The Art Centre celebrates the city’s 175^th anniversary

with 3 new exhibitions and a sculpture unveiling

Ken Danby

October 11 to December 15, 2002
Exhibition sponsored by Robinson & Company

Guelph artist Ken Danby, named to both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario in 2001, is one of Canada’s most accomplished realist painters.  This exhibition featured sixteen works spanning 1969 to 1977 from the Art Centre and University of Guelph collections.  A watercolour titled Rainbow Study, which is a preparatory work for a major oil painting titled Niagara, was donated to the Art Centre by Robinson & Company in recognition of Ken Danby’s career achievements.

Pearl Van Geest: This Pure Mouth  

October 17 to December 22, 2002 

Guelph artist Pearl Van Geest intersperses symbols of technology with human-made and natural elements to explore our changing relationship to nature and spirituality.  The motif of a kiss becomes in her paintings a potent symbol of healing, desire, escape, power, and memory.  This exhibition featured a series of 1 metre square lipstick and oil on canvas paintings completed in 2002.  The Ontario Arts Council provided support for the exhibition and brochure catalogue containing an essay by Dawn Owen.  This was Van Geest’s first solo exhibition in a public art gallery and coincided with the Guelph Arts Festival.   

Gordon Couling: One Day in New York

November 21 to December 23, 2002  

This exhibition featured sixty sketches by Guelph artist Gordon Couling (1913-1984) created in a single day in New York City – July 29, 1958.  Couling was the founding chair of the University of Guelph’s Department of Fine Art that was established in 1965.  He helped create an undergraduate studio art program that would become one of the largest in the country.  His work ranges from figurative drawings and abstracted landscapes to large scale abstract expressionist paintings and geometric wall reliefs.  In his most intimate drawings, Couling distilled the essence of his subject with fluid lines drawn in charcoal, ink, and crayon, as is evident in this remarkable series of New York sketches.  This collection of drawings was part of a recent gift to the Art Centre from Mary Katchanoski and Muriel Taggart.

Verne Harrison: Dual School Bench

Sculpture Unveiling on October 21, 2002 at 1:00 p.m. 

Guelph artist Verne Harrison’s Dual School Bench was the Art Centre’s second artist’s bench commission.  Harrison took his inspiration from a child’s school desk and from the Art Centre’s origins as Ontario’s model consolidated school (Macdonald Consolidated School, 1904).  The bench also celebrated the 175^th anniversary of the city.  Dual School Bench was commissioned with funds donated by John Bligh and Nancy Bailey Bligh.  Harrison’s exhibition Museum Chronicle was shown at the Art Centre in 1999 and later toured to Lynnwood Art Centre, Simcoe and the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery.   Harrison’s work is represented in public, private, and corporate collections.

This commission and future artists’ benches are awarded through a juried process.  It is anticipated that six benches will be acquired for the park.  The jury consists of artist Lois Betteridge, Art Historian Chandler Kirwin and Art Centre Director Judith Nasby.

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