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filed under Artist Bios - Canvassing the Artists, Featured.

Abma Threshold

Andante 2013

Beard Menagerie

BlackwoodFarm

Pool

bond

HORSE

CatskillGlow

Echoes Torment Acrylic on Canvas

Crowley

Moon River small

3 tipis sunrise

liverance

Light

King Bee wall

Paul Lorenz BLACK WITH YELLOW OVAL

sasha lozaic blacktree

SchaeferGallery

Mcnenly The Beekeeper

messer Gondolier

Masewichimg

Every artist knows that top quality raw materials assist in delivering the best product they can produce. From full-service facilities that host classes, to small intimate family stores, Chicago has a great selection of art suppliers for all kinds of artists. These art stores can inspire creativity and assist in fulfilling the vision of a project you have in your mind.

1. BLICK ART MATERIALS

GOOGLE MAP LINK: 42 S. State St. Chicago

WEBSITE: https://www.dickblick.com/

Blick Art Materials has been a family owned art supplies store since 1911 and is the largest and oldest provider of art supplies in the United States. They pride themselves on superior customer service, extensive selection, and competitive prices. Blick’s has quality art material for every phase of artistry, whether you’re a professional or amateur artist, art educator, architect, or designer.

2. GENESIS ART SUPPLY

GOOGLE MAP LINK: 2525 N. Elston Ave Chicago

WEBSITE: https://www.artsupply.com/

This brick-and-mortar store has been a staple in the Chicago art scene for 25 years and it’s online version artsupply.com provides the same level of knowledge and expertise. They have a wonderful selection of supplies for every artist whether you paint, draw, draft, sketch, illustrate, design, make models, plan, build, teach, sculpt, or make prints.

3. ARTIST & CRAFTSMAN SUPPLY

GOOGLE MAP LINK: 828 S. Wabash Ave, Chicago

WEBSITE: https://www.artistcraftsman.com

This small national chain with a location in Chicago has everything for the core base of fine artists and has expanded their quality selection of supplies to new and devoted crafters and young, emerging artists.

4. LAKE VIEW ART SUPPLY

GOOGLE MAP LINK: 3228 N Lincoln Ave & 3314 W Foster, Chicago

WEBSITE: Lake View Art

With two locations to serve the downtown arts scene, this smaller yet complete supplies store has everything a seasoned or emerging artist needs.

5. FLAX ART AND FRAME

GOOGLE MAP LINK: 220 S. Wabash Ave, Chicago

WEBSITE: https://www.flaxartandframe.com

Based in the heart of Chicago since after WWII, this art supplies family-run store has been the destination for commercial and fine art, they were always considered the “class act” in Chicago

filed under USA, USA ART EVENTS.

Vancouver’s art scene is bustling with established and emerging artists. Almost any night of the week, you can find an exhibit opening or event. These 10 amazing and unique exhibits showing throughout the city this fall have something for everyone from photography, sculptures, interactive art and of course, paintings. Here’s 10 Vancouver Art venues that are as unique as the art itself featuring university campuses to intimate smaller galleries.

1. IN THE FOOTPRINT OF THE CROCODILE MAN: CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE SEPIK RIVER, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

To January 31, 2017

Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia

This unique exhibition In the Footprint of the Crocodile man will showcase the most comprehensive collection of contemporary Sepik art in North America for the first time.

2. WHITE, STEEL, SLICE, MASK AND BEAR CLAWS SALAD HANDS

September 10, 2016 – January 8, 2017

Contemporary Art Gallery

An ambitious new multi-venue commission by collaborators Dutch artist Mirjam Linschooten and Canadian artist Sameer Farooq, interrogating the ways in which cultural diversity is narrated and represented.

3. THE SPACE IN BETWEEN: CONTEMPORARY WORKS BY SALLY MICHENER + TAM IRVING

September 14-November 5, 2016

West Vancouver Museum

The exhibition and companion publication situates their newest works in the ongoing and vibrant development of the ceramic arts in British Columbia

4. REVERSING THE TIDE

September 20 – October 16, 2016

Ferry Building Gallery

Mixed media by Cori Creed, Esther Rausenberg, Tracey Tarling and Richard Tetrault. This exhibition is the first in a series that will be shown in galleries across Canada on the subject of our environment and our threatened oceans and waterways.

5. MILA KARAVAI: MATERIALIZATION

September 20-October 9, 2016

Silk Purse Arts Centre

Inventive artist Mila Karavai, presents a collection of illustrative works using unconventional surfaces such as paint, aluminum and papier-mache, that explore the transformation of an idea into a physical form.

6. THE END OF THE AFFAIR: RE-IMAGINED ROLES AND 20TH CENTURY CINEMA

to October 22, 2016

AMELIA DOUGLAS GALLERY

Paintings by Stefanie Denz – In the relatively brief history of film, many glamourous starlets have graced the screen by relying on their youth and beauty. With the social change of the sexual revolution, gender power struggles and the dynamism it produced in culture became apparent in some movies in the 1960s and 1970s.

7. JOSEPH STAPLES: GARDEN OF PARADISE

To October 22, 2016

UNIT/PITT Projects
Joseph Staples’ work is a study of contemporary print and photography through collage. Garden of Paradise is comprised of six video loops, each consisting of two GIFs juxtaposed onto each other to form an intersection of movement, the animations finding alignment momentarily before drifting out of sync again.
GOOGLE MAP LINK: 236 E. Pender, Vancouver BC

8. WITNESS – GROUP WORK

To November 6, 2016

New Media Gallery

There are five works of art in this exhibition. An exhibition that explores machine vision. The works examine interplays between the perceiving machine, the world that is perceived by the machine and we who are both perceiving + perceived bodies.

9. THE ART OF SMALL THINGS: MEGHANN O’BRIEN

to October 2, 2016

The Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art

Meghann takes materials from the natural world and transforms them into remarkable pieces of high-level human expression. Working with traditional materials such as mountain goat wool and cedar bark has given her a deep connection to the supernatural world, a connection to her ancestors.

10. PICASSO: THE ARTIST AND HIS MUSES

to October 2, 2016

Vancouver Art Gallery

Examining the significance of the six women who were inspirational to his artistic development, Picasso: The Artist and His Muses is the most significant exhibition of Picasso’s work ever presented in Vancouver.

filed under CANADA ART EVENTS.

The following story illustrates why a properly prepared foundation is essential to the long life of a good painting, given the vicissitudes of travelling, storage and viewing space to which it will almost certainly be subjected. It also shows what Conservators know well, that time and chance, travel and weather, can do to a painting not put on a really good foundation to start with.

During the year 1944 as a young boy I often watched my Mother (Sybil Hill) working at painting a large pastoral scene for the United Church in a small town in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. She did it on large masonite boards, fitted together to make a shape like a church window maybe 6 feet wide and 10 high. She was a good artist, taught and respected by Fred Varley, AY Jackson and Arthur Lismer. Some 25 years later I got a call from the people at the the church, they were removing the painting and wondered if I wanted it. I travelled to BC, packed it up and had it shipped to Ontario, where it has been stored in various places since. When I got it then, in the early ‘70 s, it already showed signs of deterioration. Mostly moisture damage from humidity getting into the masonite, softening the front and causing small chunks of paint to flake off. That deterioration has become worse over time. It would need a major restoration job, now, 60 years after it was painted, if it were to be hung anywhere again.

A fine painting, no matter how well or expertly done, or how beautiful, like a fine house, starts with a good foundation. Upper Canada stretchers are used as that foundation by hundreds of professional artists and conservators throughout North America. They are designed and made with a great deal of hand work to be the best available at a reasonable price. Using Upper Canada Stretchers, you can be sure your paintings will have the beginning they need to last at least as long as the canvas and even longer if you follow the time-tested canvas preparation directions described below. What’s more, you have the pleasure of putting together a stretcher frame which is easy to assemble, perfectly square and rigid, and stays flat and square under any tension you care to use in stretching your canvas.

As a professional you know how your energy and creativity is supported by having excellent, responsive tools. The work of artists is undoubtedly a lot more of art than of science, although today science has a lot to contribute. Nevertheless, good artists have always done a lot of experimenting, and relied on their own experience for decisions about materials and how to prepare and use them. So nothing here is to be construed as anything but a guide, a starting point for building or adding to your own expertise.

Our Conservator and professional artist customers have taught us what it takes to make a great keyable canvas stretcher frame:

• several unique profiles in a variety of configurations to suit any need
• deep slope or “fall” on the front face avoids unwanted canvas contact
• hardwood maple keys ridged so they grip in the grooves
• long rounded radiuses protect canvas at the edges
• select grade kiln-dried wood and precision-cut custom work to make a perfectly square, easy to assemble, flat rigid frame that takes any desired level of tension in stretching without warping or bowing.

Here is an excerpt from some technical notes on stretchers by the Australian Conservation Society, amol.org.au. I have augmented their ideas with some information gleaned from our experienced customers.

For the last five hundred years or so in Europe and elsewhere, canvases have been stretched over wooden frames for painting. This technique became a popular alternative to wooden panels as it allowed artists to create large transportable paintings with a minimum of preparation time and expense.

The stretcher is, in fact, a complex construction which must be well made and finely “tuned” to meet the requirements of a flexible canvas. Artists for many years have painted on canvases stretched on keyable stretchers for a number of good reasons. If the painting is on boards, these are liable to crack as they dry out, or swell and distort or even tear the painting if there is moisture in the air. They are also susceptible to dry rot and insects! And a solid board of a large size is very heavy.

A necessity in a high quality stretcher is the use of wooden keys to maintain tension in the canvas. A weakened and sagging canvas easily causes damage in aging paint layers.

Poorly made stretchers may exhibit; insufficient or no beveling on the front face, no key slots, inadequate cross bracing leading to warping or twisting of the frame under tension, recessing of cross bracing too close to the canvas, fixed or poorly made joints, and corners out of square. These deficiencies contribute to the faster deterioration of the canvas, ground and paint layers.

Preparing the canvas or linen surface:

Sizing with acrylic gesso, or “flake” white (contains lead,not healthy!) seals the canvas against moisture penetrating from the back. If it is hard enough, and yet flexible enough to avoid cracking it becomes a stable base to support the whole paint layer when many years in the future, the canvas has deteriorated (as it may well do in time, which often has the same effect on paintings as it certainly does on people), and the entire painting must be transferred to a new canvas by a painting conservation expert.

Canvas may shrink under the gesso treatment and become over tight and ¯warp” the frame, or it may relax, and require the frame to be “keyed out” to retighten it.

Maybe it would be a good idea to try, on a smaller canvas, a few of the preparation ideas to see what works best. Experience says that every type of canvas and linen is different, especially made by different manufacturers, and whether preshrunk or not, treated somehow, or not. Careful professionals will experiment with a new canvas or linen to see how it behaves, before using it to support a valuable, important painting.

The experience of our many customers is that our stretchers, with proper cross bracing, will easily stand enough tension that there is no worry about “ghosting” from the cross braces while painting. This is provided the canvas is a good quality cotton duck, properly prepared with one or more coats of gesso. Initially, the canvas should be stretched snugly, but not with a lot of force, with canvas pliers, but without driving in the keys. Any tendency of the frame to twist can be controlled by judicious tightening of the different corner keys, and cross brace keys. You can stop the keys from dropping out (which they may do before they are driven in somewhat) with a bit of sticky tape. Then, if the canvas begins to sag later under the weight of paint, or after priming, you can tap in the keys to restretch the canvas.

Donato Cianci, Nov. 8 2002

Here is quote from one of our customers that illustrates how good stretcher bars can help artists do their best work.

“Hi Donato. We talked a bit when I placed an order for some stretchers (the biggest set was 7 1/2 by 4 feet), and I said I would drop a line to tell you how they worked for me. Well, I’m very pleased with them. At first I was concerned about the softness of the wood, but after stretching a piece of linen four times over the large bars (literally tight as a drum) there is no perceptible warping or even strain on the form of the bars or stretcher as a whole- very nice. It seems like the softness of the wood is a plus – it definitely takes the tacks better than hard woods. I can’t tell if the wood is better (straighter grained or something) or if the superiority is in solely in your workmanship, but I’m glad I know about your company. Thanks, Oliver Benson”

Filed under Info.

^{_{Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash}}

As COVID-19 continues to turn lives upside down across the globe, we, at Upper Canada Stretchers, have been thinking about how we can support our community in the arts. With situations changing by the hour, it is confusing and unsettling, causing worry about the health and safety of our loved ones and ourselves, challenges with juggling family and work in the same space, and real concern about finances as those in the arts are hit particularly hard.

For many, being told to stay home has created an unfamiliar abundance of time which can present endless opportunity. However, as Twitter user Joi-Marie (@joimariewrites) points out, “I’m starting to resent everyone saying ‘It’s a great time to be a creative’, or, ‘Why don’t you write a book during social distancing?’ A lot of creatives are empaths and anxiety and confusion isn’t the best recipe for quality output.”

With no concrete notion of when life may return to “normal”, we have decided to start a blog series we’re calling, “The Art & Craft of Coping With Social Distancing”. Moving forward, we will be posting ideas we’ve collected to try to provide emotional support, inspiration, and hopefully some fun into this crazy experience. We are asking people to comment on these blog posts, our Facebook page, Twitter, or even by email with your own ideas and experiences of what is working for you. As a thank you, on Tuesday of each week, we will do a draw from those who post to win a different product from UCS. We hope that the collective creativity of our incredible community will help inspire and remind us all that we’re here for each other and we’ll get through this.

“Democratic society needs its unique and diverse cultural and media landscape in this historical situation, which was unimaginable until recently. The creative courage of creative people can help to overcome the crisis. We should seize every opportunity to create good things for the future. That is why the following applies: artists are not only indispensable, but also vital, especially now.”
^{Germany’s culture minister, Monika Grütters, announcing a 50 Billion Euro aid package for the arts.}

Ways to Protect Your Emotional Health During Social-Distancing

_{Photo by Finn on Unsplash}

We’ve all heard the recommendations from health officials about how to protect our physical health during this global pandemic but what about our emotional health? There are countless emotions being triggered by the constantly changing situations around us and it’s hard to know how to deal with those. Your emotional and psychological state have a powerful impact on your health, including your immunity, so it is vital that you pay attention to and take care of it.

The following articles contain excellent information and suggestions from experts in their fields on things you or others may be feeling at this time and how to cope.

That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief

Five Emotional Precautions to Take During the Coronavirus Pandemic

An Astronaut’s Guide to Self-Isolation

How to Talk to Your Kids About Coronavirus

What have you been doing that has been helpful for you and your family? Share your suggestions below or send us a message on Facebook, Twitter, or by email. The April 7th draw will be for a 12” Impress Framed Round Canvas or Stretcher in your choice of black, white, or unfinished.