Past Events for the year 2013

First Toronto Screening of the Award-winning Short Film
BONE WIND FIRE at the McMichael

Carr, O’Keeffe, and Kahlo return to the McMichael on Film

Film Artist’s Talk and Reception on Sunday, April 28

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

APRIL 17, KLEINBURG ON – Join us at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection on Sunday, April 28 for the first Toronto film screening of BONE WIND FIRE, an intimate and evocative journey into the hearts, minds, and eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr, and Frida Kahlo—three of the twentieth century’s most remarkable artists. The private screening takes place at 12:30 p.m. for invited guests and the press. At 1:30 p.m. filmmaker and painter Jill Sharpe will present an artist’s talk to the public on her painting series inspired by the film and her artistic journey through these creative projects. Public film screenings run at 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. and there will also be a selection of Carr paintings on display, all free with gallery admission.

BONE WIND FIRE was inspired by both the book and travelling exhibit Carr, O’Keeffe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own, first presented at the McMichael in 2001 and guest-curated by Sharyn Udall, who also worked as consultant on the film. The film is a meditation on the work of the artists, each of whom centered much of their work on the environments in which they painted: Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary desert landscapes of New Mexico, Emily Carr’s lush rain forests of British Columbia, and Frida Kahlo’s heat and dust of Mexico City. Using the women’s own words from more than 6,000 pages of the artists’ letters and diaries, the thirty-minute film is not a traditional documentary, but rather a “creative non-fiction” film, using image, sound and tone to engage the viewer on an emotional and aesthetic level rather than merely an intellectual one. Vancouver Sun film critic, Katherine Monk, describes it as “a rich impressionistic essay on nothing less than the artist’s place in the universe.”

Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, it has won Best Canadian Film at Montreal’s International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA), an Artistic Innovation Award from Vancouver Women in Film and Television, and Best Short Documentary at the Sonoma International Film Festival, California.

About Jill Sharpe

Jill Sharpe has been making films since the early 1990s. Her interests, and accordingly the subjects of her films, range from social justice issues to media and culture, and more recently to painting. Her documentary work includes In the Company of Fear (1999); CultureJam: Hijacking Commercial Culture (2002); Weird Sex and Snowshoes: A Trek Through the Canadian Cinematic Psyche (2004); Girls Don’t Fight (2005); Corporations in the Classroom (2007); and now BONE WIND FIRE. Her films have sold around the world and have won numerous awards. Visit www.jillsharpe.ca to find out more about her paintings and films.

About the McMichael Canadian Art Collection
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is an agency of the Government of Ontario and acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. It is the foremost venue in the country showcasing the Group of Seven and their contemporaries. In addition to touring exhibitions, its permanent collection consists of almost 6,000 artworks by Canadian artists, including paintings by the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, as well as First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists. The gallery is located on 100 acres of northern landscape and hiking trails at 10365 Islington Avenue, Kleinburg, north of Major Mackenzie Drive in the City of Vaughan. For more information: www.mcmichael.com

Media Contact for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Wendy Campbell

Media Relations and Online Presence Manager

Tel: +1 905 893 1121 (toll-free +1 888 213 1121) ext. 2201

wcampbell@mcmichael.com

Downloadable images are here:

http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/salle-de-presse/galerie-photo/film.php?id=550094&gal=new

Past Events Held at the House: 2012

Through Three Worlds

Is a multi faceted art show at the Emily Carr House this summer (July 29 – September 29^th) by Vancouver based filmmaker/painter Jill Sharpe.

The show is a result of Sharpe’s seven year journey researching the lives and art of Emily Carr, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe and includes Sharpe’s award winning hybrid film – “Bone Wind Fire” ; a display of props from the film and a new painting series by Sharpe.

Sharpe began painting at the age of 13 and remembers fondly her family’s annual pilgrimage to the McMichael Gallery outside Toronto where she first encountered Carr’s painting. “I noticed one woman’s work hanging on the wall and even at the age of 8 I think it showed me what was possible”. Sharpe went on to become a documentary filmmaker with a passion for painting. She was selected by Queue Magazine “as one of the 21 artists of the 21^st century who would change the face of BC Culture”. When she came across Sharyn Udal’s book “Carr, O’Keeffe & Kahlo – Places of Their Own” she had just spent 3 years painting in a Mexican collective in Oaxaca Mexico. She felt this was the ideal material to combine her passions and experiment with film as a large canvas.

The filmmaking process was a labour of love. Sharpe sifted through 6,000 journal pages and thousands of paintings, to create a film entirely from the women’s own words. Katherine Monk from the Vancouver Sun calls it “a rich impressionistic essay on nothing less than the artist’s place in the universe”.

Produced by the National Film Board of Canada the film is currently touring festivals and galleries in North America and Europe. It won Best Canadian Film at the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA), received an Artistic Innovation Award from Vancouver Women in Film and Television and won Best Short Documentary at the Sonoma International Film Festival.

At the Emily Carr House audiences will find the film playing half hourly; a replica of Frida Kahlo’s dress (hand embroidered silk by Vancouver’s Jane Abbott of Arcana Designs); a cow skull from Georgia O’Keeffe’s world and a new painting series by Sharpe hanging in Emily Carr’s “People’s Gallery”.

Each painting in the series is inspired by a frame in the film. In a sense I too passed through three worlds in their making. Not simply through three lives – but through three temporal realities. My process started with an exploration of the women’s internal/external landscapes deciphered from their paintings and words. Using dramatic techniques and animation, a moving painting was created for the big screen that synthesized the material. And now in the painting series, I work from 1/30^th of a second to distill a moment back into paint. I’m curious about the ‘in-between space’ – transitions. What appears as solid is one thing, and what is going on underneath the surface – another. I like to look through many prisms, hoping to catch a glimpse of the illusory.”

To see Sharpe’s work, check out www.jillsharpe.ca.

Emily painting

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A Celebration of Victoria’s 150

Thank you to all who came out to support the Emily Carr String Quartet. Their music filled the halls of Emily Carr House. Thank you.

Musical Bouquets for Emily

Date: August 16, 17, 23, 24, 30 and 31st/ 1p.m and 3 p.m
Location: Emily Carr House 207 Government Street
Experience this classical chamber music concert series at Emily Carr House. The Emily Carr String Quartet will perform in the intimate setting of this historic house, featuring a wide variety of music and readings from Emily Carr’s journals.

Adults:$6.75 Senior/Students:$5.75 Youth:$4.50 Includes tour of the House.
Sitting is limited, recommended to call ahead.

To make reservations please call 250-383-5843 or email us at ecarr@shaw.ca

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Sea and Sky (A Tribute to Emily Carr) – Paintings by Susan Corner

An exhibition of plein air paintings by Victoria artist Susan Corner runs from Tuesday, June 26 to Sunday, July 14, 2012 at Emily Carr House, 207 Government Street.

Sea and Sky is a tribute to Emily Carr, and like Emily, Susan finds inspiration in the sea and sky of the Traditional Lands of the Coast Salish and Straits Salish Peoples. Corner comments,
“I am not sure if it is possible to be a woman artist in Victoria and not, in some way, realize you have been influenced and inspired by Emily Carr”
Corner has called this exhibition of plein air paintings after a work by Carr which she first saw in the early 1980s when she worked in the Registrar’s office at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
“There is something about the deep blue-grey and white undulating lines that filled the sky and capture a sense of movement; the light thrusting downward across the sea and then the cross and upward movement of line from land towards sky that captures the immediacy of Emily’s own experience at that moment when she put paint to paper. Living on Canada’s West Coast, something magic occurs when painting en plein air: an immediacy of brush and paint on the canvas; a freshness that is hard (at least for me) to capture in my studio work.”
Many of the works included in this exhibit were painted by Corner in the company of friends, at Cattle Point and at Yellow Point Lodge. Corner draws on the immenseness and the power of the sea meeting sky – captured on a canvas small enough for her to hold in her hand as she paints:
“I have also been inspired by Emily, who found her own unique voice as an artist, to paint in a way that is true to me.”