Keira McArthur's Apartment in Hamilton, Ontario
Conversation Pieces July PopUp Apartment Show, 2021: Dining Room. "Creamer, Ring"; Reconstruction I, Comes in Waves (3/4 size original print); "Cup, Creamer Chad"
Conversation Pieces July Apartment Pop Up show Dining Room: "Pot, Paint Tube" and "Creamer Scribbles"
Conversation Pieces July Pop Up Apartment show, 2021. Kitchen, on easel - "Reconstruction I, no waves", 3/4 size original, unframed.
Conversation Pieces July 2021; dining room. "Tray, Sugar, Canada", Reconstruction I (1/4 size archival print on Hannemule Hemp); "Cup and Saucer, Tray, Sunlight", north wall
Conversation Pieces Apartment Pop Up: Dining Room pieces. "Saucer, Spoon Time" and "Sugar, Spoon" from Reconstruction I
Conversation Pieces July 2021: Living Room & silversheet. "Saucer, Sugar" from right angle, showing holographic effects
Conversation Pieces, Dining Room work - 13 pieces from Reconstruction I - Creamer, Chad, from left angle, showing reflections
Conversation Pieces Pop Up Apartment Show - living room pieces from hallway
Conversation Pieces July Apartment show - North wall of living room, showing four of the 5 silversheet pieces
Conversation Pieces Pop Up - silversheet pieces, north wall of my living room. Left to right: "Cup, Pot, Fold"; Saucer, Sugar; "Pot, Cup"; "Cup, Creamer"
Conversation Pieces Pop Up July 2021 - silversheet pieces and "Cup, Spoon" in context, showing reflections from the right angle
Conversation Pieces Pop Up July 2021 - Silversheet pieces in progress with "Cup, Spoon" in context. "Teacup" (2014/21, mixed media on canvas) to the right.
Conversation Pieces PopUp Show - Silversheet pieces in progress for context with Cup, Spoon. "Teacup" (mixed media on canvas, 2014/ 2021) to the right
Reconstruction II (in progress), detail upper right
Reconstruction II (in progress) tacked on to my kitchen wall, July 2021. Detail Upper right.
The coffee set pieces, and some roses, beneath Reconstruction II (in progress) on my kitchen wall.
Roses, porcelain pieces and the bottom of Reconstruction II (in progress), on my kitchen wall
To show the size of the actual ground for Reconstruction I and the silver sheet, I tacked Reconstruction II (in progress) onto my kitchen wall. Neon chalk - who'da thought that would be so lovely?
Conversation Pieces Pop Up July 2021, Reconstruction II, tacked onto my kitchen wall
To show the size of the original sheet from Reconstruction I, I tacked the third ground onto my kitchen wall. This is a detail of a cup drawn at Les Suites Hotel in Ottawa, March 2021.
I want living people to buy work made by living artists because there is no moment like this, and together we tell the story of Now. What you pay for a piece is a measure of your love for human nature, for our collective insistence upon creativity, no matter what.
We re-emerge after lockdowns, yes. But we are different from who we were in 2019. Shaken. Wiser, perhaps. More thoughtful, more conscious of what is valuable. Humbled maybe, by a new-found, still-fragile love for life and connection, for choice over the way we live our lives.
…Fuelled by these wonders my work in studio has produced inks and fabric dyed with colours from ten different trees, a buffet of interesting resist experiments and paper dyed for book works.
I read stories these days of people who are leaving bad jobs, tired relationships, selling house and/or business and hitting the road in trailers or camper vans: conscious, well-considered decisions to unhook from old programming and step forward into a new sense of freedom. That can mean anything.
Ah the warm golden morning sun, full on my face. This apartment, where I’ve lived and worked through thirty months of this Hamilton Residency experiment has housed me gracefully and generously. There’s enough space here to hang a show of twenty-one smaller pieces and several more larger ones. There are two beautiful trees in the […]
The Artist talk for my Conversation Pieces July 2021 show is all around me in …pieces. A story about my Dad, a memory from the Mary Schneider School of Art at age 13. Some bits about Toxic Ego Art I encountered at York University in the early 80s, and how for a long tragic time […]
I take the world’s floods and fires, the sick ash trees in my beloved forest, the fighting and looting, the art show I’m doing everything I can to launch and support myself with in pandemic times – I take all of this and my fumbling, hot, rash-covered body to the lake, and I weep.
Ah, technology. and humans. On June 18, I wrote a post about the poignancy I felt in releasing this website, which I’ve lived and worked with happily for eleven years. The company I’d hired in early May to build me a new one then erased the post and two others that same day, and uploaded […]