NEWS PHOTO CHRIS BROWN
A portion of the art work produced by the Esplanade Summer Art Camp students for The Up Front Project. The front lawn of the Esplanade will be filled Sept. 13-15 with artists and showing their work and interacting with the public.
cbrown@medicinehatnews.com@MHNBrown
Local artists will be front and centre at the Esplanade this weekend. Actually, they’ll be Up Front and outside.
The front lawn of the downtown arts and heritage centre will become a studio/gallery space as artists create temporary public art from Sept. 13-15 for The Up Front Project.
Wes Bell, a member of the City of Medicine Hat Public Art Committee, explains the project is about encouraging social engagement between the artists and the public. Another aim of the informal set up is to make the art world, which can sometimes be intimidating to the public, a little less so.
“Rather than being in the confines of a gallery which can be intimidating for a lot of people, we’re bringing it outside to make it more casual, take the walls down and just get down to what are we doing, what are we talking about,” he said.
The artists will be encouraged to interact with the public, answering questions and explaining their processes, Bell added.
Five groups – Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre Summer Art Camps, The Hive Artists’ Hub, Pop Up Park Medicine Hat, Southern Exposure Photography Club and Visual Arts Student Society – VASS MHC – and one solo artist – Brian O’Connor – have come together for Up Front.
The project’s hours are 1-6 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Sunday.
The weekend will see pieces in various stages of completion, with some just getting started and others begun from scratch on the day. Some of the pieces that will be on display are already completed.
Members of the Esplanade Summer Art Camps, led by Julie Downey-Hoglund and Makayla Schultz, painted a paint stick each day and wrote a word on it that explained how art makes them feel. The sticks have been posted together to make a large, colourful board.
“We love the little quirks and misspellings and things and all the emotions and feeling the kids recorded. It’s just great to see,” said Candace Loder of the Esplanade.
She added the experience and display is a confidence booster and a big point of pride for the kids to be able to show off their work.
Jordan Rose of the Visual Arts Student Society said the idea of talking with members of the public is an intriguing one.
“A lot of art is open to interpretation to anybody, which can give it several different meanings and also leaves people with a lot of questions,” he said. “So it’s a good way to get people understanding art and the process of it and some theories behind it.”
Rose said the piece he and some of his VASS cohorts produced for the show is a commentary on recycling, fast fashion, the overall environmental impact of those and how generations are dealing with them.
The Up Front Project is part of the Alberta Public Art Network 2019 Summit this weekend in Medicine Hat. About 30-40 art professionals form all over the province will be here, explained Bell. Another highlight of the summit, in Medicine Hat for the first time, is keynote speaker David Garneau. His Saturday talk is titled Uncommon in the Commons: Non-Colonial Public Art.
More details for the weekend can be found at albertapublicartnetwork.ca
