Each year, Spruce Avenue School hosts a toy drive to make the joy of Christmas possible for families struggling to make ends meet. You can make holiday dreams come true for kids in our community by donating a new, unwrapped toy. The school is looking for items suitable for their junior high students (ages 12-16). Drop-offs can be made at The Carrot from Dec. 5 –16th.
Gallery - December 2020
Breanna Barrington - Jam Today
Breanna Barrington, Lift Off, 12 x 16 inches, mixed media on canvas
This December, we welcome Breanna Barrington’s Jam Today to The Carrot Gallery. The exhibition will be showing from December 1st to 24th, 2020. All artwork is available for sale. Help support local this holiday season!
Artist Statement
The Queen said to Alice; “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.” Well I say, Jam can be lots of things if you get creative about it… so why not to-day? This body of work explores themes of making do with what you’ve got; whether it be time, friends, ideas, or little scraps of paper.
About the Artist
Breanna Barrington is a multimedia artist based in Amiskwaciy-Wâskahikan ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Edmonton) on Treaty 6 territory - Land that has been a historic meeting place for many people, across deep time. She holds a BFA from the UofA (2018) and has shown at multiple venues, from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts. Through painting, drawing, and bricolage, she works to arrange visual metaphors which explore the relationship between modern urbanity and the not-so-distant past. With recycling philosophy and cultural identity at the backbone of her practice; Breanna creates work to invoke whimsical awareness and an ethos of care around our shared environmental heritage.
For more, visit www.breannabarrington.com
Closed for Remembrance Day
In this time of remembrance, we honour and thank our veterans for the courage and sacrifices they have made for our freedoms. We hope that this will be a time of rest and reflection for our team. We’ll see you again on November 12!
Gallery - November 2020
Hollis Hunter - Touch Starved: A Masculine Mass Media Series
Hollis Hunter, Love Seat, 19 x 24 inches, oil on canvas
This November, we welcome local artist, Hollis Hunter, to The Carrot Gallery. This will be his first exhibition since graduating from the BFA program at the University of Alberta.
Artist Statement
Hollis Hunter considers figurative painting to be a strong medium for exploring the politics of trans and queer identity, bodies, and representation. In this series, each painting is based on a film still, magazine clipping, or printed photograph. Hunter references these mass media images of masculine-coded bodies to visually deconstruct social ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality. Abstract figurative painting challenges the perceived “authenticity” of photographs and addresses assumptions about what certain bodies or identities look like. Hunter adapts these mainstream images of “men” into his own narrative: feelings of vulnerability, and a search for intimacy as a man who is queer and transgender.
About the Artist
Hollis Hunter (he/him) is a recent graduate of the BFA program at the University of Alberta, and is working as a visual artist in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton). Hunter is passionate about activist art involving transgender rights and visibility. Within his practice, Hunter aims to address the challenges of LGBTQ+ representation through personal narratives. Transfeminist activism paired with visual arts is powerful for navigating our precarious socio-political climate.
For more of Hollis Hunter’s work visit Instagram @ poisondartist.
Call to Upholstery Artists
Showcase the art and craft of upholstery and transform this victorian sofa into a unique centrepiece for The Carrot Community Coffeehouse. This is a unique opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind functional centrepiece for The Carrot, show off your craft and skills, and have fun with design – funky is appropriate.
Requirements & Support:
your own space to work on the sofa starting November
$500 towards supply costs from The Carrot if needed
If you’re interested, please contact strategy@artsontheave.org.
Gallery - October 2020
Pam Baergen and Rick Rogers - Home, Home on the Brink
This October, we welcome local artists, Pam Baergen and Rick Rogers to The Carrot Art Gallery.
Artists Statement
It began with a conversation. We talked about the scarcity of clear choices while navigating our new normals. We thought of people being 'out of their element,' and adapting to otherness that they aren’t ready for. We talked about the edges of being human...what are we willing to change, or lose, to survive as a species? We imagined other worlds. We discussed how gains in resilience can come at the price of a loss of natural habitat. We talked about control. We discussed how distance can create otherness and lead to adversity. We saw value in visually exploring these concepts together, and so we agreed to collaborate at each stage of the creative process as safely as we could. Face masks were donned, hand sanitizer became as necessary a tool as our brushes and blades, and we took advantage of online tools like Pinterest and videoconferencing.
Even the show title was collaborative. It started with Old Ways for New Days as a proposed title and next came many ideas: Resettle, Remix; Evolution of the Commonwealth; Moving Forward, Standing Still and many more. When we discussed these we realized we wanted the concept of an alien-ness or change to be included in the title. This resulted in The Uncertain Frontier and Strange New Worlds, which triggered the words edge, verge, threshold and brink, and the title Home on the Brink. The addition of sentimentality and idealism in the form of a traditional song resulted in the exhibition title Home, Home on the Brink, an interesting shift of the same underlying theme as the original working title, but more evocative. And this title-finding process was an early indicator of success in our collaboration.
About the Artists
Pam Baergen obtained a Fine Art Diploma from Grant MacEwan University in 2005. During her studies, Baergen was exposed to a wide range of contemporary artists and artmaking practices, which inspired her to begin exploring visual art's communicative power and potential beyond reproducing a convincing image. She was compelled to learn more about the art that came before her - who made what, and why? What effect did it have? Enrolling in an art history program seemed like a logical next-step. In 2008, Pam graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Arts Degree with distinction, majoring in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture, and minoring in Christian Theology. To see more of Baergen’s work, visit www.livingportraits.ca
Rick Rogers’ background as a systems architect and scientist has been leveraged to experiment with various media, researching existing techniques and developing his own, and evolving his own processes for creating art. In Rogers’ words, “Science and art are never so far apart as our modern culture would make them seem. As an experimental artist, I see these ‘opposing’ bodies of knowledge as deeply intertwingled. The aesthetics and science of composition, the theoretical and practical pursuit of a deep understanding of the interaction of textures, and the physics and chemistry of paint manipulation are three areas in which I am particularly involved. My work is inspired as often by a scientific principle or an experimental eureka moment as it is by an aesthetic vision.” To see more of Rogers’ work, visit www.rickrogers.art
Window Gallery - August 2020
Genevieve Ongaro - Promises
We welcome Genevieve Ongaro to The Carrot Window Gallery.
“The main question behind my motivation for these works is what is the value of a promise, if not kept? What does it mean to make a promise, and why do we do it? The landscapes that I have chosen are metaphors for the in- transience of the world around us: constantly changing and shifting, yet permanent and stable. These hazy scenes are meant to evoke a sense of timelessness, and the sea is a representation of nature’s constant inconstancy, ever-changing and unpredictable, whereas the knots, built up by multitudes of tiny strokes or fibres at the mercy of time, space, and entropy, are symbols of human relationships and the promises we make. Creating the knot visually by means of small, intricate lines is an important part of how I want to illustrate these objects as entities that are both binding and incredibly fragile, delicate and at risk of unravelling.
The tension between the subject and its environment is meant to illustrate the question of whether fabrications of the human mind can in fact exist within the transience of the ubiquitous natural world. Do we make promises in an attempt to reach for transcendence from our impermanent lives? To create something that is larger than ourselves, and perhaps more beautiful and everlasting...which will live on beyond our short lives.”
Gallery - August 2020
Norma Callicott - Summer Dreams
Norma Callicott, Green River I, 6 x 8 inches, paper collage with resin
We welcome Norma Callicott to The Carrot Gallery.
Norma Callicott started her artistic journey over 20 years ago working in oils, acrylics, and pastel. The artist started exploring various mixed mediums and processes since retiring in 2016. Callicott fell in love with working with altered paper to create paper collage. The artist alters the pages of discarded magazines by melting the ink with a solution then drying the pages on a clothesline on bright summer days. The result is an interesting array of texture and pattern, some of which the artist manipulates to the desired result. As Callicott sits at the studio table, the pages in front of her speak to and inspire her. Memories and emotion come out, each telling a unique story. The use of recycled materials and Canadian made birch panel are important and meaningful elements of the work.
Gallery - July 2020
Michelle Paterok - I Woke Up, It Was a Dream
We are pleased to announce that Michelle Paterok will be the featured artist of the July Carrot Gallery. Paterok’s recent work in painting draws upon photographs as a means of tracing memory. These photographs, taken in rural Japan where the artist lived for two years, are used as a starting point for improvisation, allowing for abstraction and reinterpretation of the images. Through altering the original images, the artist aims to give an ephemeral experience a kind of permanence, reconfiguring these snapshots to reflect how the original place may be experienced and subsequently remembered.
Learn more about Michelle Paterok’s works here.
Dine the Ave: Choose Dine-In, Take-Out, or Delivery
Dine the Ave is back! Presented by the Alberta Business Association, Dine the Ave is an opportunity to taste authentic ethnic and local dishes right here in Edmonton. The Carrot and participating restaurants on and around Alberta Avenue will be offering a special menu item for $15-$25. This featured item is outside our regular menu and consists of 2-3 items, and can be ordered throughout the month of July.
There will be take-out and dine-in options, as well as delivery available exclusively through DoorDash. Dine the Ave is a perfect opportunity to try lots of new foods for a great price.
Dine-in Soft Opening June 23
The Carrot will be open for dine-in again starting Tuesday, June 23! To ensure your safety, our team will be wearing masks when serving you, and all surfaces will be disinfected after each use. We’ve also expanded our patio seating to give your more seating options. Please observe all signs and maintain a safe physical distance from others.
We can’t wait to see everyone again!
Hours
Tuesday to Saturday: 10am - 5pm
Sunday: noon - 5pm
Easter (ART) House Hunt
Come by the Carrot’s window and take a good look at our original art houses in person.
Start your neighbourhood search and try to identify each house! Write the address for your best guess under each on this sheet.
Hint: All the houses are located near Alberta Avenue from 112 Ave to 120 Ave and 92 St to 96 St. Some of the titles for the pieces include hints of where the house is located so be sure to take a look at the labels!
HOW TO PLAY:
Submit your sheet by email to: coordinator@thecarrot.ca (You can take a photo with your phone, or scan it).
The person to get the most correct will win a prize!
All Artwork © Robin Light
GOOD LUCK! ENJOY THE FRESH AIR AND REMEMBER TO PRACTICE SAFE PHYSICAL DISTANCING
It Takes A Village
Join us to ensure no family or child goes hungry during this Covid-19 crisis. With schools closing and unemployment rising due to this national emergency, the need for accessible food is growing exponentially.
It takes a village to raise a child and it’s up to us as a community to come together and help those in need.
Whether you can donate a little or a lot, your contribution will have an incredible impact!
Donations can be made through ATB Cares:
https://atbcares.benevity.org/communi…/…/124-852990159RR0001
ATB will match all donations 50% up to $1000 per donation for the month of April.
AOTA will use donations to buy food and necessities to supplement families and community members' food resources in the Alberta Avenue district during this uncertain time.
Extraordinary times = Extraordinary helpers
Due to COVID-19 our storefront is on pause, but we're online - please join us!
Hello Friends,
Given the most recent COVID-19 updates, The Carrot hours will be suspending (we’re putting the Carrot on pause).
The power of the arts and community is amazingly strong! We're all in this together. The art revolution continues on 118 Avenue. Please follow us daily for social media for art, laughter, daily news and updates. Our staff is working hard to keep our community connected through our social media! Remember to walk on the sunny side of the street, and join us online.
We are checking messages, so if you need to contact us, you may leave a message at (780) 471 - 1580 or email us at info@artsontheave.org
Take care friends,
Carrot Management
Albertavia Mummers Collective
On Thursday, January 9, The Carrot is pleased to welcome the Albertavia Mummers Collective for a Deep Freeze Festival warm-up. The team of artists bring together mythical lore, history, and the essence of communities in a 20-minute play for all to enjoy. Play starts at 6 pm!
What is a Mummers Play?
Theatre (Mummery) is a tradition that goes back to the middle ages when, during Christmas, or just before Lent, serfs and peasants would dress up in “disguises” and present pageant style performances to their liege lords. These performances were almost always in rhyme and involved certain set elements such as the theme of death and resurrection, as well as certain recurring characters such as St. George, Dame Jane (usually played by a man), Tom Fool, A Monk or Doctor, a monster of some sort, and some hero and heroine plot twist.
There are three main styles within the Mummers tradition: the Battle/Combat, the Wooing, and the Tup. Often elements of all three styles can be found in certain plays. The plays were presented to the lords at their castles and estates in hopes of donations of food or coins or clothes. The mummers tradition was prevalent throughout Europe and grew and developed many variations in different countries, changing and evolving from the middle ages to modern times. Today we see it still alive and thriving all over modern Europe as well as the US, and Canada. It has found a particularly rich expression in the east coast maritime provinces. It is now sprouting up in communities all over Canada, and we are eager to join in the fun.
Gallery - November and December 2019
Yvonne DuBourdieu & Agata Garbowska - Impermanence of Things Remembered
We are pleased to announce that Yvonne DuBourdieu and Agata Garbowska will be closing the year off as featured artists of The Carrot Gallery. The Opening Reception will be on November 14th from 7 - 9 PM. Pop in for light refreshments and to meet the artists!
Impermanence of Things Remembered is a dual exhibition featuring landscape paintings that explore ideas of imperfection and impermanence.
Yvonne DuBourdieu, On This Day Clearly Seen, 36” x 48”, Oil on canvas
About the Artists
Yvonne DuBourdieu has been a documentary filmmaker for most of her life, but now splits her time behind the camera and in the studio. DuBourdieu is an emerging contemporary expressionist painter working mostly in oil. She blends marks of realism, impressionism and abstraction to the subjects that populate her works: landscapes, birds, animals and humans. Always interested in things ‘other,’ she is continually exploring a sense of place and themes of belonging, often embracing the ‘outsider’ in an unexpected world of illusory spaces or imagined realms.
Each work in DuBourdieu’s collection invokes a memory of place, set in landscapes of invention, infused with an energy that comes with reliving or reimagining a moment through memory. These recollections have been roused and pieced together through looking back at photographs from her past and using the figurative imagery as source material for the paintings. The process of looking back can spark a flood of emotions that set off a chain reaction, unleashing seemingly disparate thoughts and feeding into one another till the connective emotions drift in and out of the imperfect, impermanence of things remembered.
To learn more about DuBourdieu’s work, visit https://www.yvonnedubourdieu.ca/
Agata Garbowska, These Fragments I have Shored Against My Ruins II, 24” x 36”, Oil on board, vinyl, and plexiglass
Agata Garbowska is a painter, printmaker and frequent lurker on the Edmonton arts scene. Her most recent body of work is an exploration of spaces in flux. These spaces are not inhabited, but suggest human presence with select objects and remnants. Panel and plexiglass, materials often used in the construction of everyday space, are combined with painting, collage, and sculpture, to construct pieces that echo with human presence. These pieces are informed by our ongoing ecological disaster—an attempt to reckon with the catastrophic consequences of our comfortable everyday domesticity.
To learn more about Garbowska’s work, visit https://agatagarbowska.weebly.com/
Gallery - October 2019
Jay Bigam - Elements
We are pleased to announce that Jay Bigam is October's featured artist of The Carrot Gallery! The Opening Reception will be on October 3rd from 7 - 9 PM. Pop in to meet the artist!
Bigam's exhibition, "Elements," will be showing at The Carrot Gallery from October 1st to November 2nd. His pieces are produced using oil paints, solvents, sawdust, metallic spray paint..and fire!
About the Artist
Jay is a self-taught artist who paints modern impressionist landscapes and skyscapes, with a special emphasis on severe weather in Alberta. Known for his use of colour and movement, his paintings are a reflection of his love of nature and science. Since 2016, he has been involved in the Alberta storm chaser community and has been basing much of his work on weather seen while storm chasing.
In 2016, Jay was a nominee in the Alberta Foundation for the Arts 25 Influential Alberta Artists awards.
Jay loves the experience of producing live art and interacting with the public while doing so. He has made art at numerous festivals and venues
To learn more about Bigam's work, visit earthskyart.ca.
Gallery - September 2019
Jill Thomson - Urban Gardens
Jill Thomson, Flora, 60x 90”, Oil on canvas
For the month of September, we are welcoming local artist Jill Thomson to The Carrot Art Gallery. Come in from September 3–28th, 2019 and see familiar neighbourhood scapes and urban flora.
On September 26th, 2019, The Carrot will be hosting the Closing Reception of Jill Thomson's "Urban Gardens." Join us to bid a fond adieu to the whispering leaves and sweet scents of our summer wildflowers.
About the Artist
Jill Thomson's artwork evokes her personal history of a small town/prairie childhood, an urban Montreal young adulthood and a settled life as artist and mother of three in Edmonton. Her rich colourful palette and complex compositions celebrate a creative life in cities with generous front porches, cafes, bookstores, bicycle paths, gardens and ravines.
You can see more of Jill Thomson’s work here: https://jillthomson.com/home.html
Gallery - August 2019
Maria Pace-Wynters - Summer Mix
Maria Pace-Wynters, Orange Pekoe, 14″x28″, Mixed media painting on canvas
For August, we are welcoming local artist Maria Pace-Wynters to The Carrot Art Gallery.
Stop by The Carrot on Thursday, August 8, 2019 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm for the Opening Reception of Maria Pace-Wynters' "Summer Mix."
Maria Pace-Wynters’ “Summer Mix” represents a tension between the comfort of the mundane and thrill of adventure. The juxtaposition is portrayed in the demure disposition of the eyes in her subjects and the vivacious objects around them. There is also a sense of the ephemeral as the imagery on the porcelain is transcendent through time, but all else is fleeting.
Maria Pace-Wynters was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia. She attended Victoria College of Art, Camosun College (Associate of Arts degree), the University of Victoria (BFA honour program) and Victoria Film School before settling down in Edmonton, Alberta. She sells her work online through Etsy and locally at The Carrot, Sabrina Butterfly and her Alberta Ave studio.
You can see more of Maria Pace-Wynters' work here: www.mariapacewynters.com
Gallery - July 2019
Catherine McMillan - Stories from my Inner World
Catherine McMillan, Paper Lantern Dream, Acrylic and Oil on Wood panel, 18”x18”
In July, we are welcoming Catherine McMillan to The Carrot Gallery.
“I approach all of my paintings intuitively, beginning with thick textured gesso, followed by layers of fluid acrylic paint and then oil paint repeatedly applied and wiped off until I feel the right atmosphere is created. Sometimes I start with a sketch or a clear destination in mind, but often my ideas come out of the work itself and simply evolve from somewhere inside of me. Over time, these paintings of little unfinished stories quietly tell me secrets about who I am and what I deeply believe about life.”
McMillan’s intuitive instinct has taken her down many paths. She has wandered the world as a street caricature artist, opened a commercial art studio/cafe called The Quirky Art Café, and spent many years teaching a variety of art classes. In 2014, she decided to close her café/teaching studio so that she could focus on her own painting.
A notable accolade of McMillan includes having her painting, Lullaby, be accepted in the “I am a Woman and this is my Legacy” show at the Laura I Gallery in London, England. She was also invited to participate in Double Vision 2018 show at the Paper Mill Gallery, Toronto, Ontario. Catherine is represented by Gossamer Treasures Gallery in Wabumum, Alberta and her artwork is in collections throughout Canada, the US, Europe and Australia.
You can see more of Catherine McMillan's work here: https://www.catherinemcmillan.com/
Prints of Catherine McMillan’s works are available for purchase at The Carrot.
