HAND PIC’D 2018
The 5th edition of our annual invitational exhibition, HANDPIC’D, continues a precedent of celebrating emerging artists and recent graduates within the local Calgary arts community. Presenting works by Sean Taal, Megan Feniak and Kellen Spencer, HANDPIC’D 2018 features three artists navigating their own personal experiences, memories and relationship to place, through a skilful and considered practice.
Megan Feniak investigates the boundaries of human perception. Drawing from the design philosophies and functionality of Shaker carpentry, Feniak considers the ideologies embedded in the handmade and natural. Using a diverse range of material, Feniak incorporates woodwork, silkscreen and textiles alongside the use of natural elements such as bees, wax and minerals. With these materials, she creates tools and diagrams intended to shape a ‘metaphysical experience’ for the viewer. Feniak graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2018). She received the Board of Governors Graduating Student Award in Drawing.
Kellen Spencer considers the connection between urban redevelopment, memory and the notion of ‘home’. Through an analogue and digital practice, Spencer documents the increasing redevelopment occurring in inner-city residential neighbourhoods. Interested in the way his own personal memories are shaped by demolition and construction, Spencer seeks to develop a better understanding of how ‘home’ is defined and experienced. Spencer recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2018). He received the Board of Governors Graduating Student Award in Print Media.
Through meticulously detailed pencil drawings, Sean Taal renders fictionalized spaces inspired by his own sometimes-uncomfortable visual experiences of the world around him. Aiming to create a sense of uncertainty, Taal’s work blurs the dichotomy between comfort and discomfort, real and imagined. He creates work that is both approachable to the viewer, yet at the same time uninviting and jarring. Taal graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design with BFA in drawing in 2015. In 2012, he attended the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) New York Studio Residency program.
