For its inaugural solo exhibition, Artword Gallery presents the work of Toronto visual artist and poet Steven McCabe — €œThe Sandinista Series€, a body of seventeen new paintings, acrylic on canvas, with ink and collage.
The exhibition runs from October 3 to 31, 2009, at Artword Gallery, 15 Colbourne Street, Hamilton ON L8R 2G2.
Saturday October 3 from 2 to 5 pm: opening reception with the artist.
Friday October 9 (James North Arts Crawl), 7 to 10 pm; artist present.
10 pm, McCabe performs a poetry reading, with video, as part of Artword Artbar€™s regular post-crawl performance events.
Gallery business hours: Thurs to Sat from 2 to 5 pm. The gallery is also open for viewing when Artword Artbar is open.
http://www.stevenmccabe.ca/Visual%20Art-Sandanista.html
Steven McCabe comments on The Sandinista Series: €œI have been examining the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua from a poetic and metaphorical perspective in visual art; slowly working toward an exhibition. One must of course deal with the sabotage of the Sandinista goals by a certain geo-political military colossus but while doing this I discovered images of the jungle eco-system creeping into the work as well as references to other mythologies. Having never been to Nicaragua and not speaking Spanish I realize this is an intuitive more than an objective process and project.€
Steven McCabe is a poet, author, visual artist and filmmaker living in Toronto, Ontario. He is the author of five books of poetry: most recently Hierarchy of Loss (Ekstasis Editions 2007). He has illustrated books and magazines with fine-line ink drawings, created public murals and exhibited paintings on canvas and paper, collaborative art, and mixed media sculpture. He teaches art and creative writing workshops in both private and public schools. He recently directed and wrote his first short film titled My Story is Not My Own, a video-poem metaphorically examining the theme of grief. Other recent projects include illustrating The Golden Key – Classic Fairy Tales by George MacDonald.
Review by Stephanie Vegh:
http://stephanievegh.ca/blog/2009/10/13/james-north-supercrawl-october/
“In an evening already rife with the something-new, I had already decided to finally pay my first visit to the Artword Artbar in their new premises on Colbourne Street. By stint of that slight distance from the main corridor of James North, Artword was a welcome oasis of calm away from the grind-and-thrust of the Supercrawl. Its gallery is housed in the downstairs portion of the building, and is remarkably well-finished and intimate in scale; again, a curious contrast to the rest of the Crawl, but certainly not an unwelcome one. The space was well suited to Steven McCabe€™s Sandinista Series of mixed media paintings, heavily textured things that invite and endure close scrutiny with positively sumptuous layers of red. There€™s an earnest simplicity in McCabe€™s imagery, but his application of colour and texture belies a skilled and nuanced maker at work.”
