June, 2009

On display until June 30
Wabi-Sabi: Photographs of Japan by Bruce Amos

Wabi-Sabi is the characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty. Wabi connotes rustic simplicity, quietness, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear. If an object can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then it can be said to be wabi-sabi. A student of wabi-sabi learns to find simple objects interesting, fascinating and beautiful. On his trip to Japan in April 2008, Ottawa photographer Bruce Amos was searching for ways to capture images which embody traditional Japanese beauty and which transmit this sense of wabi-sabi. The photographs in this exhibition were taken primarily in Kyoto and Ome.

Bruce had an exhibition of his photographs of Mexico at Collected Works in 2005. He was a winner in U.S. Botanic Garden’s The Power of Plants photography contest shown at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, DC and the Chicago Botanic Garden. He is a long-time member of the Camera Club of Ottawa where he has attained Master status in colour slide photography and was winner of Best Slide of the Year in 2007-8. His abstract photographs of Guatemala walls are in the collection of the Art Rental and Sales Service at the Ottawa Art Gallery.

The framed photographs of Japan are for sale at Collected Works as well as quality greeting cards with his Japan images. For more information, please visit www.bruceamos.com. Photographs are on display until June 30.

September, 2009

On display in September
Interior Spaces: Works by Lindsay Watson

Lindsay Watson is an emerging artist who works with oil paint, mixed media, and photographs to "construct" alternative truths to real-life situations. She has long been fascinated by the connection between story-telling and history, both small and large scale, and tries to reconcile that in her imagery by making works that can be read in a number of "true", but often conflicting, ways. The viewer, as an active participant in Watson’s work, is asked to step into the artist’s role of narrative voyeur, where his/her own world view necessarily changes the understanding of each piece.

Part of the West End Studio Tour: September 19-20 and 26-27.

Thursday, September 10
Arc Poetry Magazine presents the Lampman-Scott reading at Collected Works - 7:30 p.m.

The Lampman-Scott award recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry by an author living in the National Capital Region.

More details to come.

Saturday, September 12
Launch for Globetrotter and Hitler's Children by Amatoritsero Ede at Collected Works - 7:00 p.m.

Globetrotter & Hitler's Children is a book of two sequences, melded beautifully and seamlessly, both of which are the shape of the poet's consciousness and body in relation to space and place. Globetrotter is an immigrant's paean to the city of Toronto, while Hitler's Children is a poet's struggle with race, otherness, and Germany in the spirit of witness, passion, humor, melancholy, and understanding.

Amatoritsero Ede, born in Nigeria, was a Hindu monk with the Hare Krishna movement; he has worked as a book editor with a major Nigerian publisher, Spectrum Books, and was the 2005-2006 Writer-in-Residence at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is the winner the Association of Nigerian Authors' (ANA) Poetry Competition's 1993 runner-up prize, the 1998 ANA Christopher Okigbo Prize for Literature, and second place in the 2004 May Ayim Award: International Black German Literary Prize. His writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including: TOK 1: Writing the New Toronto, Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Nigerian Writing, The Fate of Vultures: BBC Prize-Winning Poetry, and Voices from the Fringe: An ANA Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry. Currently, he is editor of Gboungboun Magazine, managing editor of PONAL Quarterly Forum of the Carleton-affiliated Project on New African Literatures, and publisher and managing editor of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement.

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