Maple-flavored cotton candy and smile-inducing art will be the draw when "Made in Canada," which features the works of five Canadian artists, opens at Bear and Bird Gallery Saturday. Following is information on three artists shipping work to Lauderhill for the show.
After graduating high school, Dave Barnes says he was "having too much fun destroying brain cells" to pursue an art career. "The deconstruction continued for six years until my boss, who would constantly catch me drawing instead of bartending, took me aside and suggested I get my shit together and take the art thing seriously," the 32-year-old Barnes explains. He has since earned a degree in illustration, but doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. Painted on scraps of wood from construction sites, Barnes' subjects include exploding snowmen, skateboarding squirrels, floating robots and gas-mask-clad dancers. His decision to use wood as his canvas stems from his past as a skateboarder. "To walk into a skate shop when you're a kid and see all those perfectly shaped, colorful pieces of wood on a wall must have triggered something," he explains. "It was basically like walking into an art gallery, but you could afford the art work, throw on some wheels and trash it." Visit Davebarnes.ca.
The humorous watercolors of Rosemary Travale derive from her observations of everyday people. "My goal with my art is just to make things that can make me laugh. So I love to create these strange people and things," she says. "Waiting," one of her pieces in the show, is inspired by bus-stop lines in which disparate people are thrown together. "You can pair these people up that would probably not ever be in the same place," she says. "[It's] the magic of public transit, I guess." The 24-year-old artist loves to create back stories for her subjects. "It's like going to the theater," she says, "but for free." Recently, she accepted a challenge to redesign Superman's outfit, then began wondering how he'd look with a mustache. The resulting piece, "Superman's Stache," is accompanied by "Clark's Laundry", which depicts Superman's alter ego hanging his cape on a clothesline. "Not the best way to protect your secret identity," Travale maintains. "But hey, everyone's got to do laundry, right?" Visit Rosemarytravale.ca.
While going to school for illustration, Rey Ortega also delved into technical drawing, figure studies and flash animation. But the experience pulled him in too many directions, so he now mainly works with pencils, papers and a few colors. Ortega's images, including a bespectacled girl in plaid shorts resting in the middle of a flower, often hint at untold but surely fascinating stories. "My mind wanders a lot," he says. "I might read a newspaper article or have a conversation, or even just see something mundane and imagine a larger world and story behind it. I like to think there's a kind of universe populated with my characters, although there isn't anything written down or cohesive about it." At Bear and Bird, Ortega will debut "Rusty Robot Study," the first in a new series exploring rust and robots. "I don't know why but I have a fascination with old things like debris and ruins," he explains "This year, I did a lot of stuff with crumbling rocks and concrete, and now, I'm starting to explore rust. It's really quite beautiful, the colors you can find on old, worn-out machinery." Visit Rey-o.com.
"Made in Canada," which also will feature art by Jason Pultz (Jasonpultz.com) and Lori Joy Smith (Lorijoysmith.com), will open 7-10 p.m. Saturday and run through Oct. 11 at Bear and Bird, 4566 N. University Drive, in Lauderhill. Contact 954-748-0181.
Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com
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