Alicea Paszek is a local Edmonton artist who was raised in the Highlands area. Mandolin Books has been her favourite local coffee shop for a long time. She predominately uses acrylic and ink in her work, but is sometimes brave enough to try watercolour. She enjoys using big brushes and bright colours and then going in after with ink to create the smaller details. This works well for her because it gets the base of the painting done quickly so she can see the scope of the painting on the canvas or board instead of simply imagining it. Thus combining her love for painting and her love for sketching and it is more forgiving than drawing with pen on paper. Her work often features houses or flowers or both. She enjoys exploring the intricacies of architecture and of flowers — what did humans make, what did God make, and what can ‘I’ make?
Christmas Carriage rides through the Historic Highlands neighbourhood can be booked by calling ANJL Horse and Carriage Company. Please speak with Arie Jol at 780-474-0535. Rides will begin and end at Mandolin Books, and we are offering a 20% discount on all food & drink orders for participants. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
We have an adult book club that meets on the last Monday of every month at 7:00 p.M.
We are open to new members. On October 27th, the group will be discussing Charlotte’s Web. You are invited to enjoy this children’s classic one more time and then join us for the evening to share your impressions.
Wu Lijun (Lijun W. Theberge in Canada) was born in the coal mining and steel production city of Fushun, Liaoning Province in 1973. like most people, here family’s work was connected to the coal mine. Her father worked in the mine and her mother worked at the coal mine hospital. Not the ideal background for an artist but Lijun took an early interest in art as a child and showed promise even in her early drawings, mostly done for classmates. A third-tier city of almost 2 million people, Fushun had little support for the arts in t he late 80’5 and the 90’s.
Since University was outside the bounds of affordability for her family, she began working at the Fushun Machinery Factory Steel Foundry Workshop. Still hopeful of someday being an artist of some kind, she enrolled in a three-year, part-time course in Clothing Design and Production. Her skill in drawing and her instinct regarding colour enabled her acceptance. When the Steel Foundry began its shutdown process in 1997 as part of an economic reform program, she found herself unemployed. Over the next several years she worked as an art teacher for a kid’s after school project, on weekends while working for a baby photography studio. Her skills in art served her well once again in painting backgrounds and producing background props.
These skills did not go without notice and she soon found herself working for the Fushun Playhouse, painting backgrounds and props for stage productions while establishing herself as a freelance wedding photographer to make ends meet. It was during this time that she met Ge Shu Qing, the leader of a group of oil paint artists in Fushun. The man we now know as Teacher Ge generously shared his art knowledge and invited her to join his group on countryside field trips. The resulting landscape work became the basis of the artist we see today. In early 2006, through her affiliation to the group, she was able to take part in her first art exhibition, in Korea.
Courtney Standing is a local artist of Edmonton and she works predominantly in the medium of painting, but also works in areas of Drawing an Intermedia, such as mixed media, video, and music.
There are a variety of painting and mixed media styles in her work that vary from impressionist landscapes and cityscapes, to large and vibrantly textured abstract paintings, as well as, abstract-realism. Qualities unique to her art are her fearless use of colour, and her interest in the fluidity and motion of paint and other mediums.
Themes you can expect to see in her art are transitional pieces which reflect the constant changes within our environment as well as reflections of her emotional and individual transformations that are meant to uplift and inspire personal authenticity in her viewers.
Ruby is an Edmonton based Potter who is passionate about carbon-trapped Shino glazes fired in a gas kiln. Shino is one of the oldest glazes and demands diligence and patience to perfect. Colors will vary from thick, milky white, orange, rust, peach, red, gold, and charcoal grey spotting with variations of black carbon trapping. As the gas kiln is looking for oxygen, it will draw it out of the pot trapping soda ash and leaving black markings coined “carbon trapping”. These random one of a kind markings are mesmerizing and captivating. Making primarily functional pieces, Ruby is now shifting gears to develop sculptural vessels that act as a canvas to reveal the dance that takes place between the clay, the glaze, the kiln, and the maker, revealing its intimate workings on the surface of the pot.
