A nice little motivational speech with some music from one of my favorite bands of all time.
“When you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe, you’ll be successful.”
This past friday saw a close to Spao Exhibition No. 8 and the termination of the 2013 Portfolio Program year.
We rounded off the exhibition with a closed family graduation and awards ceremony at 168 Dalhousie.
I had the great honour of being awarded not one but three awards during the ceremony: the DIrectors’ Award, the Award of Visual Merit, and the Lux Award for lighting.
I wish that everyone at the school could have won an award - being behind the scenes every day and seeing the sweat and tears that goes into the work is astounding. I was blessed these past two years to be part of an amazing group of talented and supportive art students and artists from the community.
Reflecting back on the past two years, I am struck at just how much Spao has had an impact on my life. Coming back from such a long time abroad, it really helped me to readjust to society and more importantly, got me asking some of the most important questions that I have ever asked myself about my life.
Going in to the program, I was not sure what I wanted - or even expected to get from it. Coming out, I have so much more focus and a new confidence to search out what I want.
I want to extend my deepest thanks to my instructors and peers at Spao. I imagine that it would have been quite a different experience without you all.
I look forward to seeing what you all get up to in the months and years to come!
I have entered this year’s Exposure competition online. The judging panel looks really impressive and I would encourage anyone who is interested in joining - this is a really great opportunity for some exposure.
If you swing by http://matthewbula.see.me/exposure2013, show me some love with a Vote!
Last day of Exhibition No. 8 at SPAO, open till 3pm for public viewing. After that, we have our award ceremony and a few well deserved beverages.
This Friday at 3:00pm will mark the end of public viewing for SPAO Exhibition No. 8.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to give an “Artist Talk” in the school gallery.
It was a fantastic experience for me - albeit a tad nerve wracking to have to really explain in real-time, what my work was about.
The audience was very supportive however and there was a very nice dialogue that we had.
I had never previously shared my sketchbook and journal with anyone, but I felt that it would be very meaningful to do so with the people that came out to see my work and hear what it was about. I passed it around as I was speaking, so that the audience could maybe get a better glimpse into some of my thoughts or practices.
I think that for the future, this may be a practice that I continue.
All in all, this exhibition process and the event itself has been a tremendous learning experience for me. I look forward to sifting through the things I have learned throughout this process in order to see what I can take away for next time.
As for now, the school year is over - but I already have been shooting new work and commissioned to do something else.
Good things are happening.
Once again, I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended the show or corresponded with me via email - your support was greatly appreciated.
The vernissage for Exhibition No. 8 was a roaring success with just shy of 700 people passing through our doors.
It was a truly humbling experience to experience such a turnout of quality individuals to come and see their work.
The show is not over yet!
The works will be up until this Friday April 26 2013 and tomorrow (Tuesday the 23rd) there will be some more artist talks from 1-3pm - which I hope you will be able to attend.
If you didn’t get a chance to view the work at the vernissage, please make sure you come back, we are open from 10am-5pm all week long and some of the artists are in the studio during those times.
Thank you for contributing to the success of our exhibition and your continuing support of SPAO.
For those who missed it here is a photo of UNSEEN @ La Petite Mort Gallery, Ottawa, Canada.
Peu ceux qui l’ont manqué voici une photo de l’exposition UNSEEN @ la galerie La Petite Mort à Ottawa, Canada.
The end of my time at SPAO has arrived and our portfolio program final exhibition is nigh. All of the students have been furiously producing and putting final touches on their work for some time now.
I have been going over my final work with a fine tooth comb, cleaning and tweaking images at really high magnifications. I was working on this image that I took last year which was a long exposure and noticed these two people standing in it.
For this image, I had used a bleaching technique and I realized that I had never seen people in it before. It was a pretty cool little discovery to see that not only were they present here, but that they had stayed still enough during the time lapse exposure that you can make them out.
Our SPAO exhibition is on April 19,2013 at 168 Dalhousie St. and this year it looks like it’s going to be a fantastic show.
I urge you all to come out. The show will be up for a week during the days as well!
This is a portrait from last year. I have been revisiting old work (old??? as in last year) and trying to see what sort of connections I can draw between my previous though processes and my current ones.
It’s amazing how much my early work has informed the things that I am doing now. I did quite a lot of stewing and thinking about what my images are actually about this school year, and what I am trying to discover with them. In looking at my previous stuff, it keeps coming back to the concept of identity. Where do “we” come from. Sure that can be physically, geographically, culturally, etc. But I am really interested in finding the moments where our identities are formed. Sound relatively impossible? Thats how it feels sometimes.
Anyways, this was a portrait done when I was exploring the idea of cultural identity last spring.
