Art of Imagination Day
By Bhat Boy
The Society for Art of Imagination is opening three exhibitions in Ottawa on Art of Imagination Day, which is Saturday, September 13. The exhibitions will be at Roast ‘n Brew, the Glebe Community Centre Gallery and Orange Gallery.
The exhibitions are comprised of artists from Canada and across the world, but feature numerous Ottawa artists including Tick Tock Tom, who builds his sculptures from spare machine parts, creating robots and moving sculptures out of junk yard scrap. His “Bleeding Heart” featured at Roast ‘n Brew pumps motor oil through its valves in a rhythmic gush of blood.
When I first saw this piece at a street fair in Montreal in 2011, it was squirting blood all over the pavement, but has since been refined by switching to oil. Tick Tock Tom’s “Bleeding Heart” will be making the rounds on Saturday, September 13 going from exhibit to exhibit as they open along with a colourful cast of Art of Imagination characters from across the globe. The star of the event will be Brigid Marlin, dressed as an eagle, who will fly from opening to opening with her cast of winged faeries gathering momentum as the day moves forward.
The event is free and kicks off at the Roast ‘n Brew Coffee shop at 2 p.m. with the opening of the show featuring Marina Malvada’s “Angels on a Battlefield,” a spectacular, large painting of the destruction of earth. Instead of lamenting, or begging god for forgiveness, mankind busies himself filming it with his phones.
At 2 p.m., Brigid Marlin, the founder of the society, dressed as an eagle; her flock of winged faeries; and Miguel Tio, representing the American Society of Art of Imagination, will lead the parade to the Glebe Community Centre where the exhibit opening at the Glebe Community Centre Gallery will feature many of the society’s most prominent members. Artists include H.R. Giger, who died last May. Giger spent his youth in a German concentration camp, and his work shows the darker, earlier feeling of the Imagination Society when it was first created.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Glebe’s own Cara Elizabeth will be showing at Orange Gallery with her gentle fairy paintings, starting at 6 p.m. Like a modern fairy tale, Cara’s affordable paintings, bubbling over with soft mystical figures set in gently coloured textures, are far more representative of the optimistic younger generation of Art of Imagination members. I like to think of myself as an optimist, and I will have my own painting of the Glebe mounted on a rainbow trout with the Bank Street bridge spanning its tail to Old Ottawa South. Look to see if there is room in my Glebe for Lansdowne Park. Cara Elizabeth and I are both winged faeries, and will also be present at the Orange Gallery opening from 6 to 10 p.m. We will be serving wine and cheese.
Art of Imagination Day Saturday, September 13
2-3 p.m. Artists and winged faeries gather at Roast ‘n Brew Coffee Shop, corner of Bank and Fifth
3 p.m. Parade led by our founding eagle and faeries to the GCC for art opening
6-10 p.m. Closing party at Orange Gallery, 290 City Centre Drive, Hintonburg
Bhat Boy is a local artist whose works of imagination grace a number of Glebe buildings.
