The Harrison Festival of the Arts features a collection of artists at the famous Ranger Station Art Gallery. This exhibit will be on display for the entire month of July. Hours during the Festival are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and for the remainder of the month from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends at the Ranger Station, 98 Rockwell Drive.
XYZ Collective
XYZ is a print focused collective based out of Vancouver, BC. It includes artists and printmakers Patrick Bravo, Jonny Hodges, and Mike Paulson. Working with a range of contextual themes from American folk art and tattoo traditions, to the connection between the mind and imagination of the child and of the adult, to the dissemination of popular culture and politics. Working often at a scale that pushes the conventions and potential of print media XYZ seeks to interrogate and reconfigure public perception of images within the art world and society as a whole. In the tradition of print media as a democratizing form of image making and information distribution the work of XYZ explores a varied array of contexts in which print media has and will continue to influence and shape culture and society. It is our belief that by pushing the limits of what is normally considered possible in print media and image making, there is great potential to affect positive change and to engage with communities and the public.
Patrick Bravo
Throughout my upbringing I’ve always been amazed by life and that ‘spark’ that comes with experiencing everything that is new. I find as adults become accustomed to their social life it takes time to find that ‘wow’ factor again.
My work straddles the domain of High and Low art and I am as attracted to ‘street art’ as much as those works that are in the museum. Aiming to bring a childlike perspective to serious adult themes, I use pattern, colour and montage to make work that has a sense of fun.
Jonathan Hodges
My practice is concerned with mediated imagery from American popular culture, politics and advertisement in the 21st century. My work strives to explore the importance of the idol/icon within the context of popular culture in the 21st century through the use of collage and formal abstraction of photographic imagery. My collages are composed of images that hold many references and implications to a larger context outside of aesthetics. Through this the viewer is left to make sense of the overwhelming amount of visual components, which correlates to the overwhelming amount of mediated imagery that is present in the world, in which the viewer/consumer is left to make decisions.
Based on my upbringing in the Christian church I see many crossovers between Christianity and popular culture in the way that the images of either entity (pop culture or Christianity) are illustrations carrying morals and are figures looked to for guidance. I’m also interested in contemporary visual tropes, which I feel are aligned with the icon, that are images easily recognizable by more than one person, and often portray morals or beliefs of the individual, for example paparazzi photos of celebrities.
Through my use of new and traditional Print Media I inherit the rich history of the medium, such as accessible dissemination of information and its role in creating revolution, as well as the ability to push the limits of the medium as an art form in terms of scale and imagery. Making use of the enlarged halftone dots as an initial form of abstraction, and embracing the flaws of the silkscreen process I am able to manipulate and render the final image as something imperfect or deteriorating. The deteriorating image for myself is symbolic of the dismantling or displacing the importance of representation and the icon.
Mike Paulson
With one action informing the next and working from a lineage of processes which yield artifacts that are not conventionally seen by the viewer, my work with all of its divergent points and tangents is connected by a common aim. To expand the conventions of the traditional mediums of print and drawing and to conceptually reconfigure the experience that a viewer may have with a given work of art. By exploring the capacity of different materials I seek to not necessarily provide answers but rather to offer questions that will alter the way that those materials are perceived and read.
