This week’s Work of the Week is January by John K. Esler.

Did you know: The month of January is named after the ancient Roman god Janus? Janus was the god of beginnings and transitions. He also had two faces – one looking forward into the future and one looking back towards the past.

About the Artist: John K. Esler (1933 – 2001)

John K. Esler was born in 1933 in Pilot Mound, Manitoba and attended the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1960. He continued studies there, receiving a Bachelor of Education degree in 1962, and in 1964, after a period of travel in Europe, took a teaching position at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary (now the Alberta University of the Arts). He joined the faculty of the University of Calgary in 1968 where he taught intaglio printmaking, staying there until his retirement in the 1980s.
 

Esler was well-known in the Calgary arts community, and did much to raise the profile of printmaking in the province. He played a major role in the expansion of the printmaking department at the Alberta College of Art and Design and at the University of Calgary and in partnership with artist Ken Webb, established Trojan Press to provide a facility for local printmakers to develop their skills. Esler's works were exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad and he is represented in many public and private collections. His awards included the C.W. Jefferys' Award from the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts and the G.A. Reid Memorial Award from the Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

John Esler had an irreverent, somewhat Dadaist sensibility which he expressed in his art and in his teaching methods. He encouraged his students to experiment, to make art with a mind open to unexpected possibilities. A series of artworks that offered a typical example of his approach were called Relics of the Twentieth Century and involved the use of cast-off garbage and refuse that he ran through the press to create relief prints. Objects that became fodder for the creative process for this series ranged from a squashed lunch box to the flattened chassis of a television set.

This week’s Work of the Week is Ancestor by Indigenous artist Florence Shone.

About the Artist: Florence Shone

Florence Shone is a mother of two and self-taught artist who uses acrylic and canvas as her medium.
 

She is originally from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, but has resided in Edmonton most of her life. She has a degree in Native Studies from University of Alberta in Edmonton. 

Shone says that she has always been an artist. She began drawing at an early age, but it was only when she was almost finished university that she took an art class and learned that painting allows her to visually express and release her emotions onto canvas. Subjects include Blackfoot people from archival photographs, portraiture, landscape work and other intuitively created pieces.

She regularly participates in local exhibitions in Alberta and has had work on display at the Royal Alberta Museum.

This year, National Indigenous Peoples Day also coincides with Summer Solstice on June 21. It is a great way to celebrate the unique culture and achievements of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples of our country.
 

During National Indigenous Peoples Day and June's National Indigenous History Month, explore:

• amazing artwork by Indigenous artists in the AFA's collection
• upcoming events throughout the province
• resources and events across Canada

About the artwork:

Poitras enjoys working in a variety of media including painting and mixed media collages that incorporate historical and contemporary symbols, newspaper clippings, and painted elements. In her work, 'Legacy of a Liberated Culture', she uses mixed media to create a colorful collage to highlight her diverse culture.

View the artwork in Augmented Reality. And click on the pink 'AFA virtual museum' below to discover other artworks by Poitras from 1984 to 2019.

About the Artist:

Jane Ash Poitras was born in the northern Alberta Cree community of Fort Chipewyan. Even though it was recommended for her to pick another career, as it was perceived it would be impossible to make a living as an artist, her resiliency helped her achieve a successful career. 

She has garnered her many accolades and achievements through her career, including being a recipient of:

• the Alberta Centennial Medal (2005)
• Order of Canada (2007)
• Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award (2011).

Image description

Multi-color images of an Indigenous person wearing a black and red feathered head dress, brown dog-like animal, yellow and red bird-like animal, black and red and turquoise abstract faces, and various black and white historic symbols. Four tipis with various colors including brown, yellow, whilte, red, green, blue and pink are at the bottom of the painting.

Wheel Week is the first week of June and this year it falls on May 30 to June 5, 2022. It also coincides with Anything But a Car Day (ABCD) on June 1 and The ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge (June 1 - 30, 2022) to encourage the community to get active.

Get active by walking or travelling by bike, scooter, skateboard, rollerblade or wheelchair and discover public art along the way! Share what art catches your eye with us on social media: 
 

• Is it a public art sculpture, street art ... art from a gallery or museum or festival ... or poetry at a transit station? 
• We encourage you to share using the hashtag #TakePartInArt and #MyAlbertaArt

About the artwork:

Kids/Nobleford, Alberta by Wally Houn was acquired by curatorial purchase to the AFA art collection.

Check out 13 artworks by the artist showcasing different parts of Alberta and daily life of Albertans. The various artworks range in date from 1973 to 1976, and can be viewed on the AFA's Virtual Museum (click button below).

About the artist:

Wally Houn is a photographer, writer, and actor who immigrated to Medicine Hat from China when he was ten years old. He first became interested in photography as a junior high school student, and in the late 1970s, when Houn was living and teaching in Hussar, Alberta, he began exploring documentary photography. 

Houn graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Calgary, and taught English in public schools in Swift Current, SK, and in various communities in Alberta - Nobleford, Edmonton, Hussar, and Strathmore - until retiring from teaching in 1996.

Since then, Houn has worked as an actor, with speaking roles in films and TV, and is a member of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists (ACTRA).

Image description

A black and white photograph shows seven children in front of an old house-like structure with the sign "Village of Nobleford" on top of a giant white door. Two children are on bikes, one child is in a ride on toy car, and one on a tricycle. The other three children are posing while one is carrying a dog.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the official recognition of May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada! The month is an opportunity to celebrate the amazing contributions of Canadians of Asian descent, who have helped to make our country a vibrant place to live.

Immigrants to Canada from East Asia, Southern Asia, Western, Central and Southeast Asia have enriched our country with their rich cultural history, including diverse languages, art and traditions. It is also a month to remind us to appreciate the achievements of Asian-Canadians and to stand together against all forms of anti-Asian racism and discrimination.
 

We're celebrating Asian Heritage Month by highlighting a few of the diverse artworks in our collection by Albertans of Asian descent! ​

• click the arrow icons ( < or > ) above to scroll through the images.

About the Artist: Amy Loewan

Born in Hong Kong, Amy Loewan immigrated to Canada in 1978 and is based in Edmonton. Amy enjoys creating artwork that promote peace and understanding. "A Peace Project" has been designated as a Certified Cultural Property of Canada in 2010.

About the Artist: Marigold Santos

Born in Manila, Philippines and immigrating to Canada in the late 1980s, Filipinx-Canadian artist Marigold Santos is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice ranges from drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and tattoo.

You can read more about Marigold Santos and her artistic practice here: AFA Alberta Artist Profile - Marigold Santos.

Image descriptions

A Peace Project: six sheets of long hanging weaving strips of rice paper are hanging in a gallery. Each sheet has different abstract lines and dotted lines.

Flight: various colorful kites of black, orange, blue and rainbow colors are in the blue and cloudy sky. The kites are overlooking a green and grey land.

This week's Work of the Week is Bassano-Summer Sky 2008 by Danny Singer.

The first, full week of summer is coming to close, but don't worry, there are many more to come!
 

We hope you will be able to get out and enjoy an icon of the prairies - the wide expanse of clear blue sky, like in this stunning photograph, Bassano-Summer Sky 2008.

About the Artist: Danny Singer

Danny Singer is a photographer living and working in Vancouver. He began his career as a cameraman and director for the CBC.

In 1970, he moved to Montréal, where he made the transition to still photography. Working out of the tradition of documentary photography and using contemporary photographic techniques, Singer records places found in Canada's western prairie provinces and presents them as grand panoramas.

Singer has been the recipient of many awards and grants, including the Hamber Foundation Award of Merit. He has exhibited solo shows across Canada and his work can be found in private and public collections across the country including the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.

This week’s Work of the Week is Tents by John K. Esler.

It’s the start of the May long weekend, which is always the unofficial kick-off to camping season in Alberta! So, if you’re headed out this long weekend to pitch a tent and enjoy the great outdoors, we wish you happy camping!

About the Artist: John K. Esler (1933-2001)

John K. Esler was born in 1933 in Pilot Mound, Manitoba and attended the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1960. He continued studies there and received a Bachelor of Education degree in 1962, and in 1964, after a period of travel in Europe, took a teaching position at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary (now the Alberta University of the Arts). He joined the faculty of the University of Calgary in 1968, where he taught intaglio printmaking, staying there until his retirement in the 1980s.
 

Esler was well known in the Calgary arts community and did much to raise the profile of printmaking in the province. He played a major role in the expansion of the printmaking department at the Alberta College of Art and Design and at the University of Calgary and in partnership with artist Ken Webb, established Trojan Press to provide a facility for local printmakers to develop their skills.

Esler's works were exhibited widely throughout Canada and abroad and he is represented in many public and private collections. His awards included the C.W. Jefferys' Award from the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts and the G.A. Reid Memorial Award from the Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

John Esler had an irreverent, somewhat Dadaist sensibility which he expressed in his art and in his teaching methods. He encouraged his students to experiment, to make art with a mind open to unexpected possibilities. A series of artworks that offered a typical example of his approach were called “Relics of the Twentieth Century” and involved the use of cast-off garbage and refuse that he ran through the press to create relief prints. Objects that became fodder for the creative process for this series ranged from a squashed lunch box to the flattened chassis of a television set.

This week's Work of the Week is Sun Dog by Carroll Taylor-Lindoe, because we are in the dog days of summer!
 

The dog days are commonly identified as occurring between July 3 and August 11. It is traditionally the hottest and most humid time of the summer. But what does it have to do with dogs? It really has nothing to do with our four-legged friends and more to do with the placement of the stars in the sky - specifically one star, Sirius aka the Dog Star. 
 

According to the Old Farmer's Almanac:

This period of sweltering weather coincides with the year’s heliacal (meaning “at sunrise”) rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Majoris—the “Greater Dog”—which is where Sirius gets its canine nickname, as well as its official name, Alpha Canis Majoris. Not including our own sun, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.

In ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome, it was believed that the dawn rising of Sirius in mid- to late summer contributed to the extreme weather of the season. In other words, the “combined heat” of super-bright Sirius and our Sun was thought to be the cause of summer’s sweltering temperatures. The name “Sirius” even stems from Ancient Greek seírios, meaning “scorching.” For the ancient Egyptians, the dawn rising of Sirius (known to them as “Sothis”) also coincided the Nile River’s flood season. They used the star as a “watchdog” for that event.

Of course, the appearance of Sirius does not actually affect seasonal weather here on Earth, but its appearance during the hottest part of summer ensures that the lore surrounding the star lives on today!

So get out and enjoy the warm weather, because, before you know it, the dog days are over.

About the Artist: Carroll Taylor-Lindoe

Carroll Taylor-Lindoe attended the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts), Calgary, from 1966 to 1967, and again from 1974 to 1975. In 1968, Taylor-Lindoe attended the Instituto de Allende in Mexico.

She has held many solo exhibitions, including many at the Wynick/Tuck Gallery in Toronto, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, and the Glenbow Museum. She has participated in two-person and group exhibitions, at the Triangle Gallery of the Visual Arts (Calgary), the Works Festival (Edmonton), TrepanierBaer (Calgary), the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), and more.

She has been given teaching positions at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax), Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary), and the University of Calgary. She has been a Visiting Artist at many places as well; she was Visiting Artist at Sir Winfred Grenfell College, Memorial University in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge, and at Queen's University, Kingston, again, amongst many, many others. Taylor-Lindoe's work can be found in the collections of Petro-Canada (Calgary), the Glenbow Museum, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Royal Bank (Montreal), Department of External Affairs (Ottawa), the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), and numerous private and corporate collections.

She lives and works in Calgary.

July is National Picnic Month! So we're sharing with you Irene McCaugherty's Church Picnic. 

En plein air. Al fresco. Sur l'herbe.

Dining outdoors is a great idea no matter how you say it, so grab a blanket, your favourite picnic food, and a friend, to enjoy a (physically distanced) picnic this July!
 

About the Artist: Irene McCaugherty (1914 - 1996)

Irene McCaugherty was a self-taught artist, writer, and poet. Her folk-art paintings explore the people and cultural narrative of southern Alberta’s pioneer days in the later part of the 19th and early 20th century. She recorded the daily happenings of life in early Alberta with humour and colour and invited viewers to enter her world of auction sales, musical rides, road building, small town life, and ranching.

McCaugherty often painted in an unusual dimension, long and narrow. That rectangular shape reflected the view she had out the window of her pick-up truck, as she drove around southern Alberta to capture the stories of the people and the places she called home.

Her watercolours do not conform to traditional one-point perspective, and she found a voice that was uniquely hers, capturing the imagined past and invented history of life on the prairie. She created more than 1,000 paintings before her death in 1996, many of which have been donated by her family to the Lethbridge College Campus where they are on display in the Founders’ Square Space.

For many years, McCaugherty wrote a newspaper column for the Lethbridge Herald called Diary of a Farmer’s Wife about cowboy life on her ranch in the Porcupine Hills of Alberta. She also self-published three books and one recording of her stories, poetry, and paintings.

McCaugherty received an Alberta Achievement award in 1992, and an Honourary Doctor of Law degree from the University of Lethbridge in 1995, for her work preserving the history of Southern Alberta. Her art can be found at the Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada – a time to recognize the history, heritage and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada. Each June, the AFA honours and elevates Indigenous artists sharing selected artworks and their profiles from our collection as our Works of the Week.
 

This week’s Work of the Week is “Magpie” by Bruno Canadien.

About the Artist: Bruno Canadien

Born and raised in Denendeh in the Northwest Territories, Bruno Canadien is Dene (of mixed heritage) and a member of the Deh Gah Got’ı́é Kǫ́ę́ First Nation, a Deh Cho Region member of the Dene Nation. He now lives in southern Alberta, the traditional territory of the Blackfoot, Tsuu T’ina and Nakoda.

Bruno majored in painting and earned a Diploma from the Alberta College of Art (now the Alberta University of the Arts) in 1993. His pieces have been shown in solo exhibitions in Okotoks, Black Diamond and Calgary, and in group exhibitions in Calgary, Banff, Red Deer, Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie.

Through his work, Bruno address issues critical to First Nations peoples, including sovereignty, natural resources, environmental preservation and the oil and gas industries treatment of the land and its people. His collages, paintings and drawings and other pieces reflect his respect for his heritage and his passion for bringing important issues to the forefront. Through the language of art, Bruno is communicating the need for national attention.