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Ana Belén Cantoni: wrapped up

by on April 8, 2013 in Arts, General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Visual Arts

Colombian artist Ana Belen Cantoni, in the Gerin-Lajoie studio with her work Pink and Black.

Colombian artist Ana Belén Cantoni, in the Gerin-Lajoie studio with her work Pink and Black. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

“The ways in which our bodies find stability within physical limits, but strive to overcome those limits is an important paradox in my work,” says Ana Belén Cantoni, while wrapped up in some of the snaking strings that compose her work-in-progress Pink and Black. “Though you know what this piece really makes me think of?” she adds, struggling a bit to free herself. “A techno CD!” I spoke with the funny, prolific Colombian visual artist in her airy Leighton Artists’ Colony studio, where she had a five-week residency through a Colombian Ministry of Culture scholarship.

Ana Belen Cantoni's work Pink and Black. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Ana Belén Cantoni’s work Pink and Black. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

“There’s an idea I’m trying to express with Pink and Black, but it’s also a game, it’s a challenge. It’s like – what if I can create my own universe, with its own rules? But these rules are always in tension with actual nature – with the nature of the material, or the rules of geometry, for example.”

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Colombian artist Ana Belén Cantoni with her work Hands. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Another tension within Cantoni’s work is her conflicted relationship with art theory. In the midst of a thoughtful response to one of my questions, she interrupts herself to say, “though you might hear me using theory to explain my work, sometimes I want to resist it. I want the work to offer an experience, not an argument.”

She also tends to resist traditional sculptural approaches, drawing on disciplines in which she has no formal training, like geometry and sewing. This can inspire a certain technical inventiveness: “With Hands, I traced my hand on a bed sheet. In creating Pink and Black I also used my body. As well as addressing a bodily theme in my work, I rely on my own body for measurement!”

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Jill Barber’s The Poem Song onscreen

by on March 26, 2013 in Arts, Banff, Film & Media, General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Music, Videos

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Jill Barber in the Hemingway Studio in 2012. Photo: Kim Williams.

Every now and then while producing for The Banff Centre, an opportunity comes up to work on something outside of the usual, something free and artistic. Resources are often limited with these projects, and it becomes an exercise in making the maximum possible with the least available. For example, when I worked on a music video for Jill Barber’s The Poem Song. I had 24 hours after meeting Jill to come up with a concept and prepare for the half-day shoot. It was tight, so I had to think instinctively about the visuals, follow my gut, and be a little daring. Jill had asked for something experimental, personal, and unique to the location, but other than that, all of the inspiration came from the music.

For the shoot, Tory Kendal, the videographer, and I filled the Hemingway Studio with as many lights as we could pull up the icy service road and worked with a Canon 7D and a vintage lens to get a nostalgic feel. Working with Sasha Stanojevic, the lead animator, we designed the inkblot effects and set about filming food dyes and bleach on various papers for the transition effects. One of the parts I really enjoyed with this video was making the drawings. It’s always been a part of my artistic practice and it’s been the foundation of my path into video.

This project was an unusual challenge. I’m used to taking myself on a process of artistic discovery that requires experimentation and trial as a part of development, but to take a team and three vfx/motion graphics guys on a process like this is quite different. It required a lot of very open discussion, trust, and patience but in the end I think we were able to pull off a delicate and detailed piece of work. Take a look for yourself.

Edwin Hasler, is a UK-based filmmaker who was here at The Banff Centre during 2011-2012 doing a work study residency as video producer with our Film & Media department. Singer / songwriter Jill Barber was here in early 2012 for a creative residency in our Leighton Artists’ Colony.

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Joseph Boyden: fiction & fact

by on March 21, 2013 in Arts, General, Indigenous Arts, Leighton Artists' Colony, Literary Arts

Joseph Boyden soaking in Banff in front of his Leighton Artists' Colony studio. Photo: Kim Williams.

Joseph Boyden in the Leighton Artists’ Colony. Photo: Kim Williams.

Earlier this week, Joseph Boyden opened his public reading here by confiding to the audience that he wasn’t supposed to read from his new work, but he was going to anyway. Then he dropped us right into a graphically violent scene involving his three protagonists, a scene he describes as, “a car chase from the 1600s.” The Orenda, Boyden’s newest novel, is set in the 1600s at the intersection of First Nations and Canadian history. The book is expected to be out in September, and I know that everyone who was in that room with me will want to know what happens to the three characters we were briefly introduced to: a Haudenosaunee, a Huron-Wendat, and a Jesuit.  

Boyden won the Giller Prize for his second novel, Through Black Spruce, and he’s been in our Leighton Artists’ Colony this week on a Paul D. Fleck Fellowship through Indigenous Arts, editing his new novel. I met him the day after his reading. For one thing, I wanted to know what he felt standing in front of us and reading from The Orenda. “It was fun to read but it was a little nerve-wracking,” he tells me.  ”You feel like a brand new writer again. Despite any little success I might have had, it’s all new again.” He’s clear that The Orenda stands alone (it’s not the third book in the trilogy that includes Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce) though fans may find an interesting connection to his previous novels.

Continue Reading →

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Alastair Putt: The math in the music

by on March 8, 2013 in Arts, Classical, General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Music, Piano

Alastair Putt. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Composer Alastair Putt, in the Leighton Artists’ Colony. Photo: Meghan Krauss.

Alastair Putt is a musician and composer from London who’s been in Banff recently as a resident in the Leighton Artists’ Colony. The 29-year-old is basking in the solitary isolation of his mountain studio to work on a piece commissioned for the London Symphony Orchestra, which will premiere in the summer of 2014.

Putt is inspired by mathematical processes, and uses them as material for his music. His new work, still untitled, “is governed quite strictly by a spiral-shaped form in which the successive sections become shorter and faster, giving the sense of a coiling screw.” He says the form gives a nice arc to the piece as a whole, even if the precise nature of the structure isn’t necessarily heard by the listener.

Putt’s mathematical inspiration isn’t unusual among composers. Many early-20th century composers inspired by serialism looked to mathematics for models to organizing sound. But Putt has distanced himself from the intense dissonance also associated with serialism (and says that he sympathizes with people who experience excessive dissonant sounds as an “assault”). He sees a common trend in contemporary classical music towards a “rehabilitation of consonance” (borrowing a phrase from Julian Anderson, a former professor of his), reviving the more stable harmonies associated with traditional classical as well as popular music.   

I asked him if that was a conservative trend. “I don’t think that a composer who uses harmony is any more conservative than a poet who still uses, say, traditional syntax,” he told me. Still, there’s a challenge here to avoid clichés and tired conventions. “I’m interested in consonant chords which don’t have such historical baggage, as, say, great big romantic chords,” Putt adds. “It’s all a matter of context, and keeping things in balance within the consonance-dissonance spectrum. That’s how music gains its light and shade, its intrinsic drama.”

 

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Everyone gets in a rut

by on March 1, 2013 in Arts, Banff, General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Visual Arts

Bull elk visiting the Leighton Artists' Colony at The Banff Centre. Photo: Janice Tanton.

Bull elk visiting the Leighton Artists’ Colony at The Banff Centre. Photo: Janice Tanton.

Every­one gets in a rut. Hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to take a vaca­tion, or a phys­i­cal break from your reg­u­lar work cycle enables you to have a new per­spec­tive on things. Yes, there is a sense of com­fort to hav­ing ‘every­thing in it’s place’ in your own home stu­dio, but there is some­thing to be said for shak­ing it up, expand­ing your hori­zons and get­ting into a new space to cre­ate and imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties pre­vi­ously unthought of.

For me, I lit­er­ally “get out­side” and paint when I can, tak­ing the oppor­tu­nity to explore the Rocky Moun­tains and Kananaskis Coun­try — lit­er­ally in my front and back yard. That’s an “ele­gant solu­tion” to a one-day res­i­dency.  A great way to observe and appre­ci­ate nature and cre­ate some­thing new.

For a more in-depth exam­i­na­tion of the process or project, there is noth­ing like leav­ing my comfy home stu­dio and dri­ving a half an hour down the road to the Leighton Artists’ Colony at The Banff Cen­tre. This January/February marked the fourth res­i­dency period I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to enjoy in this cadil­lac of artist’s res­i­den­cies. I feel very lucky. Continue Reading →

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“Day one, settling in. Day two, immersed”

by on February 21, 2013 in Arts, Banff, General, Leighton Artists' Colony, Literary Arts, Playwrights' Colony, Theatre

Edmonton based playwright, Meg Braem and Toronto-based playwright, Colleen Wagner have spent the past two weeks with the Banff Playwrights Colony retreat working on their current plays in the wonderful solitude of the Leighton Artists’ Colony. Below they share a few reflective words about their time here.

Meg Braem (left) and Colleen Wagner (right) on the steps of Meg's studio, the Henriquez Studio in the Leighton Artists' Colony, at the beginning of their residency. Photo: Brian Quirt, Director, Banff Playwrights Colony.

Meg Braem (left) and Colleen Wagner (right) on the steps of Meg’s studio, the Henriquez Studio in the Leighton Artists’ Colony, at the beginning of their residency. Photo: Brian Quirt, Director, Banff Playwrights Colony.

Meg Braem:
This time in Banff has been so helpful, so productive, and so satisfying. Sitting in this little converted boat of a studio, I feel I am a million miles away from my life. Floating in a sea of quiet, where ideas have space and time to be cared for. I’ve written a new draft of The Cut Grass Carnival, the first so far with a spine and an ending. Yay! It’s the first time that I’ve felt somewhat at the reins of this play. I spent years endlessly trying ideas and doodling bits of dialogue the characters might have the occasion to say. It feels good. It’s lovely to have the quiet and it’s also lovely to chat with other artists and hear about how they’ve been filling their days. Colleen and I have been asked to leave Vistas dining room twice, so deep in conversation we didn’t notice that dinner ended a long time ago. One Yellow Rabbit Theatre is here working on Making Treaty Seven and I can’t wait to see a public showing of what they’ve come up with. There are so many ideas, so much support for them, and so much unabashed creation happening. It feels powerfully optimistic here. 
 

Colleen Wagner:
Secluded among tall straight fir and spruce, clouds scuttling by opening up to a blue raven above, the wind whispering, “another, and another”… word by joyful, word filling the pages. How wonderful to be able to be still in the creative process, all the while aware of the mountains, elk, deer, trees, and wind dancing to their own symphony.

It doesn’t take long: Day one, settling in. Day two, immersed.

Thank you Banff.

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