A poet first and foremost, AJ AuCoin’s evocative multi-layered paintings on cardboard and canvas are designed to enhance and adorn his sonnets. Growing up with French spoken at home, English in school, and Gaelic gleaned “on the streets” of his largely Scottish hometown, language has always been crucial to AuCoin. Poetry in the form of sonnets began pouring out of AuCoin as a teenager, utilizing all three languages, but he only started painting at the age of 66 after retiring from his job as a “raker man” paving roads. AuCoin’s passion for the natural beauty around him is palpable, noting that he never truly appreciated the exquisite scenery until he began painting it.g

Featuring paintings created with his fingers in lieu of brushes and using a palette of red, white, green, blue and black paint procured from a dollar store, AuCoin’s work often references images from the local newspaper. Remarkable sunsets, however, are so ubiquitous on Cape Breton Island that AuCoin paints them from memory.

An avid harness racing devotee (a form of horse racing in which horses pull a two-wheeled cart), AuCoin never misses a race during the season and the racing slips later make an appearance as the lettering for his poems and text. Using layers of found cardboard to create the structure of his artwork, AuCoin also constructs masterful hanging apparatus for the back, adding both sculptural and practical aspects to his work. Signing his art AJ/AJ, AuCoin explains that the first AJ represents the Id which creates, while the second AJ represents the Ego which achieves.

“Dare to be Different” will also be exhibiting works from members of the Colour Blind Collective, a local artist group who gathered weekly throughout the winter months over several years. Please find names of members of the Colour Blind Collective below:

Virginia McCoy

A.J. AuCoin

Tom Ryan

Terry MacDonald

Dave MacGregor

Colonel MacLellan

The opening reception will take place August 18 from 6 - 8pm.

The exhibition will run from August 18 - September 30, 2023.

When Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Hidden History of Orangeism in Inverness exhibition opens November 26

NEW EXHIBITION: When Walls Come Tumbling Down

Opening: Saturday, November 26, 2022 from 2:00PM - 5:00PM

Until: Thursday, January 21, 2022

Artist Talk: Monday, November 28, 2022 at 7:00PM, doors at 6:00PM

(Inverness NS, Nov. 17, 2022)  The Inverness County Centre for the Arts is pleased to announce When Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Hidden History of Orangeism in Inverness.  An exhibition by Karly Kehoe and Tim Brennan opens on Saturday November 26 at 2:00PM.  

In the summer of 2020, as the Shean Co-op storage building in Inverness was being demolished, a secret room was discovered.  This room housed a hidden history of the Orange Order in Inverness.  A collection of artifacts dating back to 1903 was uncovered which included ceremonial items, membership log books, meeting minutes, sashes, and a Union flag.

This exhibition shares some of these discovered items, including the fourteen-foot archway with the words “In God Is My Trust” written across the top. These artifacts are blended with a dark, intense, series of photographs from Tim Brennan that were produced in response to what was brought to light from behind the walls of the hidden room.

Research for the exhibition was led and completed by Saint Mary’s University professor, Karly Kehoe, and research assistant, Kit Cowper, whose boards at the entrance of the show explain sectarianism and the history of Orangeism, what the Order’s early years in Inverness looked like, and various aspects of its membership such as members’ countries of origin, their church of affiliation, and their occupations between 1903 and 1920. 

About Karly Kehoe:

 Karly Kehoe from Margaree Forks, Cape Breton, and is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Communities at Saint Mary’s University. Her research considers settler colonialism, Catholicism, and anti-Catholicism in the north Atlantic world. Her most recent book, Empire and Emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2022.

About Tim Brennan:

 Tim Brennan is from Inverness, Cape Breton. He graduated from high school there and later graduated from NSCAD with a BFA and from York University with an MFA. He began photographing in his early teens and has had exhibits here and there. Some people have bought his pictures and given him grants. He taught photography at NSCAD for more than fifteen years. His first photograph was of a train down at the railway station in Inverness. He stole his mothers’ camera for the shot. He has been looking for that picture ever since.

Tim Brennan Statement:

 What drives me to photograph is the desire to see the transformation that occurs and what remains of its effects. The way that light collides with the negative and unequivocally transforms it, just as we transform our landscapes as we exist within our environments. My photographs are the result of such altercations. The emulsion on the negative does not exist in a vacuum; it is corruptible and susceptible to damage. The light travelling through the atmospheric spectrum bends, splits, fades and fogs and is rarely ever seen the same way twice. The Photographs in the Orange Order exhibition are an effort to reflect and invigorate the mystery, energy and aura that these objects evoke today, as well as historically.

June Leaf in Mabou Since 1969

Opening: Saturday, September 3, 2022

Until: Thursday, November 10, 2022

Opening reception: Saturday, September 3, 2022 from 3:00pm - 5:00pm

June Leaf in Mabou Since 1969, an exhibition of never before seen works by the Artist June Leaf. 

June Leaf along with her partner Robert Frank moved to Mabou, Nova Scotia in 1969. They bought a house in the Mabou Coal Mines and quickly made it their primary residence. Leaf often speaks to the influence Cape Breton had, and still has on her life and her art practice. Leaf sees the world through people, her work is figuratively based always and it is the people of Cape Breton and the relationships that she built here that forever altered her life’s work.

In this exhibition you will see a selection of drawings chosen from her storage files but the core of the exhibition is of the portraits she made of the people around her. The portraits started as a desire to draw everyone in Mabou who had met Andrea, Robert’s daughter, before she died tragically in a plane crash when she was just 20 years old. Then they turned to portraits of the many people in Cape Breton who became friends and they continue to this day, with the most recent double portrait from July 22, 2022.

The drawings, beginning with the first piece she made in Mabou, First Water Faucet, give insight to the research and process to her extremely proficient career. You will see an early landscape from the Coal Mines which appears again and again in Leaf’s work. You will see a version of Robert Entered the Room, one of which was showed at The Whitney museum in 2016.

The primary study drawings for her well known Glasses sculpture will be on view, as well as many never seen before sculptures. June has been incredibly generous in opening her home and her work in preparation for this exhibition. She has a deep desire to show what Cape Breton has meant to her very prolific and influential career for over fifty years.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

June Leaf (b. Chicago, 1929) lives and works in New York City and Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. For over seven decades, Leaf has explored the human figure, landscape, and mechanical systems in her narrative drawings and paintings and hand-made, kinetic sculpture.

In her legendary studios, June Leaf works inventively and agilely with a prolific range of material, juxtaposing and layering each composition and often working simultaneously on paper, on canvas, and with metal.

June Leaf’s work has been exhibited and collected worldwide since 1948 when she was invited to participate in that year’s Annual Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the inaugural Exhibition Momentum organized in response to it. Leaf’s work may currently be seen in My Name is Maryan, a solo exhibition dedicated to the 20th century artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, curated by Alison Gingeras. Leaf and Maryan formed a friendship in 1958 in Paris where her work influenced his. The exhibition includes loans of Leaf’s work from her personal collection and the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

Forthcoming exhibitions include a presentation of Leaf’s work at Frieze Masters, London (October 2022), and June Leaf: New Work at Ortuzar Projects, NYC (November 2022). Leaf’s work will be included in Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946—1962 (February 1—July 1, 2024) at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, co-curated by Debra Bricker Balkan and Lynn Gumpert.

In 2016, Leaf was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Other notable exhibitions include: June Leaf, Museum Tinguely, Basel Switzerland (2003); A Survey of Painting, Sculpture and Works on Paper, 1948-1991, Addison Gallery of American Art (1991); and a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1978).

The artist’s work is held in private collections and permanent public collections including: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy at Andover, MA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, IL; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Leaf is the recipient of prestigious awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant (1989), a Fulbright Grant (1958), as well as honorary degrees from DePaul University, IL and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. For inquiries Contact Andrea Glimcher, Hyphen, at aglimcher@hyphenadvisory.com

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Emily Falencki is an artist who lives and works in North End Halifax and Cape Breton Island. She is the founder and director of 2482 Maynard and The Blue Building Gallery. Raised in New York City, Falencki completed her BFA at NSCAD University and her MFA at the National College of Art in Dublin, Ireland. Grounding her work with a profound commitment to personal narratives and how these relate to a shared experience, Falencki’s artistic practice led her to create a new kind of art space in Halifax, with 2482 Maynard and The Blue Building Gallery.

Falencki has spent much of her life on Cape Breton Island and has been a Member of the Boardof ICCA since August 2020.

HANDS DANCING 2022
ICCA Member Exhibition

July 2 - July 31

Gallery Hours : Tuesday - Sunday - 12PM - 5PM

The Hands Dancing exhibit is a show of artwork started in the 1980’s. The first venue to host the show was the Inverness Legion, it then moved to the upstairs of the Inverness Post Office. When the Inverness County Centre for the arts was built in 2003 the exhibit found its current home, where it has been well received. It is the only non-juried that ICCA hosts. Hands Dancing was named by former ICCA chair Virginia McCoy.

Opening reception is July 2 , 2PM - 4PM featuring music from Jason Roach and Gillian Head.

Sponsored by Protocase

Youth art from Inverness Education Centre/Academy and Whycogomah Education Centre

Sponsored by Protocase

Artist Statement:

“She makes form out of formlessness, continuity out of fragments, narrative and meaning out of scattered incidents, for the storyteller is also a spinner or weaver and a story is a thread that meanders through our lives to connect us each to each...” Rebecca Solnit”.

Telling a story is a translation of materials; it is a selection of information that is salient to you. This idea has led my research and studio practice to consider how the present rearranges the past. Negotiating, presence and absence, history and memory, through site-sensitive installation and weaving. I spend time reflecting on the historical female point of view of the history of place. More specifically, examining what remnants of these women have survived and what form they take. I am inherently drawn to the process of weaving and cloth as a material for the strong role it has played in the human experience. Cloth is embedded in our most mundane daily experiences; it is present in our most heavily symbolic rituals of life and death. The written word was also born of textiles, from textile materials and processes, which leaves textiles inseparable from language. I use weaving in my work to create cloth, but I also use processes of weaving to develop ghostly narratives, through a reordering of text taken from previously published literature. I see weaving as the methodical layering or interlocking of tangible or conceptual fragments to build experience. My practice is about searching and uncovering, it’s about weaving these collected fragments back together to better understand myself.

There is a thread that moves through my process, my thematic choices, and body that all find areas of overlap in traditionally prescribed feminine territory. I look to those women who have paved the way like suffragettes and numerous textile artist. Western history has associated women within the domestic, as textile practitioners, as memory keepers and as emotional beings. These qualities have often been situated in a binary framework and therefore; positioned as negative attributes, but I see them as areas of strength within my practice.

These remnants from the past haunt us in the present, transcending temporality and folding linear ideas of time into themselves. It is with my object making I intend to allow remnants of these stories to remain in our consciousness and habitually persist in the present day. I wield the metaphor of haunting in my work through the use of presence and absence. Processes like cyanotype and Devore printing are achieved because of absence. Cyanotype prints use light to preserve the negative details of an object, the process preserves the trace an object leaves behind. Devore printing techniques burn away thread, the absences of the thread in the woven cloth create a shadow image, this shadow is dependent on the lack of threads. I feel we have a greater propensity to take notice when something is missing or taken away.

I repeatedly find myself seeking solace in previous generations, uncovering pieces of the past that feel familiar to me. I seek to layer and juxtapose material and historical complexities to emphasize the ephemeral nature of memory. My work is the mediation and reanimation of collected fragments to accentuate a feeling of sentimental longing and nostalgia. My processes are a push and pull between a reveal and an erasure; they mimic ideas of how memory, especially collective memory, functions. More specifically, how details are both lost and also embellished. My work is the mediation and reanimation of collected fragments to accentuate a feeling of sentimental longing and nostalgia.

Jessie Anne Fraser BIO:

Living in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, Jessie Fraser is a craft oriented visual artist. Fraser completed an MFA in 2019 at Alberta University of the Arts in Craft Media. She has participated in multiple residencies and exhibited work in a number of venues throughout Calgary, including group shows at Viviane Art Gallery and Stride Gallery.

Her practice considers how imagery, poetry and hand-woven cloth may be combined, to investigate the affective potential of woven cloth and text in site-sensitive installations.

Image, text and textiles, along with photographic and weaving processes are used as sites of intuitive and emotional investigation. Using time as both a process and a material Jessie’s practice is the process of weaving. She weaves not only with thread but also historic narratives and atmospheric feeling.

2022 Exhibition Sponsor - Protocase