Serendipity by Philip Willey – May 2011.

I stopped in at the Collective Gallery in Fernwood where Chiarina Loggia has a show. Chiarina was there and happy to explain her methods and motivations. She talked about reaching out to others, sharing feelings and experiences, creating images that others can relate to.

“The artist in me never sleeps. She peers through my eyes at the shifting forms and flowing colors of my world. She listens to my heart and hears the echoes of my desires. She swims inside my stomach and churns up waves of emotion. She wanders around my mind unlocking treasure chests of ideas. She takes me in hand and weaves her magic with brush and brayer. She is my muse and inspiration.”

Clearly art is a major part of her life. The work on display consists of intaglio prints, based on photographs. After the etching and printing process they take on their own characteristics and become removed from the photographic. The smaller prints appear personal; they seem to represent friends, family, intimate moments that most people would find familiar. In the larger pieces, titled ‘Body of Work’ 1 & 2 (the double-entendre is intentional), she has combined all these elements, incorporating images from previous shows, first by collage, then by distorting the images on a computer, modern communications being another of her interests. The effect is of a walk through a gallery, lingering afterimages, memories. These works refer to the importance Loggia attaches to the body and body language. I sensed a muted eroticism in several of the pieces. A kind of wistful physical yearning. To me Loggia’s works speak of the passage of time. They appear as fleeting episodes, reminders of the transience of life, as if the only real permanence exists in art objects [1].

I liked the work. The photopolymer gravure technique is ideally suited to the subject matter. I made a few notes but I wasn’t entirely happy with what I’d written. The editors at exhibit-v can be tough. Two paragraphs probably wouldn’t satisfy them. For this to be a proper article I needed more.

Louise Harding ‘The Way Forward’

Then in Chinatown I got lucky. Call it serendipity, or synchronicity, one of those mysterious words, I don’t know how or why, but everything just seemed to fall into place. I looked into Dale’s Gallery hoping to find something to write about and who should be there but Rachel Berman. She’d dropped off a couple of small paintings of the kind which are becoming all too rare in Victoria these days, most of her work goes to the Ingram Gallery in Toronto. She was looking at some charcoal drawings by Louise Harding. Striking work we both agreed, skillfully drawn. Harding uses professional models, perhaps they aren’t beautiful in the classical sense but she treats them respectfully and endows them with a kind of down-to-earth beauty. She ‘exaggerates the part of the pose she finds most interesting’ and she isn’t afraid to leave tentative working marks among the firmer more confident lines. Studied tones, thoughtful placement of the figures and fearless cropping make for a virtuoso performance.

While I was making notes Rachel was telling Alison about a show she’d just seen over on Herald Street at G.J. Pearson’s studio. I vaguely remembered G.J. Pearson from Fran Willis’ gallery so over I went to Herald Street. There I found him in his studio/ living space surrounded by his creations. I got an impression of orderly clutter, like being in an artist’s head. Quite a lot to absorb in one session [2]. In fact it would probably take several sessions but I was worried about the 2 hour parking limit on Discovery so I had to make do with the quick tour. G.J works in different ways….everything from da Vinci-like constructions to Daliesque drawings. Then there’s the vandalized giftware (disfigurines), part-human, part machine conglomerations, irreverently altered classical paintings and Gollumish clay figures in bunny suits. I need a bit of time to think about this I said. So do I he said.

G.J. is a man of many parts. He certainly doesn’t make things easy for art writers. Amanda Farrell had a crack at it in Monday Magazine [3]. Whimsical was the word she used. I can’t improve on that. Loggia, Berman, Harding, Pearson…it all fits together…I think.

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Knaves in Toyland

POSTED BY: AMANDA FARRELL

04/01/2009 12:00 AM

G.J. Pearson’s whimsical works

A mermaid washes herself in a bathtub. Bert and Ernie make an appearance in a Renaissance painting. A woman is strapped to an Icarus-like kite contraption. These are just a few of the whimsical creations in Toyland of Milk and Honey, the new show by artist G.J. Pearson at the newly minted Dab Gallery.

“I imagine it looks like the wall of somebody’s crazy grandmother,” says Pearson.

And indeed it does; the cozy Dragon Alley live/work space, which just opened in December of last year, is crammed with sculptures, modified paintings and edited porcelain figurines, most in the middle of some kind of action. While it’s obvious much imagination has been put into creating the pieces, Pearson says he wanted the audience to flex their creative muscles as well.

“What I try to do with my work is make suggestions and then let people fill in the blanks. I like people to be not so much left hanging, but left hungry,” he says. “So my idea is that there might be a narrative, but you don’t have all the pieces so there’s always this feeling or this assumption that there’s something missing, something you don’t really get.”

The centrepieces of the exhibition are Pearson’s doll-like sculptures. The figures have a dark, cartoony feel and are made from a low-temperature plastic firing clay, which produces vivid colours and looks almost like wax when it is fired. Pearson says the pieces were inspired by Japanese ball-jointed dolls.

“They’re gorgeous, they’re stunning things and I’m obsessed with them,” says Pearson. “So I started doing very small, posable articulated dolls. They’re like toys. Those pieces evolved into what I am doing now.”

While the sculpted dolls may be the stars of the show, Pearson’s paintings and figurines add to the exhibit’s mischievous tone. Both are made from found objects: for the figurines, Pearson scoured thrift stores for old nicknacks and then added his own clay pieces to them, and the paintings are cut outs from old art books that he’s modified, put in fancy gilded frames and given cheeky new names.

“It just feels like something you shouldn’t be doing. It’s just really fun to do,” he says of the painting creations. “You’re taking something that should be shown huge respect—and I do have the utmost respect for the painters who made those pieces, they’re gorgeous, I’d love to be able to paint that way—and then I’m wrecking them. I’m basically doing graffiti over them like a punk. But at the same time, it’s the page out of a book and if I hadn’t cut the page out of it and stuck it in a frame, it may have ended up in a landfill.”

Pearson says he had similar pangs of guilt when working on the figurines. “I thought, ‘These things meant something to someone at one point,’ but now they’re in a secondhand shop, so obviously they don’t mean anything to the person that got rid of them,” he says. “Chances are somebody’s grandmother died and they cleaned out their place and dumped it all off at Value Village or whatever. So I’m hoping that I’m taking these things and bringing them to a new generation that will collect them and let them collect dust on their mantle.”

I’d argue these pieces are far too animated to collect dust.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTU7gs39S9g