News

Mulled wine, eggnog, toads!

2011-12-06T16:02:00.001-08:00

I will have a few new pieces on view at Trench Gallery this month. Please join me and let's mull over art with some mulled wine. The opening is Saturday, December 10, 2011 from noon to 4pm. The gallery is located at #102 - 148 Alexander St.

18th Annual Art for Life auction

2011-11-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

I will have two drawings in the upcoming 18th Annual Art for Life auction. The auction is on Saturday, November 26 from 7pm to 11pm at the Rocky Mountaineer Station at 1755 Cottrell St. Tickets are $90 and include drag queens! art! Bif Naked! canapes! desserts! drinks!

Concerning the labour dispute between Teamsters Local 31 and the Great Canadian Railtour Company there will be no picket lines during this event... click here for more info.

Paper Cats

2011-10-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, at long last, I am officially taking on commissioned cat portraits. I.e., your cat meticulously rendered in watercolour on paper where it can not cause any trouble. For more info, please visit... www.papercats.ca. No dogs.

Monomania review in the Georgia Straight...

2011-08-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

The Georgia Straight's Robin Laurence had some kind words about my work currently up as part of the Monomania exhibit at Trench Contemporary Art...

Carrie Walker's recent little drawings of exotic animals (a hippo, a gorilla, a snarling African wildcat...), which she has surrealistically imposed upon old, anonymous pencil sketches and watercolours. The found images Walker employs as her grounds are mostly pastoral English landscapes to which she matches her style and medium, hilariously achieving a tension between the original scenes and their highly alien trespassers.

Monomania Exhibit at Trench Gallery

2011-08-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

Holy crow, I almost forgot! On right now at Trench Contemporary Art is Monomania: An Organic Archive of the Terminal City Archive from 1949 until Now. A salon style extravaganza of Vancouver-based artists. Read more about the show here. The closing party is on Thursday, August 25, 2011 from 6:30pm til late. Trench is located at #102 -148 Alexander St.

Ocelot Elopes with Baby Budgie

2011-06-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

A love affair, a kidnapping, a late night snack?

Living on reclaimed bog...

2011-04-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

...makes for some pretty awesome weirdnesses and some darn crooked houses.

Wolverines invade Richfield, PA.

2011-01-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of finished drawings from my Circle Hunt project. The old post office above is in Richfield, Pennsylvannia. The cave below where the beaver is hiding out is in Hinckley Reservation in Hinckley, Ohio.

A few words about the Carrie Walker project...

2011-01-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

    Due to a number of e-mails I received in the late 90's at my e-mail address carriewalker@hotmail.com, I knew there were other Carrie Walkers in the world. The e-mails were personal letters to Carrie Walker but they weren't for me. I would always reply to these e-mails, sometimes honestly, "Sorry, wrong Carrie Walker, try an underslash or something." On other occasions, I would pretend I really was the Carrie Walker they wanted, "I broke it off with Kevin. Florida was a drag, I'll never go back." In response to these masquerades, I would get another e-mail... "this doesn't sound like Carrie."

    I grew up believing my name to be uniquely me and mine. With the advent of the Internet and my subsequent research into other Carrie Walkers, it has become clear that I am not my name. Searching for some sort of commonality between us, I find there aren’t any shared qualities beyond name and gender. There is one aspect of these women that, while not ubiquitous, does predominate - the photos of us are not candid but posed. They are already portraits. Creating an online profile is a process of creating a self-portrait. While each of us may attempt to exert some influence over how we are received via our own websites, Facebook or other online postings, our portraits continue to be painted for us by others. By the bad photos of us our friends post on their online albums, by our employers who want the world to know how we can help them, by the documenters of any committee or convention we’ve participated in.

    For this body of work, I have been collecting photos from the Internet of every Carrie Walker I can find. I then crop and enlarge each photo so I have an image of each face approximately life size. From the resulting image, which is often pixelated and distorted from being enlarged, I make a drawing. Upon completion, I immediately post each drawing on my website. Consequently, future Google image searches for “carrie walker” may result in not just the original image but also my drawn version. In this way, the work immediately enters the public realm and engages with an audience which in all likelihood is not looking for an art experience. Both the searcher and the searched become participants in the project. While the work develops a life of its own online, the drawings themselves remain as remnants or documents of the project.

    Will some Carrie Walkers feel their privacy has been invaded by such an action? This is one of many questions I hope to raise. Many people seem to be unconcerned with notions of privacy; posting, apparently without reservation, huge amounts of personal information. Are they aware that to some generations ideas of surveillance are associated with fascistic, totalitarian regimes? Do they see only the advantages of social networking mechanisms? We may presume that the information we post is only of interest to our friends and family or employers but as many people know this information is also being collected by advertisers. What other surreptitious audiences are looking at these elaborate portraits we’ve made of ourselves? Through this series of portraits I hope to draw attention to these notions of privacy, identity and self-portraiture.

And, I gratefully acknowledge the support of the BC Arts Council.

Carrie Walker project completed (for now).

2011-01-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

Phew! This series of sixty portraits of women who share my name was completed this morning with this lovely lady. Her username on peekyou.com... imadirtyslut0000001.

Some fish are bound to croak.

2011-01-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

The number of fish at the studio is increasing but sometimes the number sinks. Or floats, depending how you look at it. I named him Lucio posthumously.

The story behind Fire Work...

2011-01-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

American artist and filmmaker Anna Hoover has graciously filmed and edited this video about my upcoming show Fire Work at Trench Gallery. Music by Jason Zumpano!

Rearranging the landscape with your host...

2010-12-30T20:23:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow artist Shanna Maurizi just posted this video interview that was shot last September in NYC. The circle hunt project further illuminated and, in this case, animated too!

Fire Work at Trench Contemporary Art

2010-12-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

This odd assortment of watercolours and drawings consists of previously unexhibited work that shares the fortune of having survived being first engulfed in flames then thoroughly doused by the local fire department last Christmas morning. The show opens Thursday, January 6, 2011, 6 - 9pm and will run through February 12, 2011. Regular gallery hours are 12 - 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday.

For the curious...

2010-12-29T19:01:00.000-08:00

A bit of background to my upcoming show Fire Work at Trench Contemporary Art in this article in the Vancouver Courier.

A Cat Bust

2010-12-01T19:10:00.000-08:00

It may not be respectable but drawing cats is hilarious. Meet Mao, my cousin's Siamese cat.

New Work at the New Trench Gallery

2010-11-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

I will be exhibiting a few new drawings and watercolours in a group show at Trench Gallery this December. The opening is Thursday, December 2, 2010 at #102 - 148 Alexander St., Vancouver.

Art for Life Auction

2010-11-08T15:34:00.000-08:00

The Art for Life Auction is this Saturday. I have two pen and ink drawings in the silent auction. So...

Build your art collection, have fun and support people living with life-threatening illnesses at the Art For Life Fine Art Auction - Saturday, November 13, 2010 at Vancouver's Five Sixty Club (560 Seymour St).

and eat desserts.

New Work at Gallery Atsui

2010-10-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

Selections from my series of Carrie Walker drawings will be on display at Gallery Atsui along with the work of Kitty Blandy and Jillian McDonald. These drawings are portraits based on photos of women who share my name gleaned from the Internet.

Guest curated by Michael Bjornson, the exhibition title The Other "...posits the hypothesis that all creative expression is, in a sense, self portraiture or, at the very least, an extension of the way we see and/or feel about ourselves." The opening is at 8pm this Friday, October 8, 2010 at 602 East Hastings St.

Searching for the Picturesque in Ohio and Pennsylvania

2010-10-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Explaining the circle hunt...

2010-08-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

“We have now only to request the attendance of every man and boy

who has any grudge or ill-will against the bear, wolves and panthers.”

-advertisement, American Field, March 1821

Shortly, I will be travelling to three known locations in North America where circle hunts were held during the mid 1700’s through to the mid 1800’s: Hinckley, Ohio; Richfield, Pennsylvania and Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. At these locations, I will sketch the current landscape following William Gilpin’s guidelines set out in his book, originally published in 1792, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape.

While Gilpin was writing his tracts on the “picturesque” and promoting the gentile occupation of sketching the rural landscapes of England; on this side of the the Atlantic, Euro-American colonists were coming to terms with the hostilities of their environment through a strange and brutal ritual called a “circle hunt.” An account of the Great Pennsylvania Circle Hunt of 1760 describes the gathering of 200 armed men who, forming a circle of 30 miles in diameter, marched towards the center of this circle slaughtering every creature within its borders. Although many animals managed to break free of the encroaching circle of men, the final count of the day’s carnage included 41 panthers, 109 wolves, 112 foxes, 114 mountain cats, 17 black bears, 1 white bear, 2 elk, 198 deer, 111 buffaloes, 3 fishers, 1 otter, 12 gluttons, 3 beavers and “upwards of 500 smaller animals.”

I will be sketching the landscapes where these hunts occurred using Gilpin’s guidelines for sketching the “picturesque” which he defined as the qualities that make a particular landscape suited to be drawn or painted. With several dozen landscape sketches complete, I will return to my studio. Referring to historical records of the numbers and kinds of animals killed during these hunts, I will draw the animals back into the landscapes, allowing them to posthumously re-inhabit their environment. Through this process, I will endeavor to create a ritualistic reversal, a futile restoration, an archive and an epitaph, while at the same time illustrating the complexities and absurdities inherent in the relationship between civilization and wildlife.

The brutality of the circle hunt, which in its time was considered a social, sporting event with a practical outcome, stands in sharp contrast not only to concurrent ideas of the “picturesque” but also to present day efforts in North America towards wildlife conservation. I am interested in this historical period as it marks the beginning of a significant shift, indeed a rift, in the relationship between man and nature which, in turn, is reflected in visual representations of animals. This theme is explored by John Berger in his essay “Why Look at Animals?” wherein he writes “the image of a wild animal becomes the starting-point of a daydream: a point from which the daydreamer departs with his back turned.” With this work, I want to indulge these daydreams while simultaneously addressing the realities of our fraught history with animals.

I would like to thank the Canada Council for their generous support of this project.

New Studio!

2010-08-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

and yes, that is a ping pong table.

one new work from Vermont.

2010-03-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Crowning of Flower Queen 1912

2010-03-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

Evangelist, psychic, photographer, sculptor, recovering alcoholic, nuclear physics student and now, Carrie Walker, queen...

New Studio!

2010-03-09T12:41:00.000-08:00

albeit it temporary. My studio for the month of March is in this old church in Johnson, Vermont.

The guts.

2010-01-26T18:37:00.000-08:00

Studio Sketch

2010-01-25T18:53:00.000-08:00

It turned out to be the best studio I ever had; my fourth one in Vancouver. The large North facing windows only leaked a little in heavy rain. Not once had someone spread shit on the bathroom wall. We never had to sweep rubble off the steps after it rained. It was neither so unbearably hot in summer nor so miserably cold in winter that I couldn’t work, I mean nothing more than a week or two knocked out if the temperature was extreme either way. Usually nothing a little space heater couldn’t handle, as long as it was plugged in the East wall and not the West wall so the breaker wouldn’t go. Recently the breakers had started blowing every afternoon despite our precautions but we fixed this problem by unscrewing a few of the overhead fluorescents. The smell of stale grease coming up from the restaurants below was easily cleared out by cracking the windows and running a small fan. The front door’s hydraulics were shot making it hard to get in and out with an armload of supplies but it was secure. The building was only broken into once while we were there, the thieves hoisting themselves through one of the back windows whose latches had all long ago busted off and never been repaired. The linoleum was crumbling under our feet and the ceiling tiles looked like they might come crashing down onto our heads but it wasn’t like the building would be condemned. The neighbourhood was safe at night, there was food and coffee available nearby and I had a number of friends working in the neighbourhood. And no rats, Sonja reminds me. As a minor bonus, we used to be able to give directions to our studio by describing it as being “around the corner from the adult toy store, just down from Puncturehaus, above the Wet Wizard bookstore.” It was perfect.

Fire, Fundraiser, Art!

2010-01-25T18:33:00.000-08:00

A number of friends have kindly organized a fundraising event for Sonja and me. It will held this Friday, January 29, 2010 at 1727 W. 3rd Ave, 7 - 11pm.

Salvaged Drawings

2010-01-25T18:27:00.000-08:00

As I watched firemen pour gallons of water down on my flaming studio on Christmas morning 2009, it appeared that I'd lost everything, all my supplies, furniture and a collection of probably 500 drawings. Thirteen days after the fire we were granted access to the building. Inside my studio (which I accessed by climbing under a fallen wall and slipping through a hole between two joists) my drawing drawers stood intact. My friend Dina and I removed some charred rubble from around the drawers from which I was able to pull out what turned out to be close to 300 soaking wet drawings. I spent three days drying out the work with blotting paper and stacks of records and books to press them flat. I've been able to salvage roughly 200 drawings, a little smoke damage and charcoal here and there, but most with nary a scratch upon them. Above are two smoke damaged drawings.

a review of sorts

2009-11-10T22:07:00.000-08:00

on the gastown blog of my show at Jeffrey Boone Gallery.

neckLACE in Toronto

2009-11-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow artist Marina Dempster has curated a show at the Department in Toronto. It is a show of artists' translation of the necklace and opens Nov. 5th. The above work called "Circling the Boundaries" is watercolour on paper with gold filled wire. You can see a slideshow of the exhibit here.

To While Away the Time

2009-10-03T22:41:00.001-07:00

My first solo show at Jeffrey Boone Gallery opens this Thursday October 8, 6-9PM or visit at your leisure...
October 8 - November 7
Jeffrey Boone Gallery
1 East Cordova St. #140
Vancouver, BC V6A 4H3
604-838-6816

This project is a collaboration with unwitting partners. It began with an old, skinny, ring-bound sketchbook that I’d purchased in a thrift store in Chilliwack. Its pages were filled with faint pencil drawings of mountains, trees, streams and solitary cabins as well as quaint montages of windmills, water pumps, birds on branches and arched stone bridges. Contemplating these sketches, I decided that these somewhat impoverished landscapes required life. With a disregard for plausibility, I started drawing animals into the scenes - a falcon perched, wings outspread, on a bridge over a small town; a bighorn sheep the size of the cabin it stands beside; prairie dogs calling to one another across a brook in the forest.
Once I’d filled the pages of this found sketchbook, I began to search out other drawings with which to meddle. Ebay proved to be a fair source of drawings. I limited my purchases to landscapes, cityscapes and some interiors in pencil and watercolour. My purchases began arriving in the mail and I continued with my work. The resulting collection of drawings and paintings range greatly in quality and style and are dated back as far as 1850.
All of these drawings come to me second hand and seem to have been more or less discarded at some point by someone and I consider my reworking of them to be an act of rehabilitation or rescue. Using the existing landscapes as a springboard, I apply pencil and paint and find my own style greatly influenced by the marks of the other artists. The animals I’ve added are both out of context and out of scale so that the resulting drawings becoming fragments of fantastical narratives, of stories half told.

I am grateful for the support of the BC Arts Council.

The Storybooks Have Been Unfair, again.

2009-09-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

I'll be showing a series of watercolour paintings/drawings in L.A. at Kristi Engle Gallery. The show opens Saturday, September 19, 2009 and I will be giving an artist's talk on Sunday. This work was originally shown at BjornsonKajiwara Gallery in 2007.

This user has not written anything about themselves.

2009-08-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

I'm drawing Carrie Walkers again. Seems they're all getting online these days. I'm hoping that one day in a Google image search that one of my drawings (which I am posting to my website as they are finished) will show up on the same page or at least within a few pages of the original photo.

Drawn and ReDRAWN

2009-06-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

I will be exhibiting a few drawings this summer at Jeffrey Boone Gallery alongside the work of Anna Plesset and Biliana Velkova. The theme of this exhibit, titled ReDrawn, is the artists' use of drawing as a form of appropriation. It is part of the citywide drawing festival, DRAWN. The works I will be showing are a number of reworked drawings by one Emily Franey. The original drawings are dated from the mid-1800's but there has been some doubt as to their authenticity. They don't feel that old, only one of the dozen or so of her drawings that I acquired is significantly yellowed and there is an odd consistency to the quality of the lines which has led to discussions with a few people about the possibility that they are tracings. A minor mystery of no consequence. The original drawings, regardless of their origin, are lackluster.

Show is on from July 16 - August 15th. The opening is Friday, July 24, 6-9.
1 East Cordova Street unit 140, Vancouver, BC

The Drawing Center

2009-06-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

I'm super thrilled to have had my work accepted for the Drawing Center's online viewing program. The Drawing Center is a not-for-profit gallery in NYC that puts on some great shows, I always visit when I'm in New York. I mean, I've been there twice. A little about them...

"The Drawing Center has been a unique and dynamic part of New York City's cultural life since 1977. The only not-for-profit institution in the country to focus on the exhibition of drawings, it was established to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history, to juxtapose work by master figures with work by emerging and under-recognized artists, and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of art and culture."

No dominance exists in the coterie at Christmas.

2008-12-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

This seasonal mash-up contains one found drawing with ground squirrel then photoshopped with text and Ben Reevesesque snowflakes.

A quick browse with wolves.

2008-09-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

For anyone who missed seeing my latest exhibit in the Attache Gallery, Lee has posted it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGjyL83BKA8

Locomotion on land is ungainly.

2008-08-19T15:53:00.000-07:00

Here is one of my most recent alterations to a small watercolour I recently acquired. I was able to remove the existing paint quite easily and then add the details of this harp fur seal pup. The painting is roughly 3 1/2 x 5 inches.

Old news but good news.

2008-06-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

I received a BC Arts Council grant this year to continue my found drawing series. I've been buying drawings from Ebay with a $25 cap per drawing (not including shipping which can be extremely reasonable at times and absurdly overpriced other times depending on the whims of those doing the mailing.) The monetary cap is somewhat arbitrary but was made with the idea that the artwork has been deemed to have little monetary value therefore it removes the implication that I'm destroying something of value or using the value of the existing work to give my own work value. (I mean, I'm no Chapman brothers able to go out and buy a suite of Hitler's watercolours and alter them. Not that that wouldn't be super fun.) Nevertheless, some people can get up in arms about "art" whether they are artists themselves or not, and place another kind of value on it, a sort of universal law that thou shall not tamper. More on all that later. Here are some of the drawings I'll be working with...

also...

2008-04-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

I've designed a number of album covers for Jason Zumpano's band Sparrow. This isn't the most recent as those in the know will know, his band's name now being Attics and Cellars. I was going for a Penguin Book cover look with this one. The image is from a series of drawings where I'm working on found drawings. Generally speaking, in this body of work, I've added animals into existing landscapes. Here is another drawing from that series...

oh, and by the way, you can download that album from zunior for only $8.88!

in the news...

2008-04-14T19:25:00.001-07:00

I currently have a series of drawings of wolves on exhibit at/in the Attache Gallery. The Attache Gallery is a moving gallery located in a briefcase belonging to Lee Henderson. If you see him with his briefcase please stop him and ask to have a look. I'm sure you will find him most obliging.