ELAN staff Camille Horrocks-Denis sat down with Kim-Sanh Châu and Miriam Ginestier, co-directors of Studio 303. Miriam Ginestier has been involved with Studio 303 since 1990 whereas Kim-Sanh Châu joined the team in 2013, and became co-director in 2018. Ginestier is a former dancer and queer event organiser. Châu is in the process of completing her Master’s degree in Dance at UQAM. She also works as an independent choreographer and videographer. 

Photo by Camille Horrocks-Denis.

Studio 303 was established in 1989. Could you tell me about what sparked its beginnings, and how the organization evolved in the following years?

MG: Studio 303 was established by three choreographers who wanted a cooperative space in which to train, teach, rehearse and share their work. Two of the choreographers left within the first year, and the third stayed on for five years. I hopped onboard in 1990, working in exchange for classes. The studio grew mostly staffed by self-taught artists. The early days were very intuitive and organic, allowing for a lot of organisational flexibility, with much of the programming done on a first come-first served basis. Once there was a critical mass of artists wanting to teach or perform at Studio 303, we started professionalizing and applying for grants, which required a more curatorial approach and more conscious artistic choices. The focus then was mainly on presenting work. We had the Vernissage-Danse series that lasted twenty years, the Edgy Women festival for twenty-three years, and Noises in the Dark for ten years. Studio 303 has remained constant with its three branches of supporting teaching practice, creative practice, and sharing with the public, though each vein has had its own trajectory.

Grants are a vital part of a non-profit organization’s ability to sustain themselves. How has federal and provincial funding affected the type of work that Studio 303 does?

MG: Funding has a huge impact on programming decisions. The shift from first-come first served to curating work came as a request from funders. The creation of an Inter-arts section at the Canada Council had an important and positive impact on Studio 303’s interdisciplinary programming and on the blossoming of Edgy Women into a festival. Support from Emploi-Québec has allowed us to create an internationally-renowned workshop series.  Losing our Canadian Heritage funding in 2013 for apparently political reasons, created a significant strain on our organization. We had to downsize significantly to survive.

How has Studio 303’s focus changed since the loss of the Canadian Heritage funding?

KSC: It has affected how many shows we present, and what kind of events we do. We used to present work every month, but now we do about six events a year. After that cut, we felt more freedom, as well as a need to express ourselves politically, and so we created Cabaret Tollé, a political performance event that criticized the Harper government. This was a major milestone for us and led to Studio 303 being associated with a stronger political identity.

MG: When you are funded for presenting work, there is a lot more focus on promotion, ticket sales, advertising, and it is difficult for small venues to compete. After losing the Heritage funding, we redirected our energy to the services we offer. We created new types of events, such as our collaboration with the MAI and Theatre La Chapelle for Queer Performance Camp – a safe space to create, explore, perform and network for queer artists. Our focus is more on workshops, residencies, Grant Labs, networking opportunities, creating meaningful relationships with international partners. We still present work, but within process-oriented conceptual events such as REMIX and Metamorphose, which exist to ask questions and reveal the creative process, rather than entertain audiences. We are artist-centred, more than ever.

What kind of services and opportunities does Studio 303 offer that helps to meet the needs of choreographers in Montreal?

MG: Studio 303 is dedicated to creating an inclusive home base for experimental performing artists. Our services are needs-based and inventive. These include one-on-one grant consultations (Grant Labs), really diverse workshops, which are a great place for choreographers to network, share interests, and spark new collaborations or projects.

KSC: We host residencies in our Studio as well as in partner organisations in France, Vermont, and recently Rouyn Noranda. We are one of the only organizations that offer a residency for emerging curators, which is a good entry point for artists interested in that field. We always aim to find gaps in services and resources for the Montreal dance community, and we aim to meet those needs in any way we can.

Photo by Emily Gan.

Could you share more about the different networking events that Studio 303 hosts?

MG: Every three years or so, we host an event called SPARK, a five-day multi-venue event for a dozen international professionals with whom Studio 303 and its artists feel affinity. It is an opportunity for international presenters to engage with the practices of local artists, and has led to touring and residency opportunities for many of the artists involved. A lighter offshoot called SPARK Series happens annually in late May during the FTA/OFFTA period to take advantage of the presence of presenters already in the city.

KSC: There is also À Table, a networking event that offers artists the opportunity to sit down with presenters at individual tables for several hours. Artists can initiate, join or eavesdrop on conversations as they wish; this format aims to subvert usual power dynamics that can be prevalent in regular networking events.

MG: Another useful resource in terms of networking, specifically for emerging artists and/or newcomers, is Taking the Leap. It’s an online guide on our website that breaks down the different steps for producing and presenting a show, with a section about the Montreal dance milieu, and includes a curated directory of resources available in the city. It is a useful guide to help artists find community and opportunities, and although dance-centric, it can be very useful to many independent artists working in performance. An updated version will be launched September 19th at Studio 303 alongside some cocktails!

Are there any specific challenges for English-speaking dancers in the Montreal dance community?

MG: Although dance is not a language-based art form, many of our local dance institutions are not completely bilingual, and can feel less accessible to English-speaking and allophone artists. There are also cultural differences, and I’m going to make a big generalization: anglophone and francophone dance artists seem to operate in different aesthetic universes, and this adds to the challenge of finding your place in the local environment; perhaps even more so for allophone artists. The wonderful thing about Montreal though is that when compared to other cities, our institutions and the dance community in general is really collaborative, welcoming and nurturing. And well-funded! Which makes this city a good place to start your career. Montreal has more dance presenters than any other Canadian city; more (and better funded) residency opportunities, more workshops (often subsidized), and more exchanges with European institutions and artists. Dance is very strong in Montreal.

This year marks your 30th anniversary; what kind of events will you be hosting to celebrate?

KSC: Instead of having a big party, we chose to spread some sparkle throughout the year by using the theme of Saturn Return. It is an astrological period of significant growth, with connotations of generational cycles, and looking backwards in order to learn and find inspiration for the future. We are also very excited about an upcoming show that we will be presenting on November 2nd called Impossible REMIX. The premise is essentially for a collective to remix an existing piece that is impossible to remount. Another exciting project is the Curator-in-residence project, which will use Studio 303 archives to produce work.

Do you have any goals and projects in mind for the coming years?

KSC: I work a lot in Asia, and we are working on establishing future collaborations there, but nothing is set in stone yet.

MG: We would like to work towards taking a stronger stand on certain political, environmental, and decolonization issues. Even though this type of advocacy requires a lot of energy, knowledge and resources, it is important to us make strides in those aspects. Another goal is to offer better salaries and hire at least one more staff member. And we’ve recently started offering childcare at our shows!

KSC: The funding cycle usually works in four-year chunks, and right now we’re right at the beginning of that cycle and have many ideas, but they are in early development, so we can’t talk much about them for the moment.

Do you have any pointers for English-speaking choreographers in Quebec?

MG: Come to Studio 303! We offer one-on-one grant advice and many workshops in English.

KSC: It is also good to become a member of the RQD (Regroupement québécois de la danse) as they have great resources like a community calendar, a directory for events being hosted across the province, as well as calls for submissions and job opportunities. Artère is also a great resource with similar job postings and calls for submissions. Always keep applying for things, attend workshops, and performance events. Make yourself known!

 

Lisa Theriault is an artist originally from Charlottetown, PE and currently living and working in Montreal, QC. She received a BFA from Mount Allison University (Sackville, NB) in 2014. She co-founded the online project space Closet Gallery in 2017 with Philip Mercier. She has exhibited and curated works for galleries across Canada, including AKA Artist-Run Centre (Saskatoon, SK), Galerie Sans Nom (Moncton, NB), Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB), Saint John Arts Centre (Saint John, NB), and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown, PE). She recently completed the Ease on Down the Road Artist Residency at Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre (Sackville, NB) and is currently curating the exhibition “Fast Forward” for the Young People’s Gallery in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

How did the idea for Closet Gallery come about? What has been your experience so far? Has Closet Gallery provided any insight into people’s consumption of, and relationship to, art online?

Closet Gallery was a project I started with my partner Philip Mercier in 2017. We moved to Montreal a couple years ago and, to be honest, had been receiving a lot of rejection letters in terms of exhibiting artwork and were having trouble finding opportunities as artists still early in our careers. We were talking about ways would could make our own exhibition space and we came up with the idea of a project space in our closet that would be live streamed. It really combines our interests well, since Phil also has a fascination with live streams, the awkwardness in what happens before and after, and the variety of live streams that you can find, and I have some experience working at art galleries. We started inviting artist friends to install projects in the closet that we would live stream. The projects generally have to be considerate of the tiny space, the time-based quality of a live stream, and the low-resolution of the webcam. We’ve had some really interesting projects including a floral arrangement that slowly rotted over a week, a series of ice sculptures with an ASMR audio track, and a live performance using collected prints of self portraits.

The most recent performance by James Player was the first time we live streamed something NOT in the closet. It was a 24 hour live stream from his bedroom, where he improvised music and had invited “guests” throughout that would jam with him. I think he really had a headache at the end of the 24 hours, once the music stopped! I really loved that this project was outside of the closet and it allowed the community aspect to grow. That’s the fun part about Closet Gallery, is you get to work on something weird with your friends in your (or their) home and test things out. You never know what it will look like through the webcam. A lot of people stopped by during James’ performance and it really felt like a community supported marathon.

What can you say about the state of spaces available to emerging artists in Montreal? Are there too few, do they lack in certain qualities? Do emerging artists have to be more ‘creative’ in making space for art?

I think there is actually a very confused idea about what an “emerging artist” even is, and that’s where the difficulty begins. It is often defined as a professional artist in their first five years of practice, but I think this lacks some nuance. In my opinion—and this is still vague unfortunately—an emerging artist is an artist who is early in their career and is still in a stage where they lack access to opportunities and resources to develop further. I think this is where “exclusivity” in the visual arts is perpetuated because some have more access to those initial experiences as well as work-space, materials, and resources to be able to produce strong work in those “five years”. I’m interested in finding ways that visual arts venues can embrace developing artists and what the terms could be for finding people who have the ambition and the potential, but can’t get off the ground.

Are there other examples of unconventional artist spaces that you can recommend, or that you’re inspired by?

Absolutely! There is a gallery in an old carriage house in Saint-Henri called Calaboose that was founded by Garrett Lockhart and Danica Pinteric. They are very thoughtful in how they present everything, through their website and the way they include personal touches in the unique architecture of the space. In terms of online galleries, there is Galerie Galerie (also based in Montreal) that has a nostalgia to their online presence that is reminiscent of early internet days, and they share a variety of interesting projects. There is also localhost gallery, a gallery you can visit in the game Minecraft (you can also find video documentation online). They rebuild the gallery within the game for each exhibition and get artists to make works for the virtual space; I think it’s brilliant.

How did you get into the different media you work with, like seriography, digital art and animation, and sculpture?

I’m very indecisive and I like trying everything I can! My interest in visual art started with drawing, and while I might do initial experiments or tests, I generally have a very meticulous approach to art-making and I plan things out. When I was in school for my BFA it exposed me to new mediums, and silkscreen printmaking, animation, and video seemed to have similar characteristics of planning that I’ve enjoyed working with. It’s been interesting for me to find ways to combine these techniques and it’s still something I’m working on.

One of the themes you work with is industrial development, and the human imprint on ‘nature’. How do you engage with “regional histories”?

I’ve lived the majority of my life in the Maritimes—in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. My family has especially long ties to Nova Scotia as Acadians. I think the things that have interested me there visually  come from their major industries: farming, fishing, tourism, forestry. They have such an impact, sometimes with only one or two industries being the main economic drivers in a community, that it is certainly a big part of the identity of these places. I think this is the case for a lot of smaller towns too. I’m always learning more and I’m interested in ways places can thrive without relying on one industry, especially if it’s an industry that’s harmful to the environment. The climate crisis is a big concern and I think artists have a real role in offering perspective as a positive force. Society needs to do more with less and in a sustainable and creative way, and that’s exactly what artists are best at!

Can you talk about some of your current or upcoming curating projects? You’ve previously worked with some galleries across Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick: can you talk about some of the shows you’ve previously curated or exhibited in?

Who’s Your Mother? is an exhibition I was invited to co-curate at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown, PE) with the gallery’s curator Pan Wendt in the summer of 2018. It is an exhibition of works by women artists from Prince Edward Island from the gallery’s collection, with works by nearly 40 artists on display. The title of the exhibition Who’s Your Mother? is a play on a well-known greeting used by Islanders, “who’s your father?”, as a way to find out if you have mutual relatives or acquaintances. This was such a meaningful exhibition for me to be a part of because there is not a lot of information readily available about these artists. It was eye opening to see the work that was being made in the place where I grew up, that I had no idea was there, and learn more about the history. We spent time in the gallery’s archive, other local archives, and doing nearly two dozen studio visits to purchase new works. After working on that project, I proposed to curate another exhibition in the Young People’s Gallery at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. It’s a small and narrow space near a staircase and I thought it would be a great place to show video works. The exhibition is called Fast Forward and it’s a series of short videos about the future by artists from Eastern Canada. It will be open this Summer.

In terms of works I’ve exhibited, I most recently completed a two-week residency at Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre (Sackville, NB). It was in the same community where I did my BFA and I’m already familiar with the Centre, so I really was able to get to work right away and I had things prepared ahead of time. I had been working on larger drawings that are detailed landscapes, that use an isometric perspective similar to what you see in architectural drawings or video games. They are meticulous but also loosely bring together a variety of strange structures, piles, and materials that come to my mind. I’ve experimented with making elements from these drawings into animations and I wanted to try and push that further. During this residency, I learned to use a video mapping software (video mapping is a process that uses software to shape video projections into unusual shapes and/or around objects) so I could project animations onto plinths from the gallery. They have a more physical presence and form a narrative through the moving animations. There is documentation of the project online. I’m really interested in continuing with this technique and working on improving my animations, trying different objects, and including miniatures that could be illuminated to bring these different imagined places to life.

Related to the previous question: as an emerging curator, what has been your experience in soliciting galleries, connecting artists and ideas, and proposing shows?

I’m still relatively new to curating and my first experience curating was during a yearlong internship at Mount Allison University, just after I graduated. It was perfect because I had nearly eight months to work on the exhibition (while doing other tasks for the internship) and the former Director/Curator, Gemey Kelly (who created the internship program) was excellent at giving support while giving me the responsibility to do it all myself. I learned about the timeline in planning an exhibition and communicating with everyone along the way. That initial curating experience really gave me the confidence to curate something again in the future. I’m still figuring out how to best approach galleries as an independent curator, because it’s still intimidating to me. I’m lucky that I’ve had opportunities so far that have come from applying to calls or from people that have supported me over the years.

Being an artist myself, I think it gives me an understanding of how precarious it is for artists and how important it is to put the artist first: respect their point of view, respect their time, be upfront about what’s being provided so they’re not left with the awkwardness of asking, and of course pay them. I find artists from a combination of what I see in exhibitions, through online research, and by asking other artists or curators for recommendations. It can be challenging to curate a thematic show, because you don’t want to oversimplify works or direct them to much, but I think it has a strength as an opportunity to connect artists with common interests while offering multiple viewpoints.

What else are you working on now / what’s next for you?

I’m going to be focusing more on my art practice and I’m starting a new body of work about utopian islands that will be a series of drawings and a video/sculptural installation. I just got the very exciting news that I received a Research, Creation, and Exploration grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres de Québec (CALQ) to support the project. It’s the first grant I’ve ever received to support my work and it will make such a difference!

Lisa Theriault website: lisatheriault.art

Closet Gallery website: closetgallery.ca

Follow ELAN on our Instagram:@elanqc

SEE OUR PREVIOUS FEATURES & SHORTS:

Black Theatre Workshop (Organization Spotlight)

Erik Nieminen (Feature)

Vallum Magazine / VSEAL (Organization Spotlight)

Graham Krenz (Shorts)

Jingju Québec (Organization Spotlight)

 

Erik Nieminen is a Finnish-Canadian artist born in Ottawa in 1985. He achieved a BFA from the University of Ottawa in 2007 and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal in 2010. He has exhibited in both Europe and North America, including a recent solo show at the Albemarle Gallery in London entitled “The Unreal”, and at the Galerie d’Art d’Outremont in Montreal entitled “Above Below”. Erik Nieminen’s next solo show will be in 2019 in New York City, entitled “Paradise Not Lost”. He currently lives and works in Montreal, after spending four and a half years living in Berlin. He shows with the Galerie Kremers in Berlin.

“Midas”, oil on linen, Erik Nieminen.

What attracted you to painting, and to your mixture of realism and surrealism?

For me painting is the most malleable of visual mediums. It is not constrained by programming or other technological limits. It’s purely chemical — almost alchemical from a certain point of view. The flexibility of the painting process stems from its non-reliance on mechanical visual systems which allows painting to exist as a kind of alternate reality from our own — something dream-like or even surreal. Things like film and photography serve a different function as they tie concretely back to our world as a document of a moment in time. Paintings are created over varying lengths of time with each individual inch of the canvas being taken into consideration, meaning there is nothing incidental. It is an amalgamation of thousands of conscious and subconscious decisions. Painting can be whatever you want it to be.

I tend not to distinguish between realism and abstraction (or surrealism). It all exists together, as the moment you depict something on a two-dimensional painted surface it automatically becomes abstraction. It’s either that or it’s all representation. In any case it’s all unreal, and therefore it’s a bit of an absurd notion to be too reliant on notions of “what things actually look like” and thus I am free to move between styles as much as I wish.

“Abstract Paradise”, oil on linen, Erik Nieminen.

Your work often has a mixture of artificial and natural environments: could you talk about how these themes influence your work?

I’ve always been interested in urban motion. I grew up in Ottawa, which is a city of a decent size, but ultimately has a very small-town feel about it. I always wanted to get out and live in a big urban center… to be in the middle of the hustle, in the dynamism of the crowd, of technology, of concrete — I found all this quite exciting. I understand the city as a kind of construct, a fabrication that is intended to serve humanity in an organic, natural, and fluid manner. However, it doesn’t always work, and so humanity constructs artificial escapes, mini-paradises in the middle of the city in the form of parks, biodomes, etc. We visit these places as a respite from everyday life. What was once commonplace is now a kind of theatrical therapy.

In terms of painting, I used the city as a subject for a long time. It provided enough content to develop complex spatial challenges, but natural habitats also provide these challenges through different shapes and forms. I’m interested in combining the city and the organic world in such a way that they collide with each other to create unique visual encounters, and from there — themes, narratives, and ideas may emerge.

Much of your work in the “Reality” series depicts people in day-to-day situations in the city. There’s a voyeuristic element to this. Do you work with photography to help create these scenes?

I wander through the city with a sketchpad, a camera, and a video-camera. Periodically I will stop and document a location that seems to contain significant visual possibilities, something I can cultivate further. I take thousands of photos per year, but also many hours of video documentation. Every painting begins with abstract sketches (lines, shapes, scribbles). Eventually a kind of abstract composition emerges. These digital photos and videos serve as reference points that I can steal from to inject into my sketched spaces. Therefore, as real as some paintings may seem, they are all impossibilities — a conglomeration of drawing, photo, and video coming together to create a singular painted experience that cannot be found in real life. In terms of being a voyeur — I try not to be noticed when documenting something… I don’t bother to compose shots, I get the information as fast as possible and move on. I don’t want to be intrusive.

“The Other Side” (top) and “Ricochet” (bottom), oil on linen, Erik Nieminen.

What are some of the sources of inspiration for you?

While I try not to rely on anything specific, I am very influenced by artists whose interest is in playing with three-dimensional space on a flat surface. Therefore the cubists and futurists were some of my earliest influences. An artist like David Hockney is someone I’ve looked at a lot, though my work doesn’t have any particular aesthetic connection to his. I’ve been looking at a lot of very formal abstract painting recently, but then I’ve also been listening to talks by the artist Vincent Desiderio who paints in quite a figurative way, almost old master-like. Literature that involves reflections about the human condition in urban space have always interested me — Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy being one, but also something like Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Man of the Crowd, upon which I based a 7 meter long painting several years ago. I listen to electronic or minimalist music while working. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, but perhaps it’s got the right mix of warm and cool to keep me in a state of balance while painting.

You’ve had experience living abroad in Berlin: how did you transition your artistic practice to the city? Can you talk about how you established connections, mapped out galleries and other resources?

It wasn’t necessarily easy to move to a country where I didn’t speak the language and knew almost nobody (my friend, the artist Vitaly Medvedovsky lived there at the time and he was very helpful). I’m also not an extroverted person, so diving in and making connections is not a natural state of being for me. It took quite a while (several years) to meet enough people to have regular opportunities open up for me. Ultimately, Berlin is not necessarily the best city in which to show painting — unless it’s of a more conceptual nature.

After nearly four years in the city I was approached by a gallery for representation. Partly it took so long because I work relatively slowly… just to build up enough work to show someone took a couple years. I had a list of galleries that I found interesting, but of course these are not places you can just walk into and show them work. They have to know of you prior to you talking to them or you have to meet through some of network-like connection. The gallery that found me was actually a new one at the time (it has since closed and I have moved on to another gallery in Berlin).

I’ve found that my work doesn’t necessarily change that much depending on where I am. Partly I attribute this to art being so globally connected now via the internet. Influences range far more than from just a local context. Furthermore I don’t have a particular interest in depicting specific locations, so if I’m living in Berlin I’m probably not using a location in Berlin as a source — it could be imagery I’ve collected ten years ago someplace else.

“Janus”, oil and linen, Erik Nieminen.

After graduating from your MFA, what steps did you take to continue exhibiting and practicing professionally?

I was quite lucky that a few people liked my work enough to want to collect it right out of the gate. Therefore I have been fortunate enough to more or less live off my art for nearly a decade now. It is not always easy — some years are better than others. The main thing is that I continue to always have exhibitions of some kind lined up for the future, which then can open up other opportunities. It was important after graduating to hit the ground running and to keep that momentum going. Therefore I try to maintain a steady schedule of about 2 or 3 upcoming (group or solo) shows at all times. I am fairly picky about where I show and the context matters, so it’s sometimes difficult to find the right environment for the work, but thus far things have worked out well enough. The occasional grant or award has been quite helpful as well, from a financial point of view.

Could you talk about your experience in exhibitions? What are some tips you might give to other artists pitching their art to galleries? 

I have worked with some curators, mostly as a result of them seeing my work online or via studio visits. I have almost never received a response by reaching out to a gallery out of the blue. I have heard this can work on occasion, but it’s quite rare as galleries tend to be inundated by similar requests for connection. They have to meet you in a social scene or see your work in a public exhibition in order to gain their attention (this has been my experience). I have worked with both commercial galleries and not for profit spaces. The upside to working with a commercial gallery is that they will (in theory) promote your work at all times and try to find opportunities for you to show and sell your work. It can have positive financial results and hopefully bring your work to a wider audience, though this very much depends on the reach and ambition level of the gallery. Artist-run centers and other non-commercial spaces can sometimes be more interesting from a creative standpoint. As they aren’t so concerned with making money, there is more opportunity to experiment and perhaps show work that would not be seen in a commercial gallery.

“AboveBelow”, oil on linen, and exhibition at Galerie d’art d’Outrement (Montreal), Erik Nieminen.

What projects are you currently working on?

I was fortunate to be the recipient of the 2018 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Award, and as a part of that I will be having a solo show in New York City in 2019. The exact date and venue have yet to be worked out, but that is my main focus at the moment. The title of the show will be “Paradise Not Lost”, which is also the title of my current body of work. In February 2019 I will be taking part in a group show at Galerie Erga curated by Jason McKechnie. The title of that is “Perspicacious Paintings”. I will also have a work at the Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Montreal as part of Nuit Blanche. I’ve never shown in a church before, so I am looking forward to that. Finally, I will be having a solo show in June of 2020 at the Galerie McClure in Montreal.

Erik Nieminen’s Website: eriknieminen.com

Erik Nieminen’s Instagram: @eriknart

Follow ELAN on our Instagram:@elanqc

SEE OUR PREVIOUS FEATURES & SHORTS:

Vallum Magazine / VSEAL (Organization Spotlight)

Graham Krenz (Shorts)

Jingju Québec (Organization Spotlight)

Clara Congdon (Feature)

Glenna Tissenbaum (Feature)

Graham Krenz is a sculpture and mixed media artist who has shown across Canada, now living and working in Montréal, Quebec. He received his degree in Drawing from the Alberta College of Art + Design, where he was the recipient of an Alberta Foundation for the Arts project grant for his graduation piece, titled “A History of Nature”, which was constructed in partnership with his friend and collaborator Meredith Angus. He has since maintained studios in Toronto, where he showed installation and site-specific work at large events while continuing to develop his small-scale work.

Our feature ELAN Member for Artists Illuminated Shorts! is emerging artist Graham Krenz. Krenz reinterprets domestic objects and works with wood to create surreal objects and panoramic images of the city. Graham has been featured in Art Bazaar and in the Toronto Star, where he talks about his practice in carpentry, interests in urbanism, and monumental transit systems. Krenz takes inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s school in Scottsdale, and the use of fake military infrastructure as camouflage during WWI. He also refers to Japanese woodcuts as an influence, describing his interest in relief carvings and the way a pre-inked woodblock looks: “They’re negative images, reflections of what the final product will be. I don’t do precisely that with my work, but I maintain that monochrome, semi-finished appearance as a nod to the functionality of our infrastructure, and the transient nature of everything we construct.”

What attracted you to your medium in wood-carving and sculpture?

Both of my parents were “workshop” people. In my father’s case, making furniture and cabinetry in our basement, and in my mother’s, painting, drawing, miniature dioramas, textiles, and more. Both of them encouraged us to work with our hands. My father’s enormous collection of chisels and planes was a factor as well, I liked using those tools and wanted a way to apply that to my artistic practice. In art school I took several sculpture electives, and enjoyed the subtractive process of carving more than the additive processes or mold-making based processes, so I’ve pursued it since.

What are some of your sources of inspiration?

The initial point of inspiration was a sort of unlikely source. The creative agency Elastic, who you may know as the group behind almost every HBO title sequence, created a beautiful title sequence for the show True Detective. This sequence, directed by Patrick Clair, went a long way to pushing me towards representing infrastructure and urban construction as the primary focus of what I make- I had never considered the power of that imagery until then. Long before that point I had already started moving my work that way after relocating from Calgary to Toronto, and encountering the enormous scale of the 401 highway system, which I have now learned is the busiest single road on earth. I wanted to acknowledge the contrast between how mundane a highway is, and how vast and vastly important the project is when you consider it as a monument to labour and human will.

What were some of the themes you were exploring through your series of hanging sculptures, objects, and domestic items (“Stuff I Thought I Wanted”)?

I was having trouble coming to terms with what I wanted, put simply. I thought I wanted all these silly little boy things, and was finding it embarrassing to think about myself that way. I built these a series of tombstones to all the pretentious ideas about myself I had as a young man. It was also the first time I’d begun incorporating any real craftsmanship into my work, I think I was too focused on how conceptual my work had to be immediately after art school. It was the beginning of my understanding of how important spending time working on a material, how that informs the messages you can send with it.

What are some resources you find useful in Montreal that might also be helpful to other sculptors or carvers?

Reaching out to other artists whose work you see is important, to broaden the amount of techniques and ideas you have access to. That’s my main advice, don’t be an island.

Do you run your own space, or do you collaborate with others?

I share a space with some photographers and film workers currently, so that we can all afford a nice, large, enjoyable space to work in. I would tell everyone to avoid owning anything you can’t lift yourself, and to avoid owning any furniture that you can’t take apart. In Toronto I moved my studio at least once a year, you will want to make this as painless as possible. Once a month, throw away a box of what you have. I’ve had shared spaces and private spaces, both have pros and cons, you have to really weigh what’s best for actually getting things done, and enjoying your time while you’re there.

What are some tips you might give to other artists pitching their art to galleries?

I think like most artists I wish curators would solicit me more, but such is life. I have been lucky to work with commercial galleries and artist-run centers. I’ve had great experiences working with both, I think they both serve different viewers and collectors, and both have an absolutely essential place in the artist economy and infrastructure. The obvious downsides with artist run centers is the application and submission process, which is generally lengthy, involves a lot of paperwork, and can be demoralizing. The benefit to soliciting commercial gallery support is that if they don’t like you, you find out pretty much immediately. Rejection is like a bandaid, it’s nice to tear it off quickly.

Photograph is by Nick Wong.

Visit Graham Krenz’ website: grahamkrenz.com

Follow ELAN on our Instagram:@elanqc

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