For Immediate Release

2009 Scholarship Exhibitions: November 5 to 28, 2009

Pamela Dodds: Memory’s Witness     
Hazel Eckert: [MONUMENTAL]    
Kelsey Schuett: my own square of innocent noughts

Opening reception: Thursday, November 5, 6-9 pm (Artists’ talks  from 6-7 pm)

Toronto, ON – November 2, 2009 – Open Studio is pleased to present the 2009 Scholarship Exhibitions from November 5 to 28, 2009 by artists Pamela Dodds (Nick Novak Scholarship), Hazel Eckert (Donald O’Born Family Scholarship), and Kelsey Schuett (Don Phillips Scholarship). Each year, Open Studio awards three scholarships, providing artists working in print media with both professional support and access to studio facilities to create new work during a one-year period. All three artists will give illustrated talks about their work and the progress of their projects over the year on Thursday, November 5 at 6 pm at Open Studio, followed by an opening reception. An exhibition brochure with an essay by Toronto-based artist and writer Lauren Nurse accompanies these exhibitions.

In the Open Studio Gallery, large, black and white woodcut prints by Pamela Dodds respond to the current pervasive atmosphere of war, reflecting on the destruction, futility and inevitable reverberations for future generations. War, though not in our midst, is a pervasive fact of our daily lives—whether we have friends or relatives directly involved or affected by war, or we simply encounter it daily in the news and politics here at home.   

Hazel Eckert’s work is an archive of visual research. Shown in Open Studio’s Print Sales Gallery, Eckert’s work functions as a visual excavation into the artist’s aesthetic preoccupation with urban anatomy and decay. Through a combination of bookwork and installation, the fragments Eckert records in an attempt to relate her experience of the urban environment are a projection of her mindscape onto the materials of the cityscape.

Presented in the George Gilmour Members’ Gallery, Kelsey Schuett’s work incorporates drawing, lithography and intaglio and examines identity and how we communicate, particularly through body language. In our social environment, non-verbal communication is a silent mediator, conveying messages without the use of verbal language, through which we are able to infer emotions and influence people's perception of our competence, power and vulnerability.

Open Studio thanks The Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation and the Donald O’Born Family for their kind support of the 2008-09 Scholarship Program.

For full artist and writer biographies, or to download a copy of the exhibition brochure, visit the Exhibitions page at http://www.openstudio.on.ca. For high-resolution images or interviews, please email sara@openstudio.on.ca.

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Open Studio gratefully acknowledges the support of The City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Open Studio also acknowledges the generous support of its members and numerous foundations, corporations and individuals.

Open Studio, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 104, Toronto, ON  M5V 3A8 T/F: 416-504-8238  
E: office@openstudio.on.ca  W: http://www.openstudio.on.ca   Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 12 - 5 p.m.  
Media Contact: Sara Kelly, Associate Director, sara@openstudio.on.ca.