Introduction

0:03

vassa the visual arts student

0:04

association is a student group

0:07

alberta managed and run by students in

0:09

the bachelor of fine arts program it was

0:11

the first

0:13

as a means to raise funds for the

0:14

bachelor of fine arts graduation

0:16

exhibition which you’ll learn a little

0:18

bit about today because that’s coming up

0:19

very soon

0:21

but has since evolved to also include

0:23

other exhibitions and community events

0:24

like this one its current mandate is to

0:27

advocate for students in the bachelor of

0:28

fine arts program and to create

0:30

opportunities through which the research

0:32

they undertake in their shoes can be

0:33

brought forward to the community so

0:35

without further delay uh we’re going to

0:37

let vasa take it away

0:40

hi everybody my name is mikhailee shapka

0:44

and

0:45

i am the vice president of vasa at the

0:47

university of alberta and

0:50

i wanted to invite all of you to our

0:52

grad show that is coming up april 20th

0:54

to 29th

0:56

at the fab gallery at the university

0:59

um where you can see

1:00

all of the garage shows work and

1:03

we’re really excited about it anyway

1:05

i’ll get on with the tour i’ll lead you

1:07

in this way

About Maud Lewis

1:10

so i’m super excited to talk about mod

1:13

lewis she’s one of my favorite artists

1:15

and i myself consider i consider myself

1:18

a folk artist as well i feel folk art is

1:21

for the people and by the people

1:23

and

1:24

i just give you a little brief overview

1:26

of her life

1:28

so she is born in 1903

1:31

and she was

1:34

obviously made bright and colorful

1:36

artwork

1:37

um

1:38

with the rural nova scotia

1:41

livelihood because her

1:44

her father was a blacksmith and then her

1:46

husband was

1:48

a fisherman so a lot to do with

1:51

pastoral landscapes and just really

1:55

brought a joyous

1:56

energy

1:57

and positive light into her life even

2:00

though she’s had some hardships she did

2:03

end up getting arthritis and it did

2:05

worsen with age

2:06

so later on in her life she was using a

2:08

bit more stencils and getting some help

2:10

from her husband everett

2:12

but

2:13

besides that she is still

2:16

obviously such a wonderful

2:18

emitting this joyous light

2:20

um a lot to do with her work is serial

2:24

repetition and that happens a lot with

2:26

folk art where there’s lots of repeated

2:28

shapes and colors and forms which she

2:31

was really able to

2:33

focus on

2:35

um every painting there’s 137 paintings

2:37

in the exhibition and they’re all

2:39

different even though they look a little

2:41

bit similar and that’s what makes them

2:43

so much more beautiful

2:45

um

2:46

she has lots of animals and flowers cows

2:50

and kittens carts with horses and oxes

2:54

so just the daily life the mundane

2:57

things that you go about in the real

2:59

community

3:00

just brought into

3:02

a gallery space so you can really

3:04

appreciate the beauty in everyday life

3:08

um

3:10

so for her painting she is

3:13

really known for her composition and her

3:15

color a lot of her work is very

3:17

symmetrical which is

3:20

to the human eye very very beautiful and

3:24

lots of thick oil paint and when she

3:26

started she was making christmas cards

3:28

and then she progressed to selling

3:30

bigger larger works and a main focus for

3:33

her was her clientele

3:35

so

3:36

as you see over here there’s a sign

3:37

paintings for sale because outside of

3:40

her she sold paintings outside of her

3:41

house

3:42

and this was the way she made a

3:44

livelihood which

3:46

isn’t so admiring for myself

3:49

and many other artists

3:52

especially being a woman so i definitely

3:54

appreciate that

3:56

and

3:56

it’s something that i look up

3:58

to and i’m gonna pass along to katie

4:02

we’re gonna do um look at some of the

4:04

animal paintings but feel free

4:06

to

4:07

take a look at all of the her early

4:09

works as we go that way

Early Paintings

4:14

i’m going to start with this image here

4:16

which is the fluffy white cat with yarn

4:18

butterfly and willows

4:20

i think what’s really interesting about

4:22

this particular painting is that even

4:23

just by mentioning the items of yarn and

4:26

willows you can imagine how soft

4:28

this cat would feel to pet it’s a

4:30

long-haired persian cat and i find that

4:33

a really interesting way to represent

4:35

texture in a sense without needing to

4:37

get super realistic

4:39

as you can see a lot of her paintings

4:40

are

4:41

especially from this period in her

4:43

career a more graphic style using a lot

4:46

of different shapes

4:47

rather than shading

4:49

to represent fur

4:51

i think one of the main things that i

4:53

find really interesting about these cats

4:54

is their eyes as everyone can see

4:57

they’re super bright

4:59

and if you have a cat you know that sort

5:02

of ambiguous stare that cats might give

5:04

you you have no idea what they’re

5:05

thinking that’s what i think of with

5:07

these images in particular

5:09

so you can see she has very similar

5:10

composition in all of these works

5:13

she has a central subject either one cat

5:16

or

5:16

it looks like a parent and two kittens

5:19

and then these blossoms coming up over

5:22

top with the tulips

5:24

the tulips are created with very simple

5:26

just three strokes each they’re very

5:28

bold and these sort of lace like flowers

5:31

on top give them a real sense of

5:33

delicacy and at the same time as i

5:35

mentioned it is still quite graphic and

5:38

focused on shapes

5:40

this was later in her career so she did

5:42

have less mobility and less ability to

5:44

paint those detailed landscapes like you

5:46

might see over here

5:48

but as you can see even from these

5:50

really simple compositions you’re still

5:51

getting a very strong sense of what

5:53

she’s trying to represent

5:54

and they’re very inviting images

5:57

especially with that central

6:00

simplistic and

6:02

stable composition

6:04

so i’ll just walk over here really

6:06

quickly

6:09

one of the things mod lewis is known for

6:11

is painting these evergreen trees with

6:13

blossoms

6:14

it just shows the creativity that she

6:16

has to represent these domestic scenes

6:18

in new ways um different than other

6:20

people might represent them

6:23

and i think in these images you can see

6:25

a bit more of that detail

6:26

representing those small flowers and the

6:29

background scenes which are different

6:30

from these images but as i mentioned i

6:32

find these images in particular of the

6:34

cast just quite

6:35

homey and make you think about who she

6:37

is as an artist there also a lot of

6:39

repetition reminds us that she is

6:42

working for a living this isn’t

6:43

necessarily an artist with a singular

6:45

masterpiece

6:47

but there’s a lot of her work that is so

6:49

inspiring and reflects her history who

6:52

she is and the things that she loves in

6:54

her hometown

6:57

i’m just going to quickly talk over here

6:58

for a bit so we’ll walk this way

7:02

so here we have a lot of images of oxen

7:05

which mod lewis is very well known for

7:07

her oxen

7:08

um a version of this style of picture

7:11

was actually used on a post stamp a

7:13

canadian post stamp in 2020 they’re very

7:16

iconic images and similar with the cats

7:18

we have stable composition

7:21

simple lines simple shapes but really

7:23

bright and fascinating colors

7:26

she represents oxen in a lot of her work

7:28

sometimes in rural

7:30

landscapes actually working because oxen

7:33

were used to work the land

7:35

i think here you can see a different

7:36

side of the animals she’s representing

7:39

them in this portraiture style

7:41

showing you their eyes and these

7:42

beautiful eyelashes that she is known

7:44

for adding on the oxen

7:46

just to give them a bit of personality

7:48

um another thing to note is these

7:50

harnesses behind the oxen’s head maud

7:53

lewis’s father actually made the

7:55

harnesses

7:56

it’s a particular style to have them

7:58

behind the horns and you can see

8:00

by representing that ornamentation in

8:02

detail in her images she’s also

8:04

reflecting part of her own personal

Seaside Paintings

8:06

history okay hi everyone my name is

8:08

james and i’m a

8:10

student from the u of a i study painting

8:13

and i’ll be giving a tour of the seaside

8:16

section

8:17

okay so

8:21

like the way we begin

8:22

we can see that

8:24

throughout the space

8:26

she’s done multiple

8:29

compositions of the same landscape and

8:32

this landscape is particular to nova

8:34

scotia which is the bay of fundy which

8:37

she was known to be um around quite

8:40

often as we all know her husband was a

8:43

fisherman and so she was actually his

8:46

his chief salesman and she would help

8:49

him out with his job but during that

8:51

time she would um

8:54

gather her surroundings and go home and

8:56

paint and

8:59

all of this was all based on her memory

9:02

from the day she was there and then

9:03

going back home and painting

9:06

um unfortunately

9:09

she developed a juvenile arthritis when

9:12

she was very young but she still

9:15

continued with

9:17

painting a drawing from simple materials

9:20

such as crayons to paintings like this

9:24

wall paint and

9:26

throughout her career

9:27

and so

9:29

we can take a look for this one

9:32

you can see the colors are quite strong

9:36

but they’re quite um

9:39

the shapes are quite um

9:41

i would say obvious and like large and i

9:44

the way i like to see all of these

9:46

paintings is if i squint my eyes a

9:48

little bit you can see the color fields

9:51

quite

9:52

present

9:54

and i think it’s a wonderful way to see

9:56

things like going back and going closely

10:00

feel free to do that when you have the

10:02

time later i um

10:06

one unique thing about her paintings

10:08

that i don’t know if anyone notices is

10:10

that the birds

10:12

have a direction that they fly towards

10:15

so they always

10:16

write so if you can see the next one

10:19

if you move on

10:22

they go from left to right left to right

10:25

left to right

10:27

and

10:29

i think it’s a unique way of presenting

10:31

the work especially in a gallery like

10:33

this you can see the passage of the

10:36

seasons so i assume this would be warmer

10:39

season like spring which is approaching

10:41

now

10:42

and

10:43

from spring something cold but beautiful

10:46

and still like winter

10:49

and we can go all the way to something

10:51

more

10:53

summer or close to fall i would say

10:56

and that one is actually my favorite

10:58

painting from this section

11:00

i like the way it’s separated from blue

11:02

to green and multiple colors that your

11:05

eye stays

11:07

on that

11:08

and then we go to blue again to the sky

11:17

uh i’m not from canada nor nova scotia

11:20

but i grew up um

11:22

close to seeing lots of boats and eating

11:25

lots of seafood so

11:27

the

11:28

the artworks that i’ve seen

11:30

and the way she’s painted really reminds

11:32

me of where i come from

11:35

and i hope you can connect with the

11:37

paintings despite our multiple

11:39

backgrounds of this crowd it’s a

11:41

wonderful crowd by the way

11:45

yeah you can see

11:47

wonderful boats houses still houses

11:52

and

11:54

take a time admire the different kinds

11:56

of colors she uses it’s not always just

11:59

bright colors there’s also nice muted

12:02

colors like almost

12:04

you can sense that the

12:06

grass is changing in the season

12:09

there’s not a lot of clouds and you can

12:11

just sit and like think about what kind

12:13

of places you’ve been to that sort of

12:15

feel this way doesn’t have to look this

12:17

way but yeah

12:21

we can move along

12:26

sometimes the birds don’t actually just

12:28

fly from left to right i would say this

12:32

is a quite a comical scene

12:35

and the birds are gonna eat the fish and

12:38

i think it’s quite a lively depiction of

12:41

life in nova scotia when especially that

12:44

she’s a salesperson for

12:46

fish

12:48

like she has to preserve the fish or

12:49

else she won’t have anything to saw and

12:53

continue painting

12:55

yeah

12:57

can move along

12:59

here

13:01

more colorful things

13:05

but there’s not a lot of clouds where

13:07

there’s some clouds over there

13:13

before we leave this section

13:15

there is a small sort of replica of her

13:18

house

13:19

and she is known to have a really

13:22

decorated and painted house and every

13:25

single inch of that house was covered in

13:28

her artwork and though that’s not a

13:32

complete reproduction it was

13:34

um it was a way for people who visited

13:38

the exhibition to try to do something

13:40

similar so kids parents grandparents or

13:43

anyone participated in drawing and sort

13:46

of emulating what she did in her own in

13:49

her own home

13:51

but

13:52

i guess we can do that everywhere

13:55

whether it’s legal or not

Home for the Holidays

13:57

okay so this section is called home for

13:59

the holidays

14:00

um so christmas cards was what sort of

14:04

started off mod lewis’s career she was

14:06

making them with her mother

14:08

um

14:09

by hand and most of them were watercolor

14:12

um she was doing that when she was in

14:15

her

14:17

young adulthood so her early 20s

14:20

and then they would sell them door to

14:22

door and

14:24

um

14:26

yeah take them around and sell them

14:28

so this is sort of what like introduced

14:30

her to um

14:32

commercial art and to selling her art

14:35

and being able to support herself with

14:37

her art

14:38

um

14:40

so she sold different designs here

14:43

and then would also do hand lettering on

14:46

the

14:48

um on the cards

14:50

um

14:52

she also then later sell sold painted

14:54

trays and different like painted

14:56

houseware that she would

14:58

sell in her family friends salon

15:01

and then later in her life she was also

15:03

selling these christmas cards to her

15:07

husband’s

15:08

fish customers

15:11

so it was through this continuous sale

15:13

of christmas motifs that she was able to

15:15

sort of get an idea of what would be

15:17

popular um so that’s why you start to

15:19

see this sort of repetition of certain

15:21

designs because those were the ones that

15:23

sold better

15:26

and you kind of see that throughout the

15:28

rest of her work as well as she’s sort

15:29

of tailored to her customers needs

15:32

or and wants

15:34

um

15:35

so this section in particular has

15:38

definitely like an air of nostalgia

15:41

christmas being this time of year where

15:45

you kind of return to tradition

15:47

and

15:48

kind of despite anything else that was

15:50

going on in the year so

15:52

you can definitely see that in her work

15:53

and this joyful like romanticization of

15:56

the

15:58

um

15:58

of the holidays

16:01

um

16:02

so the images that she’s drawing on are

16:04

both nostalgic for herself in a personal

16:07

way and then they’re also romanticizing

16:10

and

16:11

nostalgic of

16:12

this

16:13

[Music]

16:19

in a way that was very popular at the

16:21

time so courier and ives was a

16:26

print making firm that was

16:29

producing these popular

16:33

color lithographs

16:35

um that were just a way

16:38

for people of middle and lower classes

16:41

to be able to afford and put art in

16:43

their homes even if they couldn’t afford

16:46

original paintings all the time

16:48

so it made

16:51

art and

16:53

it made art very accessible

16:55

so it was most likely that she

16:58

would have seen

17:00

some career knives prince

17:03

since many of her sort of compositions

17:05

and especially

17:06

the motifs that she’s drawing on are

17:08

very similar to a lot of those prints at

17:11

the time

17:13

um

17:15

other than sort of the popular visual

17:17

culture that she was drawing on she also

17:19

sort of added in her own joyful motifs

17:21

sort of things that were

17:25

reminiscent of the holidays and also

17:27

just joy and happiness to her so you’ll

17:30

notice the sort of butterflies

17:32

and the stars and the moon um

17:35

in some of these uh

17:37

window panels

17:39

so obviously there’s not butterflies in

17:40

winter but they sort of still symbolized

17:44

joy and happiness for her so it was

17:47

still around the same sort of idea of

17:49

the holidays

17:51

um

17:53

you also kind of see it like in some of

17:55

the smaller work you’ll see

17:57

little

17:58

some of the people in the background are

18:00

sort of falling on their butts

18:02

while they’re skating

18:04

so it was still sort of these

18:07

about making it joyful and fun

18:10

um

18:11

yeah

18:14

rather than yeah rather than just

18:15

drawing on the purely traditional

18:17

imagery so she was sort of being quirky

18:19

in her own ways

18:21

um

18:24

so

18:25

these window panels are sort of the one

18:27

of the features of this section

18:29

um

18:30

this is part of a set of eight panels um

18:34

that were made for as a commission for

18:36

an american family who had a

18:42

a house in her town there

18:45

so this was the biggest commission that

18:47

she ever got

18:48

and

18:50

it was sort of a way

18:52

um

18:56

way for her to continue making a living

18:58

um

19:00

also painted her own house a lot so

19:04

it sort of was a way to bring her art to

19:06

other people’s houses as well

19:09

um

19:11

so these panels as well as the painting

19:13

for sale sign that we saw at the very

19:15

beginning um

19:17

and the other window panels are all

19:19

painted on this black

19:20

um

19:22

the wood is primed like that so that the

19:24

paintings sort of pop more

19:26

um

19:28

it sort of brings more liveliness to

19:30

them

19:31

um

19:35

this was especially because

19:37

being out in the weather all the time

19:39

they kind of needed

19:42

something to make them pop but also

19:44

they needed to be restored a lot to be

19:46

able to be in the show

19:51

one that we’ll look at is the tnt

19:53

snowman on the side here which is kind

19:55

of the corkiest one of this pit

19:58

um

20:00

so obviously he’s very festive it’s a

20:02

snowman he has a little candy cane

20:05

um

20:06

he’s got little argyle socks on

20:09

but he’s also holding like a bottle of

20:12

uh tnt and then glasses around it so

20:15

um

20:16

we can kind of like imply or think that

20:18

this might be

20:21

like a warning against like over

20:23

drinking with the festive holidays um

20:27

yeah and then the lobster adds like a

20:28

little

20:29

uh

20:30

nostalgic touch again for her

20:32

since it was

20:35

with her being on the east coast

20:37

yeah

20:38

um that’s mostly it for the holiday

20:40

section we’re gonna move um but kylie

20:42

will take it again into

20:44

the section in the next room here

Rural Life

20:47

um so this is the from here to their

20:49

section um and personally one of

20:53

my favorite ones just because it really

20:56

captures the emotion and movement of a

21:00

rural community

21:02

you can see the horse and wagon

21:07

you can see

21:08

the ox

21:10

and

21:11

how the how much hard work all these

21:13

animals are putting in alongside

21:16

us humans

21:18

and again it’s throughout the season so

21:20

she’s taking a look outside through her

21:22

window she’s walking down the street

21:24

she’s helping her husband doing her

21:26

daily job

21:27

and

21:28

the

21:29

older cars

21:31

the wagons everything like that is uh

21:33

nostalgic to us because

21:35

we can see that that’s not how we get

21:37

around these days

21:39

um i have a personal connection to

21:42

being out at the farm or in a rural

21:44

community my family does

21:46

a bit of that so that’s why i find these

21:48

so fascinating it’s just bringing

21:51

that into

21:52

[Music]

21:55

a different light for people to

21:57

appreciate and understand

22:00

and as we move through so there’s more

22:01

of like a winter scene over here

22:04

um

22:05

we can see the horses are running pretty

22:07

fast

22:08

people are skating they’re going to

22:10

bargaining

22:11

just all those

22:13

canadian things that we like to do in

22:15

the winter which is so lovely

22:18

people are probably caroling and singing

22:20

and as we move over this way we can even

22:23

see

22:24

a train going by so another means of

22:27

transportation

22:29

that we don’t use as frequently as much

22:32

um so just it has a lot of sentiment to

22:35

her paintings

22:37

um you can really tell she had a knack

22:40

for color

22:43

highlighting certain areas and

22:45

composition wise

22:50

this one i think is a little bit

22:52

humorous i feel like this should be in a

22:55

scene from a movie a getaway vehicle

22:58

perhaps or somebody

23:00

late for lunch speeding down the road

23:05

i find the tulips coming into spring get

23:08

me excited especially coming into spring

23:10

now in edmonton

23:13

and as we keep moving her famous

23:16

cherry blossoms on the

23:18

evergreen trees which

23:20

is

23:22

obviously her imagination going kind of

23:24

wild but why not if you’re in the artist

23:26

you can do what you want with your

23:28

paintings and i appreciate that so much

23:31

adding a little bit of color

23:36

yeah everyone you could come take a look

23:38

and we’re gonna keep moving along

23:43

so she incorporates not only um

23:47

lance like not only the land but also

23:49

the sea into these ones as well

23:53

and this one actually is my

23:56

one of my favorites from this section

23:58

too

23:59

because there’s little

24:01

roosters running around and the tulips

24:04

and the colorful flowers so it’s

24:07

one of the most colorful ones

24:09

and

24:10

just showing the hard work that we all

24:12

do but in the

24:14

in the eyes of the artists it is a

24:17

beauty

24:22

and as we move down you can see that her

24:24

mark making is particularly fascinating

24:27

and that tends to happen a lot with folk

24:30

art where there’s like lots of planes of

24:33

and then a repetitive

24:35

not only with subject matter but with

24:36

the way

24:38

the marks are applied to the canvas or

24:41

the substrate that she is painting on

24:46

so if you can see here to make up the

24:48

leaves and the trees or even the flowers

24:50

it’s just these like dots over and over

24:52

and over again

24:54

so repeated

24:56

everything is repeated with her work and

24:58

that’s where she can really find an

25:00

appreciation for

25:02

that and it’s just like your everyday

25:04

life you go about repeating doing the

25:06

same things it’s habitual so

25:09

you’re able to really appreciate

25:13

and these ones are more of a summer

25:15

paintings

25:16

um we can see there’s more of a yellow

25:19

hue to

25:20

them with the

25:22

horses and the chickens and hens again

25:25

and the eyelashes like katie mentioned

25:28

on the ox

25:29

are just add that little extra

25:32

special

25:34

mod lewis

25:35

touch to the work

25:38

um

25:39

and yeah i think these are just a lovely

25:41

little work to showcase life in nova

25:44

scotia

25:46

um

25:48

and then these ones down here we can see

25:50

the horse is

25:52

like double triple the size of a human

25:55

which is

25:58

so amazing

26:00

because

26:01

in per folk art perspective and accuracy

26:05

for realistic things is

26:08

up to you to decide what you want to do

26:10

and it just gives you like

26:12

how big the horses really are especially

26:14

when they’re doing all this work

26:17

and again with the pink on the trees

26:19

another mod lewis touch

26:23

um and that’s about it for this section

26:26

and i’m gonna hand it over to hannah

Spring Summer

26:33

okay

26:35

so now we’re sort of in the spring and

26:39

summer section

26:40

um

26:42

i think the obviously the main sort of

26:44

feature of this section is again these

26:46

window panels um they’re part of the

26:49

same commission that were

26:51

that the winter ones were part of um so

26:54

the family commissioned two sets so that

26:55

they could swap them out seasonally

26:58

um

26:59

so that they could be sort of um

27:02

decorating with the seasons

27:04

um again there’s they’ve gone through a

27:06

lot of restoration um after being

27:09

um

27:11

after being weathered down for so many

27:12

years especially being outside

27:15

so

27:16

but you’ll see again these sort of

27:18

summer motifs of songbirds and tulips

27:22

and fresh

27:23

bouquets

27:25

it’s very joyful

27:27

and very bright and colorful especially

27:29

compared to the winter ones it’s a

27:30

little bit more colorful

27:33

with all the flowers

27:34

um they’re definitely some of my

27:36

favorite pieces in the show especially

27:38

on the yellow background they pop out a

27:40

lot

27:42

yeah

27:44

again they’re painted on the black

27:46

primed plywood so doing this also helps

27:49

with

27:51

keeping the wood intact so that the oil

27:53

paint doesn’t age the wood or doesn’t

27:55

degrade from the wood

27:58

especially over time sometimes if oil

28:00

seeps into the wood it can sort of start

28:02

to rot so

28:04

that’s part of the other reason that

28:06

it’s primed like that

28:08

um

28:09

yeah the last piece that we’re gonna

28:11

look at in our tour is the yellow

28:14

songbirds and the cherry blossoms or the

28:17

apple blossoms sorry on the side here

28:26

so this sort of piece is not very

28:29

reminiscent of the rest of her work and

28:31

you’ll sort of see that especially in

28:33

the plain blue of the background there’s

28:36

no depth to it and it’s no longer like a

28:38

landscape

28:40

um

28:42

this sort of is a little bit more

28:43

ornamental lots of people see this as

28:46

sort of like a wallpaper design it’s

28:48

more of a design rather than a painting

28:50

um

28:52

the reason that there’s not many more

28:54

like this is because it probably just

28:55

wasn’t one of a very popular design

28:59

so she wasn’t

29:01

because she focused on selling her work

29:03

she wasn’t worried about recreating

29:06

designs that weren’t going to sell

29:07

so this probably just wasn’t a very

29:09

popular design at her time

29:12

it is a little bit funny since now this

29:15

is actually one of her most popular

29:17

pieces it’s recreated the most on like

29:20

t-shirts

29:21

and books and different merchandise

29:25

yet it wasn’t at all popular sort of

29:27

when she was making it so

29:30

um

29:32

yeah

29:34

yeah i think that’s pretty much it for

29:36

our tour i think all these students at

29:40

an amazing job so big round of applause

29:42

for them thanks so much

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