Stone Soup Exhibition at Grace-Gallery - First Opening Friday, June 12/09

Grace-Gallery is the blank canvas for the upcoming Stone Soup Exhibition. (Grace-Gallery @ 2nd and Main, Vancouver, BC). Two Progressive, Site Specific Artworks will be made in the Gallery over the course of the exhibition and reworked each week by a new set of artists.

Lisa Birke (mural) and Sascha Yamashita (installation) - Friday, June 12th (8pm til late)

Weakhand (mural) and Christopher Donnelly (installation) - Friday, June 19th (8pm til late)

Christian Nicolay (mural) and Rebecca Donald (installation) - Friday, June 26th (8pm til late)

Curated by Jennifer Mawby with Grace-Gallery Rachel Zottenberg and co-produced with Sherri Kajiwara.

The folk legend of the STONE SOUP has direct application for our current economic times. In the story, famine has hit a small village. Each villager believes that there is no food to eat in their own cupboards. Then, a savvy stranger rolls into town with a story that he will make a meal for them all from just a magic stone that he carries with him. By encouraging the villagers to each bring a little something to add to the stone soup (such as a carrot or a potato) the stranger is able to create a nurturing meal for all to share.

News media is announcing to viewers on a daily basis about how tough the current economic climate is for us. Stock values have plummeted, and companies are in a no-growth and down-sizing period. People are losing their jobs and it appears to be famine season. To combat the belief that times are too tough, the stone soup fable can be applied to create recession-proof thinking in both art-making and the general public zeitgeist.

The STONE SOUP exhibition is a model for socially interactive, sustainable, and fiscally responsible art production using a group of artists to collaboratively and incrementally create an exhibition that nourishes all. The transient nature of the artwork as it evolves also reminds us that nothing truly is permanent, and that “this too will pass”.

Click for Full Curatorial Proposal

Click for Exhibition Schedule

VANTAGE ART PROJECTS - ION Magazine #54 Interview

Pick up ION Magazine #54 (with its swanky new re-design) and turn immediately to page 34 for the skinny on Vantage Art Projects and our FRESH PICKS limited editions. Angela Grossman, Sandra Lopuch/Ben Edmiston and Mark Delong's editions are the featured illustrations for the article.

Thank you Michael M, Samantha L and Vanessa L.

We Heart ION!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD AND READ THE ARTICLE (PDF).

"Let Them Eat Cake" Exhibition Opening Friday February 6, 2009

"Let Them Eat Cake" opened last night at Gallery Atsui in Vancouver, BC to a full house. The show features four female artists working in very different media: painting and installation, photography, traditional French tapestry and food styling medium. My curatorial idea was inspired by a pivotal scene set to Bow Wow's "I want candy" in Sophia Copola's movie, "Marie Antoinette", drawing on the idea of excess in a time of increasing economically difficult times; fun and frivolity; creative expression by women, and cake as metaphor for what drives people - food, sex, abundance, not neccessarily in that order.

In lieu of an artist statement San Francisco-based artist Leah Rosenberg baked two cakes decorated in pastel hued butter cream icing. Leah's painting graces the front window and her layered sculpture and cake-wedge paintings, sometimes mirrored against the gallery wall, pointed people through the main exhibition to the back room where one could partake of the edible cakes.

Ruth Jones' fine tapestry skills were on meticulous display with a suprising and highly contemporary tapestry of a woman holding a tiered layer cake. The effect of the piece was of the merging of the woman and the pastry into one - the woman melting into the cake and the cake melting into the woman. Tapestry was the most important figurative medium of the eighteenth century and this work provides the most direct thread of connection between this very eclectic mix of artists and my original inspiration for the exhibition.

Artist and food stylist Jo Strongman created a faux-tiered cake and an unbelievably realistic ice-cream sundae topped with glittery nail polish, purposely inedible.

Jennifer Mawby's low resolution photography showed painterly pixelation on velvety inkjet prints - the pixelation visually referencing both the stripes in Rosenberg's wedge sculpture/paintings and Jones' fine stitches.

There will be Saturday afternoon tea parties from 2pm to 4pm for the month of February for anyone who missed attending the opening.

Thank you to everyone who attended last night and today's tea party!

Sherri Kajiwara
Guest Curator
Let Them Eat Cake

VIEW EXHIBITION AND OPENING PARTY PICTURES HERE

VANTAGE EXHIBITIONS - "Let Them Eat Cake" at Gallery Atsui (Feb. 6 to 28/09)

Join us for "cake" at the opening reception Friday, Feb. 6/09 from 8-10 pm.

Off to a Fresh Start

Vantage Art Projects (VAP) emerged from a desire to do something different in the contemporary art world that could connect artists, curators, galleries, and collectors. Primarily with, but not limited to, the goal of growing collectors for the vast pool of creative talent in Canada, VAP began as an intense conversation over lattes. That expanded to pro/con lists, flow charts and major mark making on white boards. Jen Mawby, one of the 2 principals of VAP had been cooking an idea for a couple of years, reinforced by the inspiration of an American project, Jen Bekman 20x200 and a larger organization in Germany called Lumas. I had been quietly infusing myself in the contemporary fine art world as a gallerist, art dealer and consultant for the past 15 years. Jen, in addition to being an artist, has an extensive background in business consulting, computers and design. With our combined talents, interests and mutual curiosity of "there must be a better way to support the art world, ourselves and still have fun..." VAP was born. A new way to communicate about art!

Where we mirror Jen Bekman is in our offering of limited edition digital prints of cool artists. Where we depart, is that we also offer a couple of other project streams involving catalogues and exhibitions in print. To get us off on our fresh start, we decided to launch VAP with our print projects under our Fresh Picks moniker. I am curating a year of images which we release twice a month (that's 24 artists to watch out for in a year). Think of it as art therapy 24x's a year and you basically receive a page out of a fine art book folio every 2 weeks if you collect the entire offering. The prints come in 3 sizes. A folio case to house the smallest size is in the works. Or frame up a couple and interchange the images over the year for variety.

We launched VAP in October in conjunction with Art Toronto and our 3rd 'art hit' has just been released - check out www.vantageartprojects.com and click onto the Fresh Picks start to take a peek.

The energy at the Toronto art fair was fantastic despite it being the week after the economic sky as we knew it fell and doom and gloom was predicted everywhere. We were encouraged to hear that the keynote speaker at the Art Dealers Association brunch inquired if anyone in Canada was doing anything like Jen Bekman 20x200! That the art world needed to get creative and make art more accessible. Just wish we'd been there to sign him up for a subscription!!! But don't worry, an information package is on it's way to Mr. Corporate Curator :)

In a couple of weeks, Jen & I should have news on Art Miami to share.

In the new year, we'll have news for how artists can submit to us for exhibition-in-print catalogues - how collectors can get their own private collections catalogued - and more.

If you're reading this and you're curious, log onto our site, sign up for our newsletters and announcements and get yourself or a friend a Fresh Pick!

artfully yours,

S

What we've been up to...Vantage News to date.

November 16, 2008 -FRESH PICKS VOLUME ONE, EDITION THREE released yesterday, November 16, 2008. "Its Third Fall" by Carrie Walker has an old masters feel while being true to Carrie's contemporary drawing based practice.

October 30, 2008 - FRESH PICKS VOLUME ONE, EDITION TWO released today. "Phone Home at Midnight" by Mark DeLong is a unique, collage and mixed media artwork in Mark's signature urban outsider style.

October 19, 2008 - Fresh Picks annual subscriptions to Volume One now available through the Vantage Art Projects Website.

October 9, 2008 - FRESH PICKS first limited edition "Meander" an exclusive artwork by Angela Grossmann goes on sale today, Thursday, October 9, 2008 from www.VantageArtProjects.com.

October 5, 2008 - FRESH PICKS and Vantage Art Projects successfully launched during Art Toronto. Our first limited edition "Meander" by Angela Grossmann goes on sale Thursday, October 9, 2008 from www.VantageArtProjects.com.

September 19, 2008 - Our safe subscribe mailing list sends out our first e-blast - news about the upcoming launch of Fresh Picks and our very, exciting first artist! Fresh Picks is launching at Art Toronto at a private VIP reception Oct. 5, 2008.

August 19, 2008 - Vantage Art Projects now offers e-newsletter updates about projects, products and calls for submission using Constant Contact and "safe subscribe".

July 31, 2008 - Luisa Santos joins the Vantage Art Projects team as our project coordinator. Welcome Luisa!

July 21, 2008 - Vantage Art Projects web site goes live with initial information about this "new way of communicating about the arts". The principals are Sherri Kajiwara and Jennifer Mawby, with project coordinator Luisa Santos.