Vote for your favourite artwork at Vaughan juried show at city hall

Vaughan Citizen
January 22, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

You have a chance to check out a selection of original artwork by some talented GTA artists at Vaughan city hall while voting on your favourites.

Twenty pieces by 18 artists are on display in the Atrium Gallery as part of the seventh annual Vaughan Juried Art Exhibition: An Art Integration Project, running until Feb. 24.

There is no cost.

Those pieces were selected from among more than 140 submissions by a judging panel consisting of renowned visual artist Ernestine Tahedl, of King City and Rocco Pannese, director and curator at Kipling Gallery and Hazelton Fine Art Galleries.

Nearly half of those that made the cut are from Vaughan.

The city wants to feature Vaughan artists within the context of other senior artists from the Greater Toronto Area, Sharon Gaum-Kuchar, the city’s arts assistant co-ordinator said.

Visitors are seeing Vaughan artists who were competing within a forum that included artists from larger artistic gene pools that are more established and it proves that Vaughan artists are able to hold their own, she added.

The show features paintings, drawings, prints and photography by emerging and established artists, including Maple’s Florin Hategan, Woodbridge’s Lisa Johnson and York Region Media Group photographer Steve Somerville.

“He is an absolutely incredible photographer,” Ms Gaum-Kuchar said. “What is stunning about his work is he’s actually mounted it on acrylic and it works beautifully. It’s a beautiful landscape.”

Mr. Somerville’s photograph, titled Marsh at Sunrise, was taken in September near Ballantrae, a hamlet in the town Whitchurch-Stouffville.

“It involved being at the site, which I’d never been to, under darkness around 5 a.m., scouting around for a good tripod position,” he said. “The mist rose gently above the pond, the sun eventually shone through the willow branches, lighting up the plants and mist almost magically.”

Winners of the jurors’ award for this year’s exhibition are Paul Brandejs’s mixed media piece dubbed After the Rain, Mr. Hategan’s linocut titled Subject #2 and Ms Johnson’s oil painting, Winter Solstice.

Honourable mentions went to Warren Hoyano, Giuseppe Pivetta and Lynne Schumacher.