The North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop (NESW) is an artist collective, or artist-run initiative, centred on a co-operative shared studio in Edmonton, Alberta, focused on "the creation and promotion of ambitious contemporary sculpture made using industrial processes and materials". [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [ excessive citations ] The NESW name makes a symbolic reference to the cardinal directions in allusion to the idea of boundless exploration. [7]
The North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop was founded in 2002, with sculptors Mark Bellows, Andrew French, and Ryan McCourt as the resident artists. In its first year, the NESW produced four exhibitions in four different venues: "Front Room Sculpture" at Harcourt House; "North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop" at Global Visions Film Festival; "Desperate Measures" with The Works Society; and " Big Things " at the Royal Alberta Museum. [2] [8] [9] [10]
Sculptures by the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop artists appeared in another 2002 Harcourt House exhibition: "Edmonton Sculpture: The Next Generation", an Edmonton sculpture survey show curated by Canadian artist, curator and critic Terry Fenton. [11] In his accompanying essay, Fenton singles out the NESW artists:
" Andrew French, Mark Bellows, and Ryan McCourt share a studio, giving them the double advantage of being removed from the student environment while retaining continued access to one another for stimulation and criticism. This does not amount to their charting a common course. If anything, the shared studio has confirmed them in separate directions: the hothouse atmosphere appears to have stimulated both invention and individuality. Their work seems to be getting closer to the source of their inspiration, French's into the occupation of space by brute force, Bellows into a poetry of volume, McCourt into elegant profiles". [12]
The success of the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop's first Big Things exhibition [13] would lead to three more presentations in the series: Big Things 2 in 2003, Big Things 3 in 2004, and Big Things 4 in 2006. [14] In 2005, in celebration of Alberta's centennial year, and the Museum's new Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth II, [10] the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop presented the Alberta Centennial Sculpture Exhibition at the newly named Royal Alberta Museum. [15]
Mark Bellows left the studio in 2005, while Robert Willms joined the NESW that same year. [2] In 2007, the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop moved into a large new facility, with 2100 square feet working space, concrete floors, 20-foot ceilings, and a 2,800-square-foot yard. [6] As the Royal Alberta Museum grounds were unavailable to the group that year, the NESW exhibited "New Directions," a show of smaller works, at the Stollery Gallery in Edmonton. [16] Upon touring the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop in 2008, Edmonton arts writer Amy Fung called the studio "essentially an artist’s wet dream in our space-deprived city." In her view, the NESW was "certainly more impressive in size and facilities than existing local ARCs and arts initiatives such as ArtsHabitat". [17] In 2008, the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop presented "AUTOGRAPH: Sculpture and Drawing by Rob Willms", [18] the inaugural exhibition in Common Sense, their new gallery space; and "Peter Hide @ The RAM," an exhibition of major works by Hide on the Royal Alberta Museum's outdoor sculpture patio. [19]
According to a 2012 Edmonton Journal profile on the NESW, their ground level studio at 10546 - 115th street has 2100 square feet of concrete floor space, 20-foot-high ceilings, and a ten-foot by fourteen-foot sliding door that leads to a 2800-square-foot storage yard. Resident sculptors in 2012 include Ryan McCourt, Mark Bellows, Andrew French, Stephen Pardy and Robert Willms. From 2008 to 2012, the NESW gallery Common Sense held twenty-nine exhibitions of artists from around the world working in a variety of media. [7] The North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop formerly ran a widely read blog called Studiosavant, which discussed the Edmonton art scene. [2] [20] [21] [22]
Peter Nicholas Hide is an English born abstract sculptor. A one-time pupil of Sir Anthony Caro, Hide is best known for upright, large-scale welded sculptures made of heavy, rusted industrial scrap steel.
Harcourt House Artist Run Centre is one of four artist-run centres in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The centre delivers a host of services to both artists and the community, and acts as an alternative site for the presentation, distribution and promotion of contemporary art.
The Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) is a museum of human and natural history in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The museum is located in Downtown Edmonton, north of City Hall. The museum is the largest in western Canada with more than 7,600 square metres (82,000 sq ft) exhibition space and 38,900 square metres (419,000 sq ft) in total.
SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit, contemporary art museum located in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. It was founded in 1928 as "The Clay Club" by Dorothea Denslow. In 2013, SculptureCentre attracted around 13,000 visitors.
Arnold Mikelson (1922-1984) was a Latvian artist who specialized in wood carvings. Starting in 1947, he was chief designer for Royal Crown Derby Porcelain of England, before working as an architectural draftsman for a number of years. In the late 1960s, he took up carving full-time. Mikelson's work includes the design of the Mind and Matter Gallery in White Rock, British Columbia. He had commissions from the forestry giant MacMillan Bloedel, the Province of British Columbia and the City of Surrey.
Marilyn Collins is a London-based sculptor, known internationally, who has exhibited in many parts of the world.
Big Things was a large-scale steel sculpture exhibition series organized by the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop for the Royal Alberta Museum's outdoor South Terrace. The exhibition series began as an effort to "expose the public to the richness and diversity of contemporary sculpture in steel, while encouraging a critical dialogue between artists."
Carol Lorraine Sutton is a multidisciplinary artist born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA and now living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a painter whose works on canvas and paper have been shown in 32 solo exhibits as well as being included in 94 group shows. Her work, which ranges from complete abstraction to the use of organic and architectural images, relates to the formalist ideas of Clement Greenberg and is noted for the use of color. Some of Sutton paintings have been related to ontology.
Richard MacDonald is a California-based contemporary figurative artist known for his bronze sculptures and his association with Cirque Du Soleil.
Edmonton Contemporary Artists' Society (ECAS) is an international artists' exhibition collective founded in 1993, based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
John Barney Weaver was a sculptor from Anaconda, Montana. He was known for creating a statue of Charles Marion Russell at the National Statuary Hall Collection, and three busts of Chester W. Nimitz for the United States Navy.
Robert Byron Willms is a Canadian sculptor and teacher, best known for creating assembled, abstract steel sculptures.
Lyndal Osborne is a Canadian artist based in Edmonton, Alberta. Her works include BioArt, Sculpture, Video art, and multimedia. She applies many different artistic methods and often uses recycled or found objects as her materials. Osborne's' installation work speaks of the forces of transformation within nature and provides a commentary on issues relating to the environment. In her more recent works, Osborne has also examined the issues of genetically modified organisms as subject matter.
Ken Macklin is a Canadian artist best known for his large abstract sculptures made from industrial materials.
Terry Fenton is a Canadian artist, author, critic, and curator known for his landscape paintings, his support of modernist art, and his writing on the work of artists such as Jack Bush, Anthony Caro, Peter Hide, Dorothy Knowles, Ken Macklin, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and William Perehudoff. Fenton is the former director of the Edmonton Art Gallery, the A.C. Leighton Foundation, Calgary and the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon. Since 2013, Fenton has resided in Victoria, British Columbia.
Ryan McCourt is a Canadian artist best known for his sculptures. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
Andrew Michael French is an English born abstract sculptor. A one-time pupil of Peter Hide, French is best known for upright, large-scale welded sculptures made of brightly painted steel. With sculptors Mark Bellows, Bianca Khan, Rob Willms, and Ryan McCourt, Andrew French is identified as part of the "Next Generation" of Edmonton Sculpture.
Ronald Lloyd Myren was a Canadian artist and landscape painter. He was a well known artist in Western Canada who painted mostly in the foothills and mountainous areas of those provinces. He was the Chief Preparator and Registrar, and was in charge of installations at the Edmonton Art Gallery, now known as the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA). He was not a religious man in the traditional church sense of the word, and was not baptized. He believed in nature and was often quoted as saying, "Nature is my church." He expressed his belief and feeling about nature through his art. He spent a great deal of time every summer out in the foothills of Alberta painting, taking photos and fishing. He said he was recording scenes of nature that were going to disappear because of logging and development, and in some respects this prediction has come true.
Douglas Bentham has been since the late 1960s, acknowledged as one of Canada`s pre-eminent producer of large-scale welded steel sculpture.
Ann Clarke is a Canadian artist, who creates vibrant gestural abstract paintings and drawings which reveal her formal interests as well as a fascination with twenty-first century technologies. She is also an educator.