Bill Friesen:
I was born into a working class family, and from an early age I was stimulated and intrigued by the beauty, motion and sounds of industrial process. When I began making sculpture, it seemed only natural to use materials I was familiar with. There was a readily available supply of scrap, cast-off material and industrial waste I could form into self contained, expressive objects.
It became apparent to me that while I was the creator of the final work, I was actually working collaboratively with several, perhaps hundreds of unknown individuals who had helped create the shapes and forms I was using.
I believe that for art to have vitality, it must be freely expressive. Steel sculpture is new and experimental, it breaks away from neoclassical concepts. My chief interest is not in the material but on form and structure. With abstract sculpture one can move freely in all directions. I am concerned with how shapes relate to each other and to their surroundings. I try to turn pieces of painted steel into work that seems magically lighter than air.
The colour used alerts the viewer to structural changes, as in a jazz composition. Colour works as the theme, structure as the riff, and improvisational variations carry the line of thought. It is the modulation of form, structure and colour of positive and negative space that creates the beauty and intricacy of the work.
When drawing and working in wood , stone and cast materials I apply the same basic principals of thought. Some of the works becomes more figurative, as seen I my masks. Here the influence of surrealism and expressionism becomes evident.
I am inspired by external forces, experience, family and cultural myths. My work can be dark and angry or whimsical and humorous. Recently I have been experimenting with masks drawing on both inner emotional reality and corporate industrial myths.
Marci Katz:
My background is in Philosophy, and that discipline informs my artwork. Making art for me is always an exploration, a personal search for clarity, truth and meaning.
Visual art has been called a "waking dream". It is generally accepted that dream images represent multiple aspects of self. Accordingly, much of my work is - directly or metaphorically - portraiture, often self portrait. I create a complex, sympathetic portrait of my subject which has implications for human nature in general.
My approach is archaeological. For a drawing, I dig into my subject's personal history, uncovering fantasies, failures, secrets, and prevailing family mythology. This involves peeling back layers from an often veiled core, and I layer the media I use accordingly.
Charcoal drawings usually start with an ink foundation setting out details of personal history and emotional memory, captured in genealogical charts, song lyrics, maps, dream imagery and fragments of conversation. The charcoal layer is drawn on top of that, accidentally revealing fragments of what underlies it. Frequently I superimpose pastel text as a third layer.
Assemblage and mixed media work is freer, more fun to do than drawing. I enjoy "rescuing" discarded and found objects for use in these pieces. But three dimensional works are also layered; objects - both found and made - exhibit a seductive surface whimsy which masks a deeper and more complex story.
With digital prints I can combine a layered style with my love of printmaking and graphic design. This more technological approach provides me with a good vehicle for voicing social commentary and political convictions. Of which I have many.
Art making is for the most part a solitary activity. As a break from the solitude, I engage in collaborative work when opportunities arise. I collaborate with sculptor and partner Bill Friesen, with him and Joe Rosenblatt as the Eastside Group, and with the Ad Hoc Groupo des Artistes as projects arise. Also, Bill Friesen and I organize Mayworks in mid-Vancouver Island, a Festival connecting Labour and the Arts, which stresses the often neglected fact that artists are workers too.
Joe Rosenblatt:
My aim is to make people laugh at danger, the world, and themselves; not as a way of escaping the frightful reality of life but rather as a way of confronting it directly. If concern with the human condition is difficult to find in my art, it is because of the comic elements, and because my subjects (cats, birds, snakes, avaricious plants, insects, amphibians, bats) wear masks.
My art and poetry lie outside the mainstream of modern art movements. My work does not take up the cudgel for social reform, feminism, environmentalism or any other ism, even though I am greatly concerned about environmental degradation in our earthly Eden. I believe in making art to feed the soul. I may even be delusional in thinking that in painting a canvas the Maker is talking to me. Possibly He is! Don’t I paint his creatures, birds, cats, bees and fauna in my garden? Isn’t there a tiny morsel of God in all of us?
Most of my creative work is done in the late afternoon, or in the very early hours of the morning when chronic insomnia prevails. However, the specific time, place or circumstance is irrelevant; it is the technique of drawing, painting or writing that dominates. I am only the servant of my muse in these creative pursuits.
Most of my creative process is cerebral. My ideas are like rolls of film that get developed in the darkroom of my mind. The images have infinitesimal dots of meaning that, bit by bit, start to take form in my brain. I distort and twist the mundane world to its essential reality through craft, humor, fantasy, honesty and intensity.