Maclaren Art Centre

The Barrie Examiner
Thursday, September 17, 2009

A new event brings together art, books, video, history and architecture in a celebration of family fun that could only happen in Barrie.

Carnegie Days, hosted by the MacLaren Art Centre, is named for the Mulcaster Street building that was the city's public library long before it became a gallery. The new annual art festival starts today and runs through the weekend. Carnegie Days is also being held in conjunction with Sunday's Doors Open Barrie, an event that opens up the doors local heritage sites and other interesting buildings for the public to see.

"(We're) looking at an opportunity to bring people into the MacLaren. I believe it really is architectural gem in Barrie and one of the things we would highlight," said Carolyn Bell Farrell, executive director of downtown art gallery. "Our hope with this is to create a continuous program of events, exhibitions, public art projects, lecture tours, video screenings, authors' readings, activities that would be programmed at the MacLaren and in the downtown area, and this is something that could grow into a city wide festival that would explore the role of language and contemporary art."

At the gallery itself, there are two new exhibitions that are being highlighted as a part of Carnegie Days. Both draw on the art gallery's origins as a library filled with books. Curators of Logotopia: The Library in Architecture, Art and the Imagination, and Ex Libris will lead tours of the exhibition this weekend.

The festival as a whole explores the role of language in contemporary art. There are more than 50 visual artists, architects, poets, curators and art historians who are participating at 23 different venues in Barrie.

Art also extends beyond the gallery walls to public art projects, such as artist designed bookmarks which have been placed in books at the Barrie Public Library, as well as local bookstores, a surprise for the readers that find them.

In the downtown core, look for six literature-inspired window displays created by area artists. And on Sunday, there is an artistically transformed a shuttle bus that will be available to take people from one Doors Open Barrie site to another from 10 a. m. to 5 p. m.

Additional events around books include everything from poetry and author readings at downtown restaurants to a book launch at the Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery.

Additional highlights include lectures by professors from the University of Waterloo's School of Architecture, video screenings that explore the nature of books and language, and workshops on bookmaking and book sculpture led by three area artists.

Many of the events are free, but where it is not, admission is nominal. For more details, see www.maclarenart.com.

Susan Doolan