Nancy Whittaker, Tarrangower Times
Imagine the possibilities when four creative artists let their imagination have its way. AND the imaginative approach of world-renowned children’s author, Jen Storer (and recent guest on IMT) when opening the group exhibition at the Cascade Art Gallery on Saturday 27 April at 2-5pm.
Cascade Art Gallery is just down the road from my place, where the next exhibition promises to really excite you with the incredible imagination shown by the participating artists.
Kareen Anchen Cascade Art Gallery Director wrote that in The Power of Imagination: Einstein famously stated, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
IMAGINATION celebrates the artwork of four locally recognised and playful visual artists–Dean Bowen, Jan Palethorpe, Sam Varian and Jeff Gardner. All four artists rely heavily on the power of the imagination to harness and lampoon a good idea, as evidenced by their abundant and creative output.
IMAGINATION includes oil paintings, bronze and ceramic sculptures, exquisite and rare Artist-made-Books, limited edition etchings and fun, quirky illustrated poetry in the form of affordable open-edition etchings.
Kareen has introduced a very special treat for all the Maldon Primary School students. They are invited to Cascade for the first preview on Friday 26 April and will draw their own ideas inspired by IMAGINATION.
Illustrated poetry by Jeff Gardner including new poems and the fantastic ‘Octopus Poems’ which have 8 lines (like an octopus has 8 tentacles) have been created specifically with small children in mind. Here is one of his poems about his beloved one eyed cat.
Milton
Slightly bananas
in a world of fruit
my little monster
is very cute
claws in the air
with lots of hair
he is in every way
my strawberry bear
Jeff Gardner
I dropped in to talk to Jeff about his work and was blown away by his amazingly huge body of work, which started when he was only 14 and continues to this day 49 years later. He draws every day in notebooks and writes words to go with the drawings. They are figments of his imagination, which never stops. Even when he is engaged in more prosaic tasks like renovations, his mind is ticking over with ideas. In the exhibition he has a very large work called Omnibus, which is three meters long and one and a half meters high. The medium is Indian Ink, then oil on cotton duck. It depicts the world on wheels with a floating figure trying to control the world.
Jan Palethorpe has recently returned from Prague where she collaborated with master lithographic printers to make a suite of stunning prints and a beautiful hand-bound collectable and rare book titled We just Are. Jan Palethorpe’s work is held in many public collections including the Brooklyn Artist Book Collection, Brooklyn NY, the Australian National Gallery Canberra, Australian Print Workshop, State Library of Victoria, Castlemaine Art Museum, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery and private collections throughout Australia, Asia and U.K.
Dean Bowen is a perennial favourite with his curious Australiana bronze critters. Dean includes large and small oil paintings and a bountiful number of limited-edition prints. Bowen’s rich visual world of animals, human figures, country and urban landscapes, night sky and cars inspires happy childhood memories in us all.
Sam Varian works in Mount Macedon and is cooking up some stellar ceramic sculptures that pose a question around ‘endangered species and haute couture’. She has said, “I take an intuitive approach to ceramics, learned from children. I envy their raw and unaffected attitude to art-making and their immediate and innate desire to be creative. My effigies are metaphors of change, of hope and gratitude. They are tied to birds and other creatures to represent relationships, endurance and our ability to take flight (with or without wings). One wonders how Sam manages to get such complex objects safely through the firing process. Her background in painting strongly influences her application of multiple glazes.
Jen Storer has been living in her imagination since she was a child growing up in the Wimmera. Jen is the founding director of girlandduck.com where she teaches the art (and business) of writing books for children. www.girlandduck.com is a flourishing online community of authors, illustrators, publishers, editors, designers and enthusiasts, with members from all over the world. Who could possibly be more appropriate to open this exhibition about imagination and writing.
And there will be an Artist Floor Talk from 2-3pm on Sunday 19 May.
This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 26 April 2024.
