The Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery is pleased to invite you to join us Thursday, December 15, 2011 between 7 and 9 pm for the opening reception of Art of the Rails, a group exhibition in celebration of New Brunswick’s railway heritage. A collection of paintings, model trains and train memorabilia, on loan by local artists, collectors and rails enthusiasts, including a running beginners HO scale model railroad layout! Fun for all ages.

Rita Sassani is an artist based in Fredericton who focuses on painting, sculpting, and batik art. She is a graduate from the NBCCD College. Her works are expressive in nature, characterized by intense colors, movement, and abstract compositions, and can be found in private collections and galleries, both nationally and internationally.

Lost in Lines celebrates the nuances of line and figures; Rita's quality of line differs between thick and strong, between movement and calmness in different parts of the composition, capturing the expressiveness inherent in the human figure. Negative space flows into positive space conjoining the figure and background, symbolizing how we are intertwined with nature rather than separate. Her art is bright and beautiful with hits of color, providing an amazing visual of the human aura.

Join us at the opening reception Nov. 3 for an opportunity to hear the artist speak on her work.

All are welcome and encouraged to attend!

To wind up the inaugural Harvest Photo Contest, hundreds of visitors voted for their favourite images on Saturday, September 17 at the 2011 Buttermilk Creek Fall Festival in Florenceville. Earlier, a panel of judges had chosen the "top ten" images – by David Morgan, Tammey McLean, Dawn MacFarlane, Debbie Hood, Ankur Goel, Connie Dowie and Ed Allen – from more than 80 submissions.
The prints are now up at the Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery until September 30.
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This fall, ALMAG is pleased to present an exhibit by one of Canada's best known and most respected visual artists, Christopher Pratt, on loan from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the official Art Gallery of New Brunswick.

Christopher Pratt is one of Canada's best known and most respected visual artists. His meticulous paintings and serigraph prints, which transform familiar scenery and architecture of the Atlantic region into evocative, archetypal symbols, are characterized by calculated precision and consummate geometric design. Compositional structure is simplified, details are omitted, and minimal colour is used to create a cool, serene mood. An enigmatic, haunting quality prompts an existential reading, and for some art historians, links Pratt to a school of Atlantic Magic Realism, which includes Tom Forrestall and Alex Colville. .
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Jennifer Pazienza is an Art Education Professor at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Jennifer came to Fredericton in 1989 to join the University of New Brunswick when they offered her a freedom she couldn't resist.

In her upcoming exhibition Landscape- Love & Longing she "maintains an old fashioned love of paint in response to a technological age that takes William James’s “buzzing, blooming confusion” to new heights."
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Originally from Fredericton, now a resident of Woodstock, Michael McEwing is an artist, teacher, and RIVA board member. In his upcoming exhibition, "Best Laid Plans," McEwing will enchant us with his combinational style printmaking as well as his role defying mixed media works.

Join us at the ALMAG at 7 pm on Thursday, April 7 for the opening reception. This exhibition will remain on display until May 19, 2011.
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Metal smith Kristyn Cooper graduated with ‘distinction’ from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in 2008. She has been recognized with such honors as the “Nel Oudemans Award” from the Shelia Hugh MacKay Foundation (2009), “Emerging Artist of the Year” at the 2009 Atlantic Craft Awards for Excellence as well as her inclusion at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea (2009).

Featuring this year's emerging New Brunswick artist from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Greg Klassen, and his elaborately constructed photographic portrait series, "Who?".

Beyond typical representation of physiographic likeness, Klassen's playful portraits invite the viewer to consider a wide range of psychological, sociological, and anthropological information about the people portrayed, including the idea of duality and the complex, sometimes incongruous aspects of human personality.

Terry Graff, Curator and Deputy Director, Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

A collaboration of work by 12 different artists each with their own unique style. Jose Morales is a surgeon living in Perth Andover. His goal for the show was to express the humanity that surrounds his everyday life, as well as introduce the viewer to his roots, and give them hints into his past by presenting paintings from other artists from El Salvador.
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Photographer Pamela Nelson traveled to Indonesia in December 2004 for a month-long vacation. Before and after the tsunami hit on December 26, she explored several villages on the island of Java, documenting the people and their communities.
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Bobbie Mortensen began painting in 1987. What began as a hobby, turned into an obsession. She is a self taught artist who paints landscapes, seascapes, still life, animals and flowers.

This exhibition will be opening at the Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery on August 12.

From Plaster Rock N.B., Allan Brewer's work will take you back in time. His drawings and woodcuts open windows and doors to that place of dreams and visions. This exhibition opens at The Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery at 7pm on July 8th and will remain until August 5th.

The Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery in Florenceville-Bristol hosts "Dooryard in Review," a retrospective look at this summer's festival.

The month-long exhibit will feature artwork from festival participants, sets and props from "The Trials of Benny Swim," an original musical which had its debut during Dooryard, and the results of several collaborative community art projects organized during the course of the festival.

The exhibition will kick off with an opening reception on Thursday, October 8th between 7 and 9 PM at the McCain Gallery
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The Andrew & Laura McCain Art Gallery is pleased to present "Things That Go Bump in the Light/Beauty is in the Eye of the Beheld", a collection of photographs by Rob Davenport of Rosine, New Brunswick. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, August 27th from 7-9 PM. The show will continue its run until September 19th.

 

In June and July, the Andrew & Laura McCain Gallery in Florenceville-Bristol will host a traveling exhibit from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

The collection of prints, which was curated to celebrate the Beaverbrook's 50th anniversary, includes among it's impressive ranks some big names that even the most novice of art connoisseurs will recognize.

The McCain Gallery is one of only three galleries in the province to secure rights to display the collection, the others being in the considerably larger centres of Campbellton and Saint John.

The collection will be formally introduced with a ticketed gala fundraiser opening on the evening of Friday, June 12th. Guest speaker, Beaverbrook CEO and director Bernard Riorden will address the crowd and refreshments will be provided.

Tickets for the fundraiser opening are $20, with proceeds going toward the McCain Gallery. A limited amount are available at the gallery or by calling 392-6769. "50 Years of Enriching Life: The Print Collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery" will be on display at the McCain Gallery until July 11th. And remember, admission to the gallery is free of charge during regular business hours!

Birth is a universal rite of passage, for both mother and child: inherently ritualistic and revelatory, the birth process (including pregnancy) is a liminal state/non-state. The pregnant woman and her hidden child inhabit mysterious shady territory betwixt and between identities. This ambiguous status is transformed by the birth process itself; the crossing of the threshold. In giving birth at home, without intervention, I have consciously abandoned the medical/technological/industrial paradigm of pregnancy, birth and motherhood, in favor of the marginal, the independent, the liminal.


My painting practice, like my approach to childbirth, is abstract, spontaneous and improvisational, incorporating the gestural symbolic artifacts of ritual. I like to think of it as a form of liturgy: worship and prayer that explore the complexity of separation and emergence and my relationship with the divine, as well as the profane. Each painting is a meditation on the process of accepting and embracing "otherness" and transformation during the primal/trance/surrender phase of giving birth that is highly mediated, when submitting to the standard ritual of North American Hospital Birth.


In embracing the liminal phase, I am forced to create and confront my own liturgy and discourse, in life and art.

Viola Pleasant Queen is an award winning, self taught quilter. Queen began quilting traditionally over 20 years ago and for the last 12 years has been producing her own designs. Queen is a juried member of the PEI Crafts Council and currently lives and works in St. Andrews with her husband.

Three printmakers, Allan Brewer (Plaster Rock, NB), Michael McEwing (Woodstock, NB) and David Silverberg (Wolfville, NS) are featured in this month's exhibition. They are all at different stages of their career and employ different styles, from the very earthy, organic feel of Brewer's woodblock prints, to the more experimental, mixed technique approach of McEwing, to the refined polish of Silverberg's etchings. Collectively they offer up a diverse presentation of printmaking possibilities.

This one week exhibit is an opportunity to show off what children in the area have been up to this year. Madame Thompson’s Grade 4 class, Mrs. Longobardi’s Grade 3 and 4 classes, Mrs. Boyd’s grade three and four classes and Madame Parrish’s Grade 3 classes from Florenceville Elementary will all have work on display. Additionally products of enrichment classes at Bath Elementary will be on exhibit as well as recent work done through community outreach and gallery workshops. There will be an open house on Saturday, June 14 from 11-3pm. All are welcome.

Darren Emenau has been creating ceramic work since he graduated from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton in 1997. He has received several awards and grants and his work has been shown across North America and is included in private collections throughout Canada, the United States and Europe. Emenau is currently based on the Lower St John River in his native New Brunswick.
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Artists' website: www.mnopottery.com

Thaddeus Holownia has travelled to the major salmon rivers of eastern Canada, in all seasons, to capture their essential qualities. Employing his signature, large-format 7"x17" view camera, his images memorialize and celebrate the riparian habitat of the Atlantic salmon: its geology, forests, pools and runs, as well as its cultural artifacts. Among the rivers being featured are the Pinware in Labrador, Humber in Newfoundland, the Margaree in Cape Breton, the Miramichi, Upsalquich and Restigouche in New Brunswick, the Grand Cascapedia in Gaspe, and the Penobscot in Maine.
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Jose Morales is a local artist currently residing in Perth-Andover, NB. Originally from El Salvador Morales and his wife Dora are both practicing physicians in the area. When he’s not tending to the physical needs of his patients Morales is exploring a less defined but equally devoted artistic practice. The subject of the work ranges from abstraction to expressionist responses to the nightly news. Unifying the work is a primary and vital sense of colour.

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Contemporary Craft in New Brunswick.

 


Materialize features work by 19 New Brunswick craftspeople. Organized by the New Brunswick Crafts Council the show was designed to assemble work that is innovative and imaginative.

Work includes pottery, textiles, woodworking, and metalwork from artists such as Linda Brine, Gordon Dunphy, Peter Thomas and recent Governor General Award winner Peter Powning to name a few.

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Raymond Martin transposes the beauty and wonder of the world into remarkable paintings of simplified outlines and flattened views that resonate as material analogues for the unconscious, the mythical and the spiritual. Incised lines in thick impasto lead us along circuitous paths and decorative labyrinth patterns into a nonlinear, transpersonal 'Dream Time'.
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Boules de Gui , a series of recent charcoal drawings by MacDonald, depict foggy, mysterious landscapes.
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Ann Manuel produces oil paintings, drawings, prints, and installations that centre around the idea of competing and overlapping feminine identities. She uses floating figures as a metaphor for the mother and juxtaposes them with groups of young girls strung between moments of tension and calm.
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In celebration of Carleton North High School 30th Anniversary and the Art Department and the Gallery have organized an exhibition of work by those who have passed through the school halls and their fine arts program and gone on to post secondary training and careers in the arts.
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The NB Art Bank is a permanent collection of contemporary visual arts by New Brunswick artists. Created in 1968, the Art Bank serves as a record of excellence in visual arts in the province.
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Curated by Mandy Ginson
Martin Demaine studied glass blowing in England and operated a glass studio in New Brunswick in the late 70's, early 80's.

Recently Martin and his son Erik have been working together to produce a series of vessels.
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