Allisonian made Member of the British Empire by the Queen

Congratulations to respected educator Shirley Pearman ('62) who has been made a Member of the British Empire [MBE] by the Queen for decades of service to teaching and the arts.

News of the awards came today as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. 

Mrs Pearman devoted 35 years of her working life to the education and training of young Bermudians in the classroom. She retired in 1997 after serving 16 years as First Assistant at Warwick Secondary School. 

With degrees from Mount Allison (BFA) and New York University (MA Ed), she was the first Bermudian to obtain a Master's Degree in Art Education.

Her service as a teacher and art specialist have been rewarded with recognition from the Sandys Rotary Club, Spring into the Arts and the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce, which in 2007 named her as one of its 100 Wonder Women.

She served on various boards and committees including the Bermuda Arts Council, National Library, Stamp Advisory Board, Emancipation Committee and Bermuda National Gallery committees.

She participated in the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington, DC in 2001, which she described as “one of the highlights of my life” and has also contributed exhibits to the Bermuda National Museum.

As one of the first black Bermudians to serve on the Executive of the Bermuda Historical Society, Mrs Pearman was instrumental in conceiving, organising and administering postgraduate awards for Bermudian scholars engaged in research projects related to Bermuda’s history.

Artist reveals all

Picture this: Stephen Harper casually reclines on a plush chaise lounge wearing a wry smile - and nothing else. A scruffy dog rests by his outstretched leg, while a woman among a group of hovering men serves the lumpy, hairy prime minister a Tim Hortons coffee.

It's called The Emperor Haute Couture, a painting by Miramichi-born artist, and Allisonian Maggie Sutherland that's received an avalanche of commentary since it made headlines last month.

Sutherland, self-described as a "social realist," credits her beginnings in New Brunswick for helping focus her artist's eye. "I wanted to learn anatomy and make people look right. I was really hung up on it. It was kind of an obsession for me," she said, recalling a suggestion by a Mount Allison art mentor that she sharpen her drawing skills.

In 1985, Sutherland enrolled at Mount Allison to study art. While she was most interested in classical, representational portraits, the school's Fine Art program was, at the time, geared toward abstract art. Though she left the university after two years, she credits printmaker David Silverberg's critique for pushing her to improve.

While she doesn't consider herself particularly political, she began the painting out of frustration with the government in late 2010. Harper didn't pose for the portrait, which Sutherland modelled after a 19th century work by French painter, Edouard Manet.

Public response to Sutherland's work has been both enormous and curiously polarizing, the artist says. While positive feedback dwarfs the negative, people either love it, or REALLY hate it.

The painting drew interest from potential purchasers all across the country. After a few low-ball offers, her dealer sold the piece for its $5,000 asking price to a man in Quebec.

To see the painting, ready the full story: Artist who painted Harper reveals all (Here Magazine)

Allisonian, Artist wins national honour

A national honour was bestowed on painter Mary Pratt ('61) last week at The Rooms when the Society of Canadian Artists recognized her with an honorary life membership into the SCA.

The CBC's Beth Macdonell recently paid her a visit at her St. John's home. See video

Alum Exhibition in Vancouver

 

 

RANDALL STEEVES :  S O M A 

JUNE 5 - 20

 

Reception: Saturday June 9, 2 - 4pm

Elissa Cristall Gallery

2239 Granville Street, Vancouver BC

  

Randall Steeves' ('88) thickly painted, textured paintings invite the viewer to reconsider the gesture of painting itself. The canvases explore the relationship between the photographic index and the painterly trace with a wry nod towards conceptual art practice. 

The exhibition features six paintings, all of which have been completed over the last two years. The subject of the canvases is the fingerprint. Steeves had himself "processed" by the Vancouver Police Department in preparation for this work and the pieces are made up entirely of his own prints. 

The paintings are all made from encaustic, a beeswax based paint that is heated and brushed onto the canvas where it hardens immediately. The process results in a complex surface that can be read as a chronology of the painting's construction and as a record of the painter's physical presence and actions. The physicality of the paintings is reinforced by the fingerprint imagery. For Steeves, the fingerprint is "a metaphor for painting... for what I'm doing when I'm making paintings, and what we're doing when we look at paintings. It's about the examination and categorization of human marks, of the traces we all leave behind. Painting can be thought of in similar terms."

Randall Steeves was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He studied at Mount Allison and received an MFA from the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Since then he has been based in the Vancouver area. He has lectured and led workshops at art galleries, colleges and universities across Western Canada and has exhibited his work internationally.