A Year of New Paintings: Eastside Culture Crawl 2016

Photo by my studio mate Chantal (FELT a la main with Love)

Somehow I managed to finish a few large challenging paintings and rearranged my space for the Eastside Culture Crawl. It is interesting to look back on what I accomplished in the past year at the Arts Factory. I feel it’s a time of transition with lots more exploring to do. I got so busy during the Crawl that I forgot to take many photos myself and so some of these are from other people. It was great to see a few people come visit me after hearing me at Hot Talks at Hot Art Wet City earlier in the month. If you missed it, you can catch it below. I’m the fourth speaker in the panel at about the 25 minute mark.

HOT TALKS: Eastside Culture Crawl 2016 from bentzen on Vimeo.

I was excited to hare with everyone the centre art piece on the wall which is a new collaboration with weaver Lucy Poskitt. I had wanted to do a collaboration with another artist for a while and I was interested in working with someone from a different discipline. It was a new experience for both of us. I started with the idea of creating something that had an organic shape and texture like as if it was growing over the panel. Although Lucy moved to Victoria, we managed to communicate our ideas over email and photographs. We met once in progress and then put it together the Wednesday just before the Culture Crawl! She also is showing in a group exhibit called Immersed and Enthralled at Kafka’s until Jan 15, 2017 where she has some small tapestry weavings.

Photo by Jodie Ponto for Eastside Culture Crawl

I enjoyed the company of new studio mates this year and you can check out their work here. I’m in the process of preparing for my next event Shiny Fuzzy Muddy. So even more new small pieces to come!  I had the company of lots of great new studios mates which you can also check out here. You can also find more photos of my process and Culture Crawl prep in my Instagram feed.