Fine Arts Faculty from the University of Saskatchewan
Reception: Saturday, October 26, 2PM - 4PM
October 26 - December 5
Art Placement is pleased to once again host an exhibition of work by the Faculty members in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to teaching and conducting research, the department faculty are also among the leading artists in the province, making work at the forefront of an ever-changing artistic landscape. Their work is diverse and often cross-disciplinary, merging new technologies with established genres, media, and forms. Individually, they have exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, and their works have been collected by prestigious institutions across Canada and abroad. Featuring new and recent work by Lisa Birke, Jennifer Crane, Allyson Glenn, John Graham, Mary Longman, jake moore, Alison Norlen, Tim Nowlin, and Susan Shantz.

Lisa Birke is an award winning Canadian experimental short film maker who situates between the traditions of painting, digital video and performance art. She has had solo exhibitions across Canada and her short films have been screened at film/video festivals and media centres internationally. Birke examines notions of ‘self’ through the lens of gender, bringing the cultural tropes of woman into focus and into question. Filmed unaccompanied in the Canadian landscape, absurd yet insightful performative acts become entangled in nuanced and complex narratives in single and multichannel video works that make reference to art history, mythology and popular culture. Revealing what lies beneath the surface of femininity, her work toys with a conclusion that is problematic, comi-tragic, and most essentially, human. lisabirke.com

Jennifer Crane is a lens-based artist who joined the Department of Art and Art History in 2005. She is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Photography Area. Her teaching covers a range of processes in both chemical and digital methods, small and large format cameras. She specializes in large-scale digital printing, historical processes, pinhole imagery and stereo photography. The overall research vision of her work is to investigate the relationship between the body and the lens in both historical and contemporary images and old and new technologies. Through the creation of still photography, video installations, performance, and fictional photographic archives her work engages the themes of memory, narrative, authenticity and archival practice, employing historical, analogue and digital processes. She has exhibited her work in galleries throughout Canada. Recent exhibitions include: “Dear Edward” (2012) Mann Art Gallery, Prince Albert, SK. “Still Films” (2011) Yukon Arts Centre, Whitehorse, Yukon, “Coming and Going” (2011) Artist By Artist Exhibition, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon SK., “Becoming” (2007) Paved Arts, Saskatoon, SK. “Fairytales and Fishwives” (2006) Gallery 44, Toronto, ON., “Seafarers and Fishwives” (2005) La Central Powerhouse Galerie, Montreal, QC. jenncranestudio.com

Allyson Glenn is an Associate Professor in Painting and Drawing, who came to the University of Saskatchewan in 2010. Working in oil on canvas, Glenn’s work combines the tradition of painting with a contemporary worldview and modern technology. Her work is notable for its thick and luscious paint handling, which stylistically references the traditions of realism, impressionism, and abstract expressionism. With an analytical approach to composition, her carefully structured surfaces are developed through dozens of preliminary drawings and sketches, as well as digital manipulation of photographic source material. In terms of content, Glenn’s paintings explore a range of contemporary subjects including social conflict, isolation, culture, and identity, as well as time, narrative, and metaphor. Glenn’s paintings have been exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in the United States, Switzerland, India, Greece, Spain, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom. allysonglenn.com

John Graham is an Assistant Professor and the Chair of Printmaking/Digital Media in the Department of Art and Art History. He is a multi-disciplinary artist who joined the University of Saskatchewan in 2014. His education includes a background in architecture as well as fine art and his art practice encapsulates an ever-diversifying range of media, including print, artist’s books, drawing, painting, multi-media installations, performance, poetry, and independent filmmaking. His 9 experimental short films have been screened at over 170 international film festivals, gallery venues and awards ceremonies in 37 countries. He has participated in artist residencies throughout the world and he has been the recipient of multiple awards, grants, fellowships and prizes in visual art and film. His visual art has been widely exhibited in North America, Asia and Europe, and his work in all media can be found in numerous public and private collections including Loto-Quebec, National Bank of Canada, National Library of Canada, National Library of Quebec, New York Public Library, and Canada Council Art Bank. His films are in the collections of National Film Board of Canada, City of Ottawa, Ontario Arts Council, and Saskatchewan Arts Board. john-graham-artist-com

Mary Longman is an Artist and Art Historian who joined the Department Faculty in 2007. Her teaching focuses on Contemporary Aboriginal Art History, National and International, though with a background in studio art and an active studio practice and exhibition schedule, she also regularly teaches in the areas of Sculpture and Drawing. Longman is an established artist who has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for nearly three decades. She works in many different mediums including mixed-media sculpture, installation, drawing, digital media and book illustration. Her works give visual representation to Aboriginal perspective, challenging colonial power structures through personal narratives that contradict official settler histories. Her fine art has been exhibited in prestigious galleries throughout Canada including the National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Civilization, Vancouver Art Gallery, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery, and McCord Museum. International venues include the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Hood Museum. Her works can also be found in the collections of the McKenzie Art Gallery, the Mendel Art Gallery, the Kamloops Art Gallery, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Saskatchewan Arts Board, Canada Council for the Arts, and the University of Saskatchewan.

jake moore is an intermedia artist who creates complex immersive and interactive installations, critical scholarship, and curatorial work. She has more than 25 years of expdrience as an artist and cultural worker at various institutions throughout Canada, and has exhibited her work throughout Quebec and nationally, most recently at the Quebec Triennial at the Musee d’art contemporain in Montreal. She has been a regular contributor and editorial collective member of dpi. an online journal dedicated to new media and feminist interaction. Most recently, she is the newly appointed Director of the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries, overseeing the operations of all four campus galleries, as well as its 6,000-piece permanent collection. She also serves as a faculty member in the department of art and art history.

Alison Norlen joined the Department of Art and Art History in 1999 as a Professor in Painting and Drawing. With a background in painting, she is perhaps best known for her large-scale drawings, which have been exhibited nationally and collected by prestigious institutions like the National Gallery of Canada. Norlen frequently works in a diverse range of media and disciplines, from sculpture to architectural installations, and even fashion. Inspired by an interest in "cultural artifice", she researches "themed" sites such as the West Edmonton mall, Disneyland, Universal studios, Las Vegas, roadside attractions, circus, and carnival celebrations. She is both spectator and recorder of these places and events, an appreciative and critical voyeur translating her experiences through personal narrative and visual metaphor. She has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally in Brazil, Korea, Amsterdam, and the United States. She has received numerous project and travel grants from the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Manitoba Arts Council, and the Canada Council.

Tim Nowlin has been a professor in the Department of Art and Art History since 1994, teaching classes in Painting and Drawing. His educational background is in traditional printmaking, though he has devoted the better part of his studio practice since the mid 1990s to painting. He has exhibited his paintings throughout Western Canada and abroad in Switzerland and Germany. Returning to his roots in printmaking, Nowlin spent several years exploring digital printing processes in works that also incorporate his long-time interest in collage and bricolage. Speaking to memory and how new meanings are generated through the recombination of discarded elements, Nowlin has found digital technologies to be indispensable in exploring the possibilities of collage as a medium. The two most recent prints included in the exhibition signal a return to traditional printmaking techniques. Printed in collaboration with technicians in China this past year, these offset lithographs offer a richness of tone and density of colour that is unmatched. In addition to his studio practice, administration and teaching duties, annually since 2015 Nowlin has served as Guest Lecturer and Visiting Artist at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan, China.

Susan Shantz came to the Department of Art and Art History in 1990, where she teaches in the areas of Sculpture and Multi-media. Her artwork consists of mixed-media works, often sculptural in form, that explore embodied ways of knowing. She is interested in ritual and gesture, and the ways in which art arises from these and becomes a cultural performance. Her materials and processes of making are varied and derive from a range of conceptual concerns. Shantz’s practice is decidedly diverse and non-media specific. Though her work is often object-based and exists in space, the term sculpture itself is sometimes ill-equipped to encapsulate the entire nature of her work, which is more concerned with the exploration of process, materials, and ideas than formal structures. The bookwork included in this exhibition was developed in 2018 is part of an ongoing project that considers some of the pressing social, economic, and environmental issues around water and waterways. Shantz has exhibited extensively throughout Canada since the mid 1980s, including major solo exhibitions at the Mendel Art Gallery, MacKenzie Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, among others. Her work is included in numerous public collections in Canada.

Installation images: