I have not blogged for some time, Bloggers tend to blog with some consistency. Daily, weekly or some other increment of time. Me, never regularly. I used to blog when I thought no one would read what I said. That still may be the case, although I have 6 followers! Thank you followers.

Today I posted several reviews I wrote over the last year, and this past month that I wanted to share, originally published on the online magazine, Exhibit-v, associate the writing more closely with my own blog. I feel grateful that the Exhibit-v creator, Efren Quiroz is willing to publish my review writing. However, I am glad they are 'home', too.

I have done other thing recently (last year) besides write about local art work - local as in work seen in Victoria BC, where I presently live. Yes, last year I created my website, http://www.deboraalanna.com/ - which also has a blog component. I found this feature very confusing because I wrote on this blog for the past 10 years. I thought I would keep this blog, because I am very sentimental and do not want to give up this long standing presence, but will have a different lean, more specifically related to my own work on my deboraalanna site. This blog, I will write a more personal side of the journey. That's what I think for now.

2013 was a year of preparing for an art residency at the Akureyri Artists Studio in Akureyri Iceland last June. I worked and showed the work made in residency at the Populus Tremula Gallery. (painting, sculpture, installation). I called the exhibition, Hybrid: Lava & Light. This travel, residency and exhibition was funded on Indiegogo by supportive, wonderful people. You can see my proposal and outcome, read about the progress, outcome of my crowd funding by clicking on the word funding. 

I am still reeling from the outcome of this residency. Next post, I will go into more detail about what happened and explain why I am feeling the impact 7 months later. 

I continued to paint all summer.

And I wrote some poetry. Still not sure if I want to share many of these.  Here's one of several. 

Also, for the month of November, I was asked to participate in Difference and Repetition, a group exhibition of 30+ local artists at the Slide Room Gallery, curated by Efren Quiroz. Below is my contribution to this show.

Vagaries through Deference  by Debora Alanna - 30 x 30"

This is a lot of blogging after a big absence. Will continue...

Kazakhstan Exhibition

Please check out my Flickr account for more photos...

Here is the installation of "Congregation".

ARTIST STATEMENT

30 October – 1 December 2008

National Museum of Art, Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Title: Congregation

This exhibition will be comprised of 5 over life sized abstracted human forms depicting the monumentality of human alliance and our large capacity for responsiveness to each other. This work will be displayed on the 2nd floor, Gallery 11, A. Kasteev State Museum of Arts on 30 October – 1 December 2006. Congregation is inspired by the momentous Kazakhstan historical works displayed in the gallery. More, as the work depicts people convening, the sculpture is about gathering – an assembly of people, a collection of perspectives, exchange.

Canadians are known as travellers. We explore our own nation and love to visit other countries. Kazakhstan has a history of nomadic existence, and some citizens describe themselves as part of a nomadic culture. Whether on a customary journey or because of a particular adventure, meeting new, companionable people is a wonderful opportunity to impart stories, commune, and interconnect. This work will show how amity and fellowship is universal, and how the act of congregating with each other enlarges each person, our communities, and our dimensionality.

New Residency

Just waiting for my Visa to Kazakhstan...


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New residency, new thoughts and feelings to aquire, new work to be done... New show to produce... new friend to make. ADVENTURE!

The Word of the Day:

peregrination \pehr-uh-gruh-NAY-shun\, noun:
A traveling from place to place; a wandering.

Peregrination comes from Latin peregrinatio, from peregrinari, "to stay or travel in foreign countries," from peregre, "in a foreign country, abroad," from per, "through" + ager, "land."

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/08/26.html

Verrocchio Art Centre - Casole d'Elsa, Italy

Looking through the wisteria aperture to the hills of Tuscany from Casole d'Elsa's Verrocchio Art Centre.

Raku my World

Inserting ceramics

Creating fire bed

Ceramics ready for the fire

Firing up the bed

Water cooled ceramic

Removing burnt sawdust

This is was Raku day...

A.I.R. Vallauris - The beginning of the residency

Seems like another world has embraced me - a time where plagues were rampant, Napoleon landed, a time where tampanade and truffles are ordinary fare. Only the olive spread and dark aromatic culinary delight are the norm, as is the well-worn architecture.

A labyrinth-like geography, this town has four corners, a plaza on each. Cloistered in one of the towering houses, I share an Ikea furnished living space with two other artists, one American, another Irish. We each have a separate studio, and mine is shown above (exterior). I have only visited my converted donkey stable, and wonder what kind of work will be produced in this stone chamber.

Extreme sensory perceptions are rampant as I walk up the cobbled, steep hill to the place where I can concentrate on sculpture again. The heavy stones calm me from my mysterious angst. History presses on this West Coast inhabitant. I need to dig deep into my ancestral past to find the sculpture within me.
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Atelier Silex and beyond

Its been almost 2 weeks since I completed my residency at the Atelier Silex. I spent four weeks creating 6 sculptures, with the intention of digitizing this work.

Through multiple layers of contacts, I was able to spend a few hours in the FormLab and the University of Montreal. However, at this time I am still searching for a means to this end. My intention is to digitize this work, and create stereolithographs that can be then utilized as molds for sculptural embellishment for architectural use. Here are two views of the same work.

The 3D digitizing studio at the Concordia University (Hexagram C) uses equipment that cannot have any metal in the original object. My work has a metal armature. I would need to make a polymer mould to facilitate any digitizing of this work. Every step taken away from the original will compromise the final outcome of the work.

This work has other challenges, which I intentionally created after previously digitizing work at Cyberware. Voids are not read by digitizing software that I have used. A trial run at the FormLab indicated that the voids or holes in the work would need to be covered by paper to be read, and the file later edited to recreate the voids. Also, a limit of 12 inches for any digitized object to be sent to a stereolithograph machine would mean most of theses pieces, which are just a little over that dimension, would be scanned in separate entities and each stereolithograph would later have to be reconnected into the work as a whole.