Mikayla Burghardt
Into the Swamp
Monday, March 11 - Friday, March 15, 2024
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, open Monday to Friday, 10am - 4pm
Reception: Friday, March 15 at 7pm
Into The Swamp focuses on environment. I evoke ideas of mold, decay, and the growth that comes from them both. I am inspired by what goes on in the natural world around me. There is a deep-rooted connection between the Earth and human beings. Our awareness of this relationship differs from person to person. My art awakens memories of our kinship to the Earth.
I use materials I’ve gathered from nature like willow branches and flowers. These materials are left unaltered, letting their natural beauty speak for itself. I also use traditional mediums like acrylic, oil and watercolour paint, chalk, and oil pastel, and coloured pencil. A new process for me is combining water, earth tone pigments, salt, alcohol, and soap to create organic looking circles. I feel out the piece and instinctively add materials to a canvas, simulating a biological object such as a planet or mold. I let these materials mix and crystallize overnight, then return to a finished piece or to add another layer. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Adopt a piece of nature. Her secret is patience.” By methodically combining these materials I create a simulated microenvironment or ecosystem. I have been conducting these experiments for a short time but find the process and outcome very rewarding.
I have a rich connection to nature. We are one in the same. When I create, I explore meanings in life, death, and the spaces in between. By adopting pieces of nature in my art making, I encourage people to step back, examine, and appreciate the less obvious bits of beauty in our lives.
About the Artist
Mikayla Burghardt is a mixed media artist based in Saskatoon. Her primary focus is painting and drawing, mixing both natural and traditional materials. She enjoys being surrounded by nature and grew up close to the mountains in Alberta. She loves exploring the prairie landscape in Saskatchewan. This is an endless source of inspiration in her art practice. Mikayla has always had a deep passion for art and sees it as an essential part of her life. Because of the profound impact art has had on her life, Mikayla obtained a level 1 art therapy certificate. She hopes to continue exhibiting and exploring her art practice as well as continuing her education to achieve her MFA.
Leo Conquergood
No Bones About It
Monday, March 11 - Friday, March 15, 2024
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, open Monday to Friday, 10am - 4pm
Reception: Friday, March 15 at 7pm
No Bones About It is an exhibition of imagination and colour, light and layering. In creating this show I’ve learned not to take life so seriously. It’s all about cramming as much fun and love into life before death, so don’t work too hard.
While making each of the art pieces in this collection I delve into a new creative process. Although the mechanism of production is different from work to work there is always a spontaneous action in my hand. Choices are made and I have to roll with them. There is no going back once I’ve made a mark, only forward. I make aesthetic decisions in the moment, following my intuition. This leads to wonderful whimsical artwork. It all starts with the seed of an idea, something I imagine, an experiment, a colour I love. Then from there my concepts grow like a garden. My compositions take on a life of their own. As an artist I am merrily the conduit for my creations.
My work focuses on bodies. Through my body, consciousness experiences life. However, in creating No Bones About It I found my mind searching for experiences beyond the body. I work playfully, evoking a subtle feminine aura through colour selection and personal motifs. I'm drawn to neon like a moth is drawn to a lamp. So for this exhibition I'm working with the light designer Kaymen Bear who will help my artwork glow to its full potential.
Only one thing is for certain, you can never be certain about something unless its happening. Theres NO BONES ABOUT IT!
About the Artist
I Am Leo Lauren.
I love pink and purple. I love the way they look together. I love each on their own. If I could be a colour I would be pink and purple, and probably sparkly too. Like a unicorn!
“Artist Extraordinaire” will be etched on my grave stone. I’m multi-disciplinary to the point where it’s nearly impossible to answer the frequent question “what is your preferred medium?” In my schooling I’ve honed in on 2 dimensional mixed media artwork. But creativity pumps blood through my veins. Fashion, crochet, sculpture in any medium that sparks my interest. I sing and strum, write, dance, and act. If you give me a creative task, I will make it art. Its in my Bones.
I am currently 23, almost 24! Born in 2000. Raised, and residing in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Living at home while getting my degree has been a blessing. Thank you to my parents, Lorna and Trevor, for being so awesome.
Jon Harrison-Kendrick
Parking Lot World
Monday, March 11 - Friday, March 15, 2024
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, open Monday to Friday, 10am - 4pm
Reception: Friday, March 15 at 7pm
Currently my art revolves around late stage capitalism, the commodification of feelings and experiences, the hollowness that is being sold back to us. My style has been described as outsider, folk, graffiti, expressionist, playful and creepy. I have anti-consumer, anti-capitalist themes in recent work, using North American car culture as the foundation, I intend to share the hope that comes with imagining the possibility to go beyond coping and adapting and into meaningful change. The decay of buildings is also growth.
Inspired by animation, stop-frames, pop-up books, drawings, board games, I would attempt to recreate my own versions of them, scouring dvds menus, recorded TVs, old magazines and Ripley’s believe-it-or-not books, I found what makes up my being.
About the Artist
The idea that hard work would equal anything close to freedom has been shown clearly false to me. Frugalness was always an underlaying theme growing up. Not to waste. Pragmatism seemed to be the message. Conversations with adult men were uncomfortable around the topic of power. Rarely encouraging and a contradicting soup of meritocracy myths, distrust of a government, trust in billionares, mixed with an unwillingness to see and my questions around money as much more than laziness.
Searching for strategies on how to cope, I found solutions that ranged from modern self help, meditation, minimalism, to van life, hustle culture, manifestation, even not masturbating. Rarely was the real answer presented – Revolution through community.
I grew up working roofing jobs, food service, landscaping, and construction, I am not opposed to work, I just don’t like my labour being wasted and myself undercompensated.
When the whole world is a parking lot, what is there left to do but…Love
Programming and Events
Closing Reception: Friday, March 15, at 7pm.
