 Hi, art lovers! | | |  | Vladimir Kanic | | | Yesterday was Earth Day, a holiday that’s celebrated by another must-read CBC newsletter all year long. Hi Art can’t make the same claims, I confess, but recycling’s always been a part of what this newsletter does. Recycling content, anyway, and CBC stories about art and the environment have been some of my favourites to feature here.
Remember this video series from last fall, for instance — Natural Collaborators? Or this interview with acclaimed photographer Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian artist who’s bearing witness to our impact on the world. If you want to take a more DIY approach to the subject of sustainability, there’s this feature about artists who’ve learned how to green their methods, and if you finish it feeling inspired, check out these guides to making inks and pigments from things found in nature … before following these tips for upcycling art supplies.
Sometimes, though, a big idea can have as much impact, if not more, than adopting a new waste-cutting strategy. This much-shared essay by Rebecca Solnit, taken from a November 2022 lecture at Princeton University, argues we have enough knowledge and know-how to fight the climate crisis right now. What we lack is fresh ways of thinking — new stories and, by extension, art — that will motivate actual action. So here are a few items to get your imagination going: CBC Arts stories about air-cleaning sculptures (as seen above), an apocalyptic Union Station food cart and an outdoor hobby that changed how one artist saw everything. | | | | | And because we promised you eye candy ... | | | | |  | Noelle Hamlyn and Geoff Coombs | | Another museum exhibition with a sustainability bent: Noelle Hamlyn will open Lifers at the Royal Ontario Museum on June 3. The project features underwater photos of Noelle’s repurposed lifejackets. (Canadian photographer Geoff Coombs created the images, FYI.) As for the lifejackets themselves, Noelle makes them from old clothing, and they’re a statement on fast fashion and overconsumption. | | | | |  | Hannah Doucet | | The winners of the 2023 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award were announced last week. Hannah Doucet is among the honourees, alongside fellow winners Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez and Wynne Neilly (previously seen here), and their work will appear in an upcoming exhibition for the National Gallery of Canada. This image is from Hannah’s series A Wish Stays With You, a project based on a childhood “wish trip” to Disney World. The gallery’s website says A Wish Stays With You “reveals how the unimaginable — serious childhood illness — is managed for and by adults, leaving the child to negotiate their memories, desires and hopes in later years, on their own.” | | | | |  | Dexter Barker-Glenn | | Montreal’s Plural art fair is its final day. Find this piece by Dexter Barker-Glenn — Snag Wood (Double Inhale) — at the fair’s emerging artists booth, along with this piece by … | | | | |  | Paramount Pictures | | | | | Happy (belated) National Canadian Film Day. Here’s a deep dive on the Canadian production boom of 1975-82, the era that gave the world Scanners and Meatballs. | | | | |  | Knopf Canada | | | | | As Alicia Elliott writes, the novel Strange Loops recalls another recent (and misunderstood) work of fiction, the Cate Blanchett movie Tár. | | | | |  | CBC Arts | | | | | | | On the latest episode of digi-Art, artist Madi Piller takes us on an AR tour of Toronto. | | |  | Jannick Deslauriers | | Amnesia: a memorial to the year I was born. That’s the title of this textile sculpture of an APC III, and as the artist writes on Instagram (totally revealing her age), the computer was first released in 1983. For newer examples of her gorgeous work, check out 1700 La Poste in Montreal, where Jannick has a solo exhibition through June 18. Read all about it. | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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I’m Leah Collins, senior writer at CBC Arts. Until next time! | | | | | |
