2016
Leya Tess
November 2016 Guest Residency
Toxic Town Mark Making
Over the course of thirty days,Leya Tess filled a 30' paper scroll with freehand ink mark making. The starting place of this piece began from the song Toxic Town by Emily Millard.
Part meditative harmony, part self-inflicted purgatory, this large scale drawing is a tangible record of passing time. A claustrophobic tangle of intersecting forms reflects the artist's experience of being a visitor in the chaos of the city.
Leya Tess is an island based artist of mixed eurasian heritage. Her black and white ink drawings are adventures in cyclical movement. She looks to find a fluid space between the eastern yin-yang duality and western presence-absence.
Jay Williamson
July 2016 Guest Residency
Sound Body
Jay Spent his time exploring the city, seeking sights and sounds both familiar and new. His work as an improv dancer and sound artist draws inspiration from the in-the-moment context of each performance. While at The James Black Gallery his intention was to reflect the experience of Vancouver filtered through his perspective as an outsider. His residency was finalized with a Workshop on Improvisation and Intention. The participants were guided through movement and story telling in accordance with Jay’s philosophy of dynamic tension and interplay with environment.
Kim Edgar
April 2016 Guest Residency
Bestiary
A culmination of sculptural and drawn works by Kim Edgar. The show is an exploration of the physicality of death as shown through animal forms. Living in the north, they have come across many dead animals in various states, whether as roadkill, hunted food, or bones and furs as decor. A recent family death prompted them to think about the more uncomfortable bodily nature of a cadaver. They have been examining those feelings through animals as a way to avoid the uncanny nature of more human-like images.
2015
Liisa Kruusmägi
September 2015 Guest Residency
The Other
Liisa explored Vancouver while simultaneously documenting her experiences away from Estonia in a new country in her works. She put together a solo show with drawings, paintings, and comics depicting what cultural differences she found in Vancouver, BC.
Allie Perez
July 2015 Guest Residency
Seawall
Seawall is the start of a collection I hope to bring to life with songs printed on soundscapes of my journeys. I love surreal qualities to my work as well as mathy structures. My hope is to write an album around this project involving ASMR qualities and reflecting the natural experiences I am exposed to.
James Gem Hall
February 2015 Guest Residency
It Takes Guts/Escape from the
Uncanny Valley
Combining black and white illustration
with influences from textile work,
Escape from the Uncanny Valley is a
multi-year work-in-progress of one
person's exploration of vulnerability, presentation, citizenship, and the uncanny through the lens of understanding the gendered body as a potentially mutable vessel.
It Takes Guts is a 12-page black-and-white 6" x 6" art zine which seeks to compare the literal functions of the inner workings
of the human body with the symbolic process of preserving one's humanity through placing personal importance on kindness and gentleness.
http://www.teamtrangst.tumblr.com
Aubrey Burke
January 2015 Guest Residency
Prayers for Zoë
Zoë Cassidy passed away December 2014 and these 600 prayer flags were installed in an alleyway in Victoria BC to commemorate him.
The images are of his tattoos he had on his body, his art and one traditional prayer flag image of TARA ~ Devine mother and healer.
The wheat paste was designed after the "Buch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid" movie title. Zoë was a wild child gun slinging ART bandit of the west coast - and his legend will roll through us all.
