Marc Bell, one of Canada’s foremost contemporary graphic artists, will be returning to Sackville as an Open Studio artist-in-residence at Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre, Sackville’s oldest artist-run centre. Bell will be the second of five artists in the current programme which is made possible with support from the New Brunswick Arts Board and will be at 7 Lorne Street from October 5 through November 9.
Bell attended Mount Allison University in its Fine Arts Department. More recently, he spent a week at the Owens Art Gallery in 2004 as part of its Artist in the Schools programme and went to public schools in the Tantramar Region to give a Cartooning and Drawing Workshop. In 2005 Bell was the Artist in Residence at CalArts, The California Institute of the Arts.
Known for his drawings, Marc Bell, originally from London, Ontario, now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has self-published more than 50 artist’s books and, since contributing to the 1996 Struts Gallery exhibition my Duck is better than Your Duck, has participated in dozens of solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada and the United States. The most recent exhibitions in 2005 were Bit by Bit at The Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver and The Cartoonist Eye at Columbia College A&D Gallery in Chicago, Illinois.
Conundrum Press in Montreal has just published Nog a Dod: Prehistoric Canadian Psychedoolia which Bell both contributed to and edited. The book documents nearly a decade of work by Bell and a loosely affiliated group of artists. Nog a Dod has been recently launched in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, and Montreal and will be launched Sackville on Saturday October 7, 1:00pm at Struts Gallery.
While a guest in Sackville, Bell will participate in various of the You Gave Me Hope When I Was At The End, 11th Annual Symposium of Art. Following that he will establish a studio at 7 Lorne Street in the Struts & Faucet exhibition galleries where he will work on a new series of collage drawings and on a new book publication due to be published early in 2007 in the United States by Picture Box Inc. His ink and watercolour collages are executed on any material he can find: promotional flyers, pizza boxes, children’s toys. Bell’s delicate described work has its own particular exuberance and sense of pointed absurdity. His studio will often be open to the public during his Open Studio residency, and he will be offering a number of workshops as well as other public events.
Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre are open to the public. Anyone interested in the ubiquitous contemporary art forms which sometimes are dismissed as “mere cartoons” is encouraged to stop by during Marc Bell’s Open Studio residency from October 5 through November 9 which has been made possible through the Artist-in Residence programme of the New Brunswick Arts Board. |
