New Things

This weekend the Grad show came to a close. I still find it odd that the event that I was looking forward to since I started OCAD is over. But I have more things to look forward to! Friday 13, 2011 is going to be the opening of a show I am having with some people from my school. We all decided that our work would look good together. The show is called Neutral and it will include work by Charlie Bierk, myself, Jared Herda, Ariel Kellett, and Callum Schuster. If you can come out to see the work, that would be awesome! The show goes until May 22nd.

Another cool thing that's has already happened is that I now have a website! Yes, www.natashagouviea.org is in existence! Go see it, it's pretty neat!

I will be having another show in June, but I will post some more information regarding that a little bit later.

The Show Off

So tonight is the night! Tonight is my Graduation Exhibition at OCAD! The opening is at 6:30 from May 5th- May 8th. COME AND SEE SOME AWESOME WORK!

Oh Yeah,

I'm done thesis! Yay! Here is some stuff that I've created!

"Wipe And Scrape". Oil on wood. 6x 4'. 2011.

"Gouge". Oil on wood. 6x 4'. 2011.

"Application and Removal 4" Charcoal on paper. 11x 14". 2010-11.

"Application and Removal 4" Charcoal on paper. 11x 14". 2011. 

"Erased Blackboard". Chalk on Blackboard. 2011.

Hennessy Youngman

So I should have posted these two awesome videos a while ago. But I am doing it now. Basically someone from my studio showed me a video by this guy and I thought it was full of insight and humour. Enjoy!

Paint!

This week I had my midterm critique for one of my studio classes as well as my thesis class. I figured this would be a good time to photograph my work. Although two of the pieces are for a painting class, I feel that they are all part of the same body of work. I might have mentioned this earlier, but I'm taking a break from drawing for a while and have decided to create some paintings. They take longer to produce, but I like the outcome :)

 

"Removal 3" Oil on wooden panel. 4x 5'. 2011.
 

"Removal 2" Acrylic on wooden panel. 2011.

"Ripped Canvas 1" Acrylic on Canvas. 4x 6'. 2011.

    

  "Ripped 2" Acrylic on canvas. 3'9"x 5'9". 2011.

"Removal 1" Acrylic on wooden panel. 2011. 

Produce

December, for me, was a well deserved month of eating and rest. January was a harder month because I was having a rough time getting into the swing of things. Part of the reason was that I wasn't crazy about jumping into a dusty tent to draw. So in order to get myself back to work I've decided to get into some painting!

I've finally got back to the studio, cleaned my space, and started working. My mind has been so wrapped up in what to produce and how to make it I havn't wanted to post anything because I didn't feel that there was anything to talk about. I've loaded some photos of my space and some (what were) in progress paintings. Once I get some more work finished I want to install them and photograph them.

4th Year XPACE Show

The 4th year art fair at XPACE took place December 18th- 19th where students from all of the art departments were invited to submit work to raise funds for their respective departments. I posted earlier that I was submitting three pieces and later brought four other pieces. One of them I already had, and the other three were drawings that I framed for the event.

Artists who submitted work to the show include Chelsea Jamieson, Kristen D'Aquila, Michael Dawson, Eric Euler, Natasha Gouveia, Carly McAskill, Kayla Altman, Caitlyn Chisamore, Krista Smith, Charlie Bierk, Ryan Bastedo, Shanna V, and Callum Schuster. Sorry if I missed anyone. But thanks to everyone who came out to the show!

These are the other four I presented.

A Glimpse of the material art and design display.

The photography department

   

News!

Hello fellow bloggerites!

Sadly this is not a post about new artwork. However, it is a post shamelessly promoting a show I will be participating in on December 18th and 19th. It is a fundraiser for OCAD's 4th year drawing and painting students (which includes me). I'm going to be submitting three of my older works to the show in hopes to raise some funds!

The show is at XSPACE at 58 Ossington Ave. On Saturday the 18th it will be open from 12- 6pm and Sunday the 19th from 1- 5pm. I should be there the entire time both days. 

I'm going to bring these. Well not all of them, I'm going to pick out three. If anyone who reads this blog can go, they should go!

In other news, I am a huge slacker. Since school ended I have not produced any art, but I have been relaxing. But, I hope to make some new stuff soon!

End of the Semester

To be honest, the past month has been incredibly stressful. I've finished my critiques and assignments and am really looking forward to a bit of a break. I'm still planning on making some art through the break, but definitely not the same amount. I finished my last two critiques this week and I think they went well. Part of me is really sad that the semester is over just because it means another year is going to be over soon. I get really nostalgic around this time of year.

As I mentioned in the last post, my studio space has transformed from a somewhat messy hovel into a dark cave of dusty doom. This is the outside of my fort.

This is the inside, there are a bunch of small tests on the wall. 
 

This is me working on a drawing.

Drawings on mylar for a drawing class.

Thesis Drawings

Me in the critique room after my critique. 

The Studio Space

The 7ish ft. space I was allotted in the studio has changed a few times, here are a few photos of the space in the beginning of the semester, along with some experimental stuff I was working on.

So this is some work I did at the beginning. I was playing with the creation of lines through erasure and indexical mark making. I used tape to lift off charcoal to make some drawings.

The studio is pretty neat, most of the time people just go there to hang out. It's a great environment though, it's great being surrounded by fellow artists because you can get a lot of feedback on your work as you work.

The Beginning of the School Year- A Good Place to Start

Clearly I did not create much work through the summer. I was working a lot and then I went to Florida for two weeks! (My first ever vacation out of the country). There is a big change in the work I've decided to produce this year. It's all drawing based. Yes that's right, I've put away my paint and brushes for a bit. The drawings posted are 5- 7 ft long, 4ft wide. They are charcoal and graphite on paper. I made them for a drawing class and they're abstractions from photographs of buildings in Toronto fused together.

I'm Sorry Blog, I've Neglected You.

Hi there blog and blog followers!

 I want to apologize for not posting a thing in months. There have been a few reasons for the neglect.
- Criticism from a career adviser that my blog was too "chatty"
- Me trying to set up an actual website
- Me being busy

A lot has happened since I last blogged. I've created some art, I quit my job to focus in school, I'm in my last year and I'm in the thesis program. Even though I plan to start up my website sometime soon, I've decided to keep this blog going because I actually enjoy and miss blogging. So, here are two pieces I created over the summer. This past October they were in a coffee house charity event for a friend's charity "Your Life Counts". Right now the work is being held at a coffee shop in Toronto called Coffee Co. on Queen and Parliament.

It's Been A While

I havn't posted anything in over a month! It's terrible I know. Well I have still been keeping busy and today I will post some art that I have been working on.
All of them are done in acrylic and are a lot smaller than I usually work. Most of them are images of my train track photos that were abstracted.

Painters Block

"Art is a business". That was the primary message at an information session I attended a few months ago at school when a few gallery owners came to OCAD.  I guess it is a business, the production and selling of goods- luxury items I suppose. It's the business part of art that pays the bills, but its also the same part that makes me weary of making new art. Maybe I'm just making excuses.

If an artist is supposed to keep on top of art history, contemporary artists and movements, new trends in art,  local galleries, big galleries, galleries for new emerging artists, gallery owners, art aficionados, web presence (blogs and websites), advertising and branding yourself, keeping on top of "customers", shipping and handling, installation, price lists, storage, overhead, profits and art making, there really is no room for anything else. It's a daunting task and I wonder if its right for me.

I've put a lot of time, effort, and money into making art, but apparently there is a whole other side I've neglected to think about. I know I should just make some art and worry about this after, but I just find it so frustrating. The more I think about all of the things that lay ahead of me, the more I wonder if I can handle being an artist. I don't want to make anything if I have to constantly worry about how to please the "customer" and how I can sell more. If pleasing people is my career of choice, I would just stay in retail.

Although art is a business in so many ways, art's initial purpose is not to be sold but to be contemplated on.

No one ever told me that being an artist would be easy, but does it have to be so unattainable?

Upcoming Events

So I just want to let everyone know of a really cool event I will be attending tomorrow. It's called Art Battle and it's taking place in downtown Toronto on Queen. Basically what happens is two groups of four artists have twenty minutes to create a painting and the audience votes which one is the best. Then the two winners duke it out. All of the losers paintings are ceremoniously destroyed. All of the paintings are auctioned off, and those that are not sold are ceremoniously destroyed. Last time they sold 9 out of 10 paintings! And 75% of the money goes to the artist. Check out their facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/artbattleto?ref=ts  and their website at: http://artbattleto.com . They will also be featuring The Keyhole Sessions, "Life drawing with and edge". Check them out at: http://thekeyholesessions.com/tag/life-drawing-toronto .

Now here is the best news of all! I WILL BE TURNING 21 THIS THURSDAY! I'm not really doing anything special, just getting a sweet ice cream cake and eating it with some close friends. But I think it's a noteworthy event!

Things I Should Have Posted Earlier

So I was looking through some of my pictures on the computer and realized there were some school projects I never posted. So today I will post them!

The first image is acrylic on canvas. It was actually the first project for my abstract class. The assignment was to abstract from nature, so I chose the human figure as my muse.

The next image is a painting for my Critical Issues in First Nations Art. Our final assignment had to be a work of art regarding one of the issues we talked about in class. This piece primarily has to do with land issues. One of the things I found interesting while studying Issues revolving around Aboriginal people is that many of the issues have to do with land rights. The land is so important because not only is it part of the identity of the First Nations people, but it's part of the "Canadian identity". ("Canadian identity" is in quotations because whether or not Canadians have an identity or what that identity might be is debatable ).
The bands going through the piece act as a reference to the profile of soil- suggesting that this piece is about land. Also, within the layers of "soil" I have embedded lines from The Indian Act that had to do with land rights. The Indian Act is probably responsible for the majority of the restrictions that affect the First Nations. Embedding lines from the Indian Act is significant because in a way I am burying this document, suggesting the Act needs revisions, or needs to be replaced.

The last two photos are the same project I did for my Critical Views in Painting class. I compiled images from a few fashion magazines and created a story (about 30 pages long) from the images. The whole idea was to re- contextualize glamorous images and juxtapose them with a strange story. Although I had a lot of fun with this one, it took a lot longer than I expected.