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1. Director’s Meandering Preamble
2. Shift | Anne & Marco Cibola | Dennis Tourbin Members Gallery
3. Bring Your Own Home Movie Day
4. Collaging Myself | Jonathan Culp | Dennis Tourbin Members Gallery
5. Upcoming NAC Workshops
1. Director’s Meandering Preamble
We consider ourselves pretty hip around here. It’s not that we match step with prevailing trends--I mean I’m still adamant this whole computer thing will eventually blow over--but for those in the know, NAC members are trendsetters. Count among the trends that have originated at NAC, the friendship pin; those little beaded safety pins once handmade and traded by school-age children to form elaborate cliques and ostracize the unpopular. That sickeningly cancerous trend was initiated by NAC member Roslyn Costanzo in the mid 1980s. Count as well, the computer animated dancing baby that became an internet phenomenon. It was created by NAC member Dennis Soron while confined to a one room apartment on the second floor of the York Hotel in downtown Edmonton. I could rhyme off more, but these examples give an idea of the magnitude of the trends that have started at NAC, trends that spread like jittery time-lapse footage of mould fanning across the PetriDish of the zeitgeist.
It came as a shock to us, then, when the concrete-cast institution of bulging bureaucracy that is Brock University announced that NAC member Derek Knight had been appointed the Chair in Creativity, Imagination and Innovation as the Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. As cool trends go, obtuse titling of senior staff positions that borders on the poetic struck us as very radical. In fact, it seemed totally rad. As well, Derek’s membership here ensured that if we adopted a similar philosophy for titling our positions we wouldn’t be following a trend, but rather amplifying something we could assert was in some way connected to us.
So it has come to be that NAC now has new titles for our staff of four. Katarzyna (Kasia) Smuga, formerly our Education Coordinator, will henceforth be known as The Principle Officer of Pedagogy. Natasha Pedros, once known at the Director of Outreach and Publications, has become NAC’s Biblio/Disco-Maniac. Annie Wilson, who recently joined us from Cultural Services at the City of St. Catharines, has been hired as The Maven of Making it Happen. My tired title, the Director of Programming and Operations, was happily jettisoned for the far more trendsetting, Minister of Energy, Minds and Resources.
We’re now working on what board directors and members of the executive will come to be known as. It’ll be a simple flip and then all will be hip again.
overnout
S.
Stephen Remus
Minister of Energy, Minds and Resources
 2. Shift by Marco & Anne Cibola
Dennis Tourbin Members Gallery
Niagara Artists Centre
8 May - 21 May 2010
At the request of the artists, the reception has been canceled.
The exhibit will be on display until Friday 21 May.
NACs gallery hours are Wednesday - Friday 10am-5pm & Saturday 12nn-4pm.
Repetition shows up in everything from architecture to music. It exists in nature and in manufactured landscapes. Shapes and sounds repeat, providing a sense of stability and predictability. But this doesn't mean that everything is always the same. Marco Cibola and Anne Cibola explore how repetition is not always exact, resulting in slight shifts. Marco's abstractions explore repetition and minor shifts in music, and Anne's sculptural work acknowledges both repetition and the shifts that change neighbourhoods over time.
-- Anne & Marco Cibola
 3. BRING YOUR OWN HOME MOVIE DAY
Saturday 22 May 2010
Home movie clinic: 12nn - 2pm
Home movie screening: 2pm - 5pm
Niagara Artists Centre
A FREE EVENT
Home movies are more fun than you think!
Watching home movies together allows communities to share and learn about our past. From the 1920s to the 1980s, countless families shot home movie footage - at home and on vacation, getting married and goofing around. These forgotten films contain scenes from our personal, local and global histories that can't be seen anywhere else.
At noon on Saturday 22 May, the Niagara Artists Centre will host a 'home movie clinic'. This is your opportunity to view, organize and repair your old 8mm, Super 8, and 16mm home movies (no video) at personal viewing stations. Technical assistants will help you to work the machines and offer information about film storage and preservation.
At 2pm, please join us for a community home movie screening. You are welcome to bring in your own home movies to share. Share a bit of your own history and learn about everybody else's.
The screening will begin with images from the collection of Vineland's Edra Thompson. Edra used super 8 film extensively in her educational work during the 60s and 70s. Her forty-year-old films feature stunning color images of steam engines, extreme closeups of feeding hummingbirds, and time lapse photography of butterflies emerging from their chrysalis.
The screening will be hosted by Jonathan Culp, who has spent many years working with 16mm and Super 8 film. He recently shot five rolls of home movie footage on the Galapagos Islands, and will be sharing that film at this event, as well as showing some of his many 'orphan' home movies with footage dating back to the 1939 royal visit!
For more information, please contact psauce@gmail.com or call 905-562-7267.
 4. Collaging Myself
Installation by Jonathan Culp
Reception Saturday 22 May 2010
Saturday 22 May - Friday 4 June 2010
During many years of outward-looking, socially engaged collage video production, I have simultaneously pursued appropriation-based work in various other media, for my own pleasure and on self-directed themes. It is this more intimate work which forms the backbone of this retrospective exhibit. Collaging Myself features objects created over three decades, many of which will be on public view for the first time.
Comic strips, T-shirts, toys, family photographs, (literally) dirty magazines, and various other artifacts of everyday life are incorporated into a great variety of original work, from hung art to zines to audiotape to slides to an 11' x 5' quilt.
-- Jonathan Culp
5. Upcoming NAC Workshops
Screen Printing | Instructor: Adam Tisdelle
Saturday 29 May & Sunday 30 May, 10am - 3pm
Located at Royal Crown Graphics: 7 Frank Street, St Catharines
$125 for 2 days
Work with Royal Crown Graphics to learn the process of screen printing in a professional print studio. This workshop will teach you everything you need to know to create a distinct design and screen print your own images onto almost any surface.
Note: Participants should bring a digital format image to reproduce and materials to print on, like a t-shirt, bag or pillowcase etc. Project materials are included in the fee, if you wish to purchase additional materials please inform the instructor ahead of time.
About the instructor:
Adam Tisdelle is part of Royal Crown Graphics, a printing studio in St. Catharines. He has worked professionally as a screen printer for many years.
www.royalcrowngraphics.com
Analog Darkroom Photography | Instructor: Lindsay E Slavin
Mondays in July 5, 12, 19 & 26. 6:30 - 9:30 pm
Located at NAC: 354 St. Paul Street, St. Catharines
$150 for all 4 classes
This workshop covers all the basics of black and white photo processing. Learn how to process your own film and maneuver around NAC’s dark room with your eyes closed. Discuss and work through the challenges of creating high quality prints and experiment with different photographic techniques to create desired effects.
Note: Participants will be supplied with chemicals and paper for all 4 classes. Each participant will be given 15 additional hours of free time in the darkroom outside of workshop hours.
About the instructor: Lindsay has been living in St. Catharines for the last two years. She has a BFA in Fine Arts with a minor in photography and major in stone lithography. She’s been taking pictures for many, many years and her favourite is high contrast black and white. She loves the drama! She often thinks about a question a professor once asked, “Can images move us, still?” Her favourite colour is green.
Space is limited.
Please contact Kasia Smuga, NAC’s Principle Officer of Pedagogy
at 905 641 0331 or by email at ksmuga@gmail.com
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