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Library hosts Animated Delight art show
A travelling art exhibition called Animated Delight that features seven short animated films and fifteen artworks by four acclaimed Alberta artists will be displayed at the Didsbury Municipal Library from July 4 until Aug. 15.
Animated Delight is an exhibition, sponsored by the provincial government’s Alberta Foundation for the Arts, that has been showing across the province in four regions over the past year, including in Olds last December and January, and Innisfail in January and February. The Didsbury exhibition is the final rural showing in the southwest region.
The main goal of the exhibition program is to show the work to communities that don’t have the same access as in large urban centres.
“The point is to get the art out into rural areas of the province and for people to get exposed to them,” said Caroline Loewen, manager and curator of the Alberta Society of Artists. “It is very important that we reach these communities.”
Animated Delight will present the works of Chris Melnychuk, Brian Batista, Leslie Bell, and Stefanie Wong. Melnychuk was a respected Calgary artist and animator who passed away in 2010.
“Melnychuk was a well-rounded artist and animator who did not achieve great recognition in his lifetime,” said Les Pinter, former curator for the foundation’s Travelling Exhibition Program (TREX) in a press release. “The concept of Animated Delight gradually evolved from a celebration of Melnychuk’s work to include three additional dynamic animators residing in Calgary. In this exhibition there are unique objects and images used by the artists to produce their diverse animations, as well as complementary artworks generated before and after the films as evidence of interconnected processes.”
He said Melnychuk was naturally gifted in drawing and printmaking, adding two prints from his portfolio related to chess pieces in action are included in the upcoming exhibition, as well as many of the original cel drawings for Zap Girl Makes Toast.
Pinter said Bell manipulates paint, cut-away shapes and hand drawn cels to explore the endless possibilities of an “organic abstract universe”.
In describing Wong’s work, Pinter said she uses an “unusual method” of threading canvas to represent the cyclical growth and decay of plant life. He added the artist also uses her textile expertise to animate small-scale theatrical sets with unique handmade puppets and objects.
As for Brian Batista, Pinter said the artist discloses a passion for Eastern mysticism, pop culture and character animation through paintings, cel drawings and on his film Twosday.
The Alberta Society of Artists, in partnership with Quickdraw Animation Society, developed Animated Delight.
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