The Arts Issue

Alannah Vokes

I am in my fifth year of studio art and I work in drawing, collage, and sculpture. My recent work explores themes of public and private, disguise and exposure, focusing on revealing or obscuring information or imagery that is charged, discomforting, or intimate. I use careful strategies of dissection, analysis, and reconstruction to conceal and complexify graphic sexual imagery or violent actions.

Miss January ’91: One of a series of collages in which I took Playboy magazines, sliced them into thin strips, and reconstructed them in a geometric configuration. The configurations are based on 3D models of dodecahedra that were glitched using information given about the Playmate in their interview with the magazine.

UFC 184: Ronda Rousey vs. Cat Zingano: A close-up of a recently completed drawing in which I tracked the motion of the feet and fists of mixed martial artists Ronda Rousey and Cat Zingano in UFC 184, a brief but fascinating fight. The blue lines represent Zingano, the red lines Rousey, and the silver shows the octagonal ring in which they fight.

Dylan Evans

My name is Dylan Evans, and I’m currently in fourth-year in the studio art program. I suppose the focus of my work is based in technology and the internet, and the dynamics of development that arise with these two things.  My inspiration at the moment is derived mostly from the internet, but also from technology and its similarities with nature.

Cyber Lovers (After Felix Gonzales-Torres), (2015 work in progress): Cyber Lovers is a rework of an artwork by Felix Gonzales-Torres, a portrait he made for two alike people, that symbolized love and togetherness between individuals.  My updated piece references this work, but the circles do not actually touch, referencing the personal disconnect between individuals who have relationships through technology.

Scan #1, (2014): This photograph is from a series derived from a performance piece that I did last winter, where I took my printer/scanner outside and pressed it against trees, foliage, bushes, etc.  This was a way for me to create a direct link between the natural world and the digital/technological.

Melina Panara

My name is Melina Panara and I am currently in my fourth year, final semester, majoring in studio art. The focus of my current practice is exploring materiality, while trying to play with unconventional notions of painting. I also have a strong interest in colour, pattern, trickery, and process. Artists that inspire me include Analia Saban, Angela de la Cruz, Linda Besemer, and Sasha Pierce.

Gingham (2015, acrylic on canvas): One of the pieces in my series of floppy paintings, I hand-painted the gingham pattern on canvas and machine-stitched the edges. No wooden frame is present, so they take on a natural hang and I like to think of them as caricatures.

Untitled (Exposed) (2015, raw canvas, wooden frame, and zipper): This piece references the body, while also making a humorous poke at Barnett Newman’s “zip” paintings.

Katie Schulz

Katie Schulz is a fifth-year student majoring in studio art with a minor in psychology. The focus of her work involves the modification of found materials. Katie is inspired by behaviour, transportation, and machinery.

Allomorph: A soft sculpture that is held by a stand. The repeated slipknot used for this material development has been achieved with a crafted metal hook.

Time Out, Chair: A wall-mounted sculpture made from reconstructed found material. Its position in space accentuates the object’s negated use value.

Alexandre Brown

A fifth-year tourism management student who enjoys art, travelling, and exploring this beautiful world we live in.

OUR Time (2014, photograph): This photo showcases the remains of the Berlin Wall. I do it for the people.

Jasmine Reimer

In my studio, I explore the domestic sphere by rendering its objects and environments alien, strange, and sensual.  I look to artists Rachel Harrison and Robert Gober, and poet Gertrude Stein, for their use of absurdity and humour and their corporeal, material sensibilities. 

(Green) Log Jam (2015, foam, acrylic, found object, epoxy putty)

(Purple) Horizontal Poke (2015, foam, plywood, acrylic, found objects, epoxy putty)

(Yellow) Hot Seat (2015, foam, acrylic, plywood, epoxy putty)

(Blue) Untitled (2015, foam, acrylic, apoxy putty, found objects)

Michael Parry

I am a third-year student in university working towards a biotechnology degree. As for my artistic inspirations: I have always enjoyed art because art is a way for an artist to materialize their deepest sense of being. I find photography fun, especially candid photography, because that is a person’s most natural state. I feel like when it boils down, my inspiration for art is expressing, or finding, people’s most natural self, past all of the outward appearances, and fronted characters.

Purple Haze (photograph)

Simon M. Benedict 

Simon M. Benedict is a first-year MFA candidate at the University of Guelph. His work playfully explores the shifting weight of words and the ways in which language can be redefined, repurposed, misconstrued, or rendered meaningless through its very communication. Benedict often uses words from songs and films as raw material for his videos and works on paper.

FAKE IT TILL YOU FAKE IT (2015, ink on paper)

NO RELATION (2015, ink on paper)

Mido Melebari 

I’m a graduate student in the food science program. I started taking photos when I moved to Guelph in 2010, but I was not improving my skills and getting a professional camera to focus on photography more seriously until recently. Now, I’m on my way to start my own business through my lovely lenses and camera.

F**KING YOUNG CANADIAN ARTISTS (FY-CA)

The collective’s collage presented below, title Art (Tentative Title), is a flippant, anxious materializing of mash-up culture, produced through found objects, scribbled texts, and various defacings and appropriations of capitalist iconographies.

Adrien Potvin

I am a fourth-year English literature major, and a poet and musician. My poetry is largely preoccupied with dreams/memories, music, films, and situational/incidental writing. In a more specific sense, my work appreciates and explicates both the mundane and the sublime – sometimes at once.

“Early Train (Field Recording #2)”: I wrote this on the VIA train, coming from my hometown back to Guelph. I attempted to pin down the origin of a sound I had heard. Through this process of fixating (perhaps out of boredom), I muse on the sometimes-erroneous nature of sensual experience, especially in such a public space.

“Red Circle”: This poem was originally the second stanza of “Early Train.” I was suggested by a friend to take the stanza out and leave it as its own poem.