploration with light and shadows, texture and painting surfaces. My artistic practice has recently been focused around acrylic painting with some experimentation in other mediums.
Megan Beland
Abandoned One
In this painting series, I am interested in working with and exploring the idea of the passage of time and its effect on spaces and materials. I also want to express an awareness of a personal relationship that we have with those effects of time. I spent my early years growing up in the small rural mining town of Grande Cache. Here I witnessed, through the ups and downs of the economy, the results of abandoned homes. While occupied houses maintained a sense of not ageing, the boarded up building next door deteriorated and seemed to age rapidly. I became aware that a balance between an active living space and its decay is affected by the presence and maintenance of its human occupants. Time creates decay. We as humans have control over the rate of decay and when we are no longer present it goes unchecked. Nature will always reclaim its own. I am choosing to explore this phenomenon by focusing on old, abandoned domestic living spaces where evidence of decay and the patina of time are dominant. I ventured out on an expedition to known rural Alberta ghost towns, to gather source material from old, abandoned buildings to witness times transformation. I also sourced found photographs of these forgotten towns. I discovered something very powerful in the fact that there was evidence of occupancy and sudden abandonment. In the painting process, I began by pigmenting water, applying it to a canvas and allowing a duration of time and evaporation to stain the surface. This process will mimic the effects of time that are happening within the environment of the subject matter. I negotiated between the resulting stains and my application of paint, creating a resolution to best interpret the balance revealed by the passage of time. The result is an eerie awareness that the ravages of time are always present, even in our own sanctuaries. I acknowledge that there exists a pattern of life and decay which is determined by the economy that we live in. The potential for more abandoned homes and towns is always there unless we intervene.
Timothy Koslik
Underworld
My artistic practice is still in its fledgling stage, it does not yet hold to one notion as a key base for my works. Rather I explore varying avenues of digital photography. The artworks I have selected for this exhibition being an exploration into that which often goes unnoticed underfoot. My creative thoughts often turn toward the unnoticed elements of the everyday as they hold great visual complexity. These ideas are shaped by the desire and respect I have for the natural world. I seek to understand at a personal level the complexity of nature and how it is often unnoticed. While I also endeavour to present the world of nature in a form that is more raw and less conformitive to the idealistic perspective of the photographer. This specific series of work attempts to seek out the natural world in a raw singular focus rather than to overwhelm with a clutter of visually focused detail. There is a certain level of excitement in capturing a glimpse of a world that is alien to the everyday of society. The nature of this alien world creates a visual that is captured within a photograph that is singular in its temporal sphere.
Biography
Timothy Kozlik is a primarily photographic based artist currently attending school at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary Alberta. The primary focus of the artwork produced is to capture the complexity of nature in the photographic form. While this is the artists main focus they are also exploring different directions of photography from old practices to the latest technology as well as a varying degree of subject matter. Overall the artist strives to capture scenes that are not commonly displayed in everyday life.
Vivian Smith
Hand Axe
The hand-axe was one of the first tools used by our ancestors and dates to approximately 1.6 million years ago. Not only was it functional, but it has aesthetic qualities that serve no useful function, suggesting the earliest example of cognition and artistic appreciation. The hand-axe was the inspiration for this project. I designed then modified a wooden die-cut in the shape of the cross section of a hand-axe for use with the clay extruder. I placed extruded segments and molded them so that each piece was in conversation with its neighbors. I sandblasted the exterior surface. The arrangement, material choice, and surface treatment are suggestive of geological features, the earth, and the passage of time. The sculpture can be further abstracted to ideas of how the individual is influenced by society. There are many different angles to view the sculpture that reward the audience with very different forms.
Biography
Vivian Smith (she/her/hers) is a 3rd year AUArts student living and working in Mohkinstsis (Calgary). She works primarily in ceramics and painting with a focus on form and colour. Her current practice and research are focused on the influence of society on identity. Vivian was the recipient of the 2020 AUArts Scholarship for Research Projects and Dr. J.C. Sproule Memorial Scholarship.
