CATHERINE DE MONTREUIL

Werkin on it.

2010-10-11T00:54:00.001-07:00

First of all, you need to check this out. November 5th and 6th at Summerhill Winery Kelowna, BC, I will have a table selling art as well as some new porcelain-drawings i'm working on, along with felter-friend Eve Haley. I'll post pictures soon.

click it!

In progress. Not done. Almost though.

acrylic, india ink on thrift store blue cloth.

20"x20" I think.

Another Apparition

2010-09-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

A Creep, and a Brother

Acrylic, marker, collage on glass

16"x20"

FOR SALE

That Conduit Thing

2010-09-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

Ark

Dimensions variable

Pine, wood glue

Solitude

12'x12'

Newspaper, glaze, acrylic on canvas

Forest I

16'x20'

Newspaper, glaze, dirt, acrylic on canvas

So Photos from the Conduit Festival have just recently shown up! I thought I would never see a picture of my ark sculpture completed --- it fell to the ground and smashed a few days after the festival, and this is the only photo of it on display I think. Paintings are mine as well

More Conduit photos, full of Local Kelowna artists... see if this'll werk fer ya: http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=892955400

Apparitions

2010-09-20T18:35:00.001-07:00

16'x20' (I think)

pen, acrylic, glue on glass

SOLD!!!!

Part of my latest series, Apparitions. Found the name for it today, inspired by a mom and Dali.

I knoooow it's been forever.

2010-04-14T12:26:00.001-07:00

Okay, so the monday post thing worked for awhile. But I've been busy... and distracted... all those excuses. Anyways, here are some photos from yet another collab I did, this time with a poet!

My friend Erin Banks curated the gallery at school for Water Week, and told me that I could make anyyyything to do with water, and she would put it in. So, here is the giant squid out of sewn strips of newspaper, along with her poem in response to the piece.

Tentacle Tango

Small speck
of soot black swims
through open water.

Silly little
creature; sinking
into my sandbox.

Shimmy shaking
towards your skeletal limbs;
synthetic flippers instead of slithery spurs.

You sense
my tentacle slip
around a sliver of your

tiny shape,
holding tightly—
a fish hook baiting

my prey.
I sweep you off
your feet as tentacles tangle limbs.

We one,
two, three step
below the spotlight—sunless depths.

Here, home,
is where you follow
my lead.

We’ll come
to the home
of the tentacle tango.

A fur teacup!

2010-02-20T02:11:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I missed a few weeks. It was bound to happen sooner or later. But my past few weeks have been wonderfully filled with art and inspiration and shows and learning. And well, just having fun and not sleeping much. (Which doesn't translate well into getting actual school work and projects done.... shoot)

Anyways, here is the completed version friends. The Nest. Photos taken by the wonderful Aidan Whitely, me and Brit got a bit of a photo shoot with our creation.

It was in the Ambient concert/sculpture room at Conduit. It definitely looks good lit up and with a band in front of it.

The Nest, as well as my Ark and two of my forest series paintings will be in the Rotary Centre for the Arts for the month of February... not that much longer I suppose.

Also! If you are in Vernon, check out the Gallery Vertigo. Brit Bachman moved her curated show "Architecture: Digress" there for the month, 4 of my 'Concrete Abstractions' (see below...) pieces going with it.

Other than that, I just spent last week in Vancouver, which was so great. Wilco, Califone, Feist, Olympics, Art Gallery... kind of a cultural experience. I've been working on an essay for the past few days on Meret Oppenheim's Object (le déjeuner en fourrure) which is just so great!

More to come soon...

I guess it's monday.

2010-02-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

Yea, it's 5:30 in the morning and I have hardly had enough sleep. So it's a simple post this week. For those of you that don't already know, we had a bunch of people over at our place for chai and samosa's yesterday which was wonderful. Chai making is one valuable skill i managed to bring back from India. Sooo I'm tired, but am very insomniac at the moment as well. Maybe too much caffeine?

Anyways, as for the art... it's a little something I drew up awhile ago. One of my favourites.

I'd like you to tell me what you think of it as well... It's just an illustration that I have considered for silkscreening, but i'd love to hear your thoughts on it. How it makes you feel. What it reminds you of.

Willow, Birch, Cherry, Grass, Plum

2010-01-25T20:35:00.000-08:00

We're weaving something

building something

Something wonderful.

We're at the school right now, pulling an all nighter for sure, with a few cups of Chocolate mint rooibos tea, a french press with coffee ready for later, some rice cakes. We might need a midnight run outside for some more branches.

Earlier we made a trip to the metal junkyard, which I wish we had a picture of. We found ourselves rummaging through old metal cogs and sprockets and hand cranks and switchboards and wonderful beautiful things in an old worn down wooden building with shelves falling over themselves and rays of light coming through the broken roof. Rusty, dirty, metal everywhere, and beautiful.

This is me about 10 minutes ago

With my collab-proj partner Brit

Curious?

This will be at CONDUIT, a kelowna-wide, evening event of beauty and art and music and crafts and spoken word and sustainable ways of living! Come!

And stay tuned for next week folks.

(By the way, the two shows last week were a lot of fun. Lots of new and wonderful people around, other great artists and some good feedback on my work, which is always good for the self esteem)

A Meditation and LINKS FOR SHOWS!

2010-01-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

Acrylic, wax, ink, glaze on canvas. 36"x48"

Mars Hill Café / / Architecture: Digress - UBCO Fina Gallery / / CONDUIT

Global frustration. Perhaps.

2010-01-11T15:59:00.000-08:00

First of all, there is a music and art show happening at Mars Hill Cafe on tuesday the 19th! Yes, some of my art will be there, some paintings that I am still picking out... It would be so lovely to see you there! It's on KLO Rd. and it starts at 7.

Here is one of the paintings that will be there on display, a montage of trees I started working on about a year and a half ago. I'm working on a different, larger painting... mixed media and wax. I'm stoked on it. You should be too.

Global frustration? Well it only lasted for a little while, and then I started to get into it. So here is the globe coming out of the oven after I waterlogged it in the sink.

My teacher has this thing for turning junk into art, and that is really our project right now. So I found an old globe in the basement and have been destroying it and putting it back together for the past few days. Not something I would normally think to do, but it's definitely fun that this is my school work! This isn't meant to be a far too cliché representation of our world falling to pieces as we destroy it day after day.... although inevitably it speaks of that. I suppose it's not at all a bad thing to consider. I'll stick up a final picture of the finished project. I just poured a bunch of was all over it from a candle I melted down.

[side note: melted vanilla candles smell absolutely, wretchedly pungent. I had to open up all the windows and doors to spare my room mates the pain of it]

And I made my monday blog deadline by 3 minutes this week! cheers!

Recently: Sculpture!

2010-01-04T13:33:00.000-08:00

Alright, so I've been learning a bit about sculpture - a fairly new field for me. I don't mean carving and sculpting marble or stone [yet], but creating 3 dimensional works out of... whatever. Woodworking has been the thing lately for me.

First, I made a tea cabinet (not really sculpture, more like handyman stuff). I designed it after Persian architecture and design, painting different patterns and images taken right from pictures I snapped at the Taj Mahal. My friends Mitch and Amin scribbled some Arabic on the front as well, so it definitely speaks of my travels and taste for tea.

But much more fun than that was creating the Ark.

Originally meant to be designed after the barca chair, my Ark has morphed into its own beautiful, boat-like being. It's made of spruce and wood glue, and I had to experiment with steam-bending the wood for this. About 26 clamps had to be attached each time I added a new strip of wood to keep the wood glue and tabs in place until it dried.

I feel as though this should be in a big Frank LLoyd Wright home, or just a home with big wall space... on the ceiling or on the wall with some good lighting. Of course, it's for sale - if you know of any potential buyers, pass the word!

Show with Lumuno and Defending Buckets

2009-12-24T20:02:00.000-08:00

So, it has been quite awhile since I've posted anything at all up here, but I'm gonna start making the effort. One thing I'm going to challenge myself with is to start posting once a week. So, Mondays (hopefully) you can expect either a sketch, a painting or some photos of something or other that I'm creating.

Since I last posted any art up here, I have decided to go to art school. I'm going to UBCO now in the BFA program. It's interesting being in school for art - yea, I'm learning some new things, but at the expense of not having time for my own stuff sometimes. I guess I just need to learn how to make my school projects MY projects as well. Probably a healthy challenge...

Anyways, here are some pictures from September. My musician friend Lumuno asked me to design THIS for him...

(Peace and Love to Palestine and Israel!)

...as well as display some art at his concert (feat. Defending Buckets) at Mars Hill Café in Kelowna.

Some old and some new paintings I've been working on for a series. Enjoy! And expect some more things soon...

abstract in the concrete

2009-08-05T15:02:00.001-07:00

This is my first art series, Abstract in the Concrete. This series had a showing in July and August 2008 at the Kelowna French Cultural center. They are all reworkings in Photoshop from original photos. To view them larger, just click on them, and if they are TOO big, just press Ctrl - (minus).

Boats

Original Photo, Photoshop - 16"x12"

Traffic

Original Photo, Photoshop - 24"x18"

Remixed

Watercolour, ink, Photoshop - 18"x18"

Égypte

Original Photo, Photoshop -

Air Conditioning

Original Photo, Photoshop - 15"x20

Par la Fenêtre

Original Photo, Photoshop - 19.5"x14.25"

Lawnmowers

Original Photo, Photoshop - 24"x31"

Kelowna Street Musicians

Original 35mm Black and White Photo, Photoshop

Garbage City

Original Photo, Photoshop - 21"x14"