All Events
On Wednesday evenings this summer, a group of young people have been working with artist Sean William Dawson to create a wall mural on the back wall of the Collier Street Parkade in downtown Barrie – an ideal location that is visible from Dunlop Street and the Barrie Waterfront. The project is a result of a partnership between the MacLarenArtCentre, the City of Barrie, and the Downtown BIA. The mural project is an outreach programme of the MacLaren, and supports the City of Barrie’s and the Downtown BIA’s commitment to building community pride and appeal. The mural is also a feature of the 2010 Lawnchair Luminata Waterfront Series, and visitors have been able to watch the mural come to life throughout July and August.
 2009.JPG "Arnaud Maggs, Scrapbook 4, 2009, digital colour print on paper, 49 x 68 cm. Photo credit: Arnaud Maggs, 2010. Courtesy of Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto.")
Please join us on Wednesday, September 15 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm to celebrate Carnegie Days 2010 and the opening of the festival exhibitions at the MacLaren:
Arnaud Maggs: Lost and Found
Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak: ...bump in the night, Barrie
Andrew Hunter: The Burden of Proof
Titles 7
Ed Pien: Enchantment
Artist Performance: The Burden of Proof: Andrew Hunter on Andrew Hunter and Andrew Hunter
The Carnegie Room, MacLarenArtCentre, 8:00 pm. Free
Artist, writer and curator Andrew T. Hunter weaves together story-telling and physical objects to create semi-historical narratives. In this...
Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak have profoundly influenced the developments in video and media art in Canada, and received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2005 for lifetime achievement. Since 1983, they have collaborated on videotapes, performances, and photo/text works that explore and document social realities from subjective viewpoints. They are professors at the University of Toronto's Visual Studies Programme and co-founders of Vtape.
Internationally acclaimed Toronto photographer Arnaud Maggs is one of Canada’s most esteemed living artists. In the film, produced by Toronto filmmaker Annette Mangaard, Maggs discusses his decision to become a visual artist at the age of 47 and abandon his early career success as a graphic designer and fashion photographer. He also touches on the motivation of his own mortality, an inevitability that keeps him working both to consolidate his massive body of work and to continue the search for fresh ideas. Meticulous and courageous in his approach, Maggs creates art that speaks of the universality of the human experience. (50 minutes, 2002)
4:00 to 5:30 pm
Curators Sunny Kerr and Yam Lau of the WayUpWayDown Collective will speak about Titles 7 at Page & Turners Book Store (123 Dunlop Street E, downtown Barrie) and then tour visitors through a selection of artist books installed at Kerry's Book Store (25 Dunlop Street W, downtown Barrie).
Yam Lau is an artist and educator living in Toronto. He is on the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University and represented by Leo Kamen Gallery, Toronto. Sunny Kerr is an artist, curator and educator living in Toronto. He manages student and educational programmes at the University of Toronto Art Centre. Tania Ursomarzo is an artist and architect based in Toronto. She is an architectural designer at Stantec Architecture and curator of the Stantec Window Gallery...
Save the Date!
The second annual MacLaren Legacy Dinner will pay tribute to Jamie Massie, community leader and philanthropist.
Join us for an outstanding evening featuring Dr. Vincent Lam, whose debut novel, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A featured event of the MacLaren's Carnegie Days Festival, this event also includes a live auction, gourmet dinner by Groovy Tuesday's Bistro and Cravings Fine Food Market and Catering.
To reserve tickets, contact Lynn Strachan, (705) 720-1044 ext. 237 or lynn@maclarenart.com
Join us for a special TGIF Workshop: Inking Up with Artist Ed Pien
Friday September 17, 3:00 to 5:00 pm
Rotary Education Centre. Free
For ages 14 to 24
A featured event of Carnegie Days 2010
Participants in this hands-on workshop will be shown various ways of painting with ink and brush by exhibiting artist Ed Pien. After practicing ink painting techniques, they will collaborate on paper-based three dimensional objects from their drawings.
Ed Pien received his MFA from York University and teaches in the Visual Studies Department of the University of Toronto. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
11:00 am to noon
Come to the Barrie Farmer's Market for a children's parade!
In July, artist Andrew Hunter worked with children from the Barrie area during Art Quest, a MacLaren summer arts camp, to create lake-monster costumes based on Hunter's research for his project The Burden of Proof. Hunter will lead the group in this public parade.
About the exhibition, The Burden of Proof
This narrative project by Waterloo artist, writer and curator Andrew T. Hunter focuses on a fictional character, Andrew Herbert Hunter, who acts as a bridge between himself and historical Barrie figure Andew Frederick Hunter (1863-1940). A.F. Hunter was a leading Simcoe County historian, archaeologist and publisher whose serious academic...
1:00 to 2:00 pm
In collaboration with the Barrie Public Library, the Barrie artist collective Ear to the Ground create an interactive reading, taking the collective library experience to a whole new level.
Ear to the Ground is a cultural group who use the language of arts and culture as a catalyst for environmental awareness and social action. The collective consists of local artists Jenn Guerin, Jacqui Swanek and Whitney O’Brien, recent graduates of the School of Design and Visual Arts, Georgian College.
This hands-on workshop for young people ages 14 to 24, explores the art of making and writing comics, from creating characters to inking pencil drawings. Each participant will design and contribute a one-page, six panel comic strip to a bound collective comic-zine.
Raised in Barrie, Ontario, Steve Manale is a cartoonist and illustrator who has worked for clients like Nickelodeon, YTV, and The Toronto Star. Steve is a monthly contributor to ChickaDee magazine. In addition to writing and drawing comic strips, Steve has worked as a singer in a band, costume designer, art director, storyboard artist, voice-over actor, movie extra, and sign painter. Steve's...
Angus Ross Room, Barrie Public Library, 2:30 to 4:00 pm
The MacLarenArtCentre’s Teen Advisory Council and the Barrie Public Library’s Teen Advisory Board are pleased to present Princes et Princesses (2000) a French silhouette animation written and directed by Michel Ocelot. This unusual feature film is a children's movie for adults that includes six short, beautifully animated, traditional fairy tales. Each story is different, but crafted in the same spirit; it’s like nothing you've ever seen before. (70 minutes, French with English subtitles.)
Merchant of Venison anyone? Experience the bold creativity of Barrie’s finest culinary artists. Select Barrie restaurateurs celebrate Carnegie Days with themed menu items inspired by literary classics. Please call the restaurants to make your dinner reservations and ask about the Carnegie Days menu.
At the Five, 10 Dunlop Street East, (705) 725-9608
Groovy Tuesdays Bistro, 73 Collier Street, (705) 721-0302
Michael and Marion’s, 89 Bayfield Street, (705) 721-1188
The North Restaurant...
Fact and fiction converge in this talent-driven drama based on Jay Parini’s novel about Leo Tolstoy. The Last Station focuses on the marriage between Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his devoted wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) in its final years. After almost fifty years of marriage the Countess Sofya suddenly finds her entire world turned upside down. In the name of his newly created religion, the great Russian novelist has renounced his noble title and his property in favour of poverty, vegetarianism and even celibacy. What’s more, Tolstoy may have been persuaded by his disciple, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), to leave the rights to his iconic novels to the Russian people rather than his own family. Sofya uses every strategy at her disposal to fiercely fight against the...
Casa Cappuccino hosts an evening of open mic poetry and readings by published authors and local novice writers and poets. Under the guidance of the Society of the Spoken Word, the MacLarenArtCentre’s Teen Advisory Council has organized the event with and for their peers. This is a great opportunity to see and hear Barrie’s young poets and writers demonstrate their talents.
Society of the Spoken Word is a Laurentian@Georgian English Faculty based-group focused on bringing all writers—young and old, amateur and professional, casual and serious—together to share their poetry and prose.
Written by Darrell Dennis, Directed by Herbie Barnes
Performance Bus Departs from the MacLarenArtCentre at 8:00 pm and returns at 9:30 pm
When initially staged on the moving bus in the spring of 2009, Tales of an Urban Indian became a smash hit and ran for seventy performances. Now, this production is back for one performance only before its repeat engagement in May 2011. Tales of an Urban Indian is the story of Simon Douglas, a contemporary First Nations male born on a reserve in British Columbia in the 1970s and raised both on the reserve and in the city of Vancouver. The story is a semi-autobiographical tale about a kid growing up. Told entirely from a personal perspective, Tales of an Urban...
10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Free
The Barrie artist collective Ear to the Ground has transformed a shuttle bus with language and visual art, which will tour visitors to select Doors Open Barrie sites, the Tourism Barrie Office at the Southshore Community Centre and festival hotel partners. On board the bus, visitors will discover a “library on wheels” or “book mobile”. Throughout the day, Barrie authors Dr. Bruce Meyer, Damian Lopes and Trudee Romanek will board the bus to share readings from selected works.
Ear to the Ground is a cultural group who use the language of arts and culture as a catalyst for environmental awareness and...
Tours of the building and the exhibitions, all day 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Visitors are invited to join informative building and exhibition tours held throughout the day and led by MacLaren Gallery Guides, staff and exhibiting artists.
Video Screenings at 10:30 am, 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm
Andrew Carnegie: Prince of Steel, directed by Austin Hoyt, explores the life and legacy of the immigrant who rose to become one of the world's richest men, a legendary philanthropist and the confidante of presidents. From his childhood in Scotland to the continuing charitable work of the foundations he established, this documentary tells the story of a man who lived the American dream, told through expert commentary, archival footage and interviews with family members, including his only surviving grandchild. (50 minutes, 1997)
10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Join artist, writer and curator Andrew Hunter in this workshop to create stories and illustrated books that will be published online and in simple folding formats as part of Hunter’s community project The Burden of Proof. The workshop will employ the online publishing tool Bookleteer (www.bookleteer.com) developed by the UK artist collective Proboscis (www.proboscis.org.uk), a long-time collaborator of Hunter's. (See the exhibition description for more about this project.)
noon, 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm. Free
Susan Charters is a storyteller, writer, teacher and musician from Orillia, whose welcoming and powerful style draws her audience to the tales she tells. For Carnegie Days, Charters honours the late Alice Kane, a storyteller and librarian, who played a major role in developing the Toronto Public Library's world-renowned children's library services, and was an inspiration to Canada's storytelling community. Selections will suit adults and children and will include “The Woman of the Sea,” “The Blue Faience Hippopotamus,” and “Charlie Rowland” (all found in Ms. Kane’s book The Dreamer Awakes), as well as a mix of Irish and multi-cultural tales that Ms. Kane loved....
1:30 to 3:00 pm
Regional artist Megan Thorpe will lead this family workshop, focusing on easy-to-make pop-up books that depict and communicate a narrative in each family’s life.
Meghan Thorpe is a graduate of Thompson Rivers University with a Fine Arts Degree. She has instructed children's art classes with the Maclaren and the VanGo Program as well as a visual arts program at a Montessori School for children aged five to eight. Currently Thorpe is pursuing her Bachelor of Education and working as a visual artist. Visit www.canvasgallery.ca to view Thorpe’s work.