Capsule Review: Girls Walking and Confetti 

               Transformation is an on-going exhibition (Sept 28, 2018-April 13, 2019) at the Gordon Smith Art Gallery, North Vancouver, featuring artworks from the Artists for Kids collection, which are focused on educating young students on visual arts.  From the collection, I selected Girls Walking and its companion Confetti (Fig. 1) by Angela Grossmann to show how she converted archaic objects into art forms.

            Grossmann (b. 1955) is an internationally recognized Canadian contemporary artist, who is well-known for her mixed media collages and printing on “teenager” subjects such as Alpha Girls (2004). A graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Concordia University and a former faculty at a few universities, she now lives in Vancouver to practice her profession. 

Fig. 1 Angela Grossmann, Girls Walking (left, larger image) and Confetti, 2008, collage/mixed media, etching with archival inkjet on paper, 50 x 38.5 inches. The original image (left) is secured on the frame, whereas the mark-made duplicate (right) is floated outside the frame. The white lines appearing on Confetti are window reflections.

            Girls Walking, i.e., the original work consists of torn up pieces of archaic photographs from an unknown source, whereas Confetti is its smaller print form that has been blurred and splattered with ink around the girls (mark-making). With the exception of the splattering, the two images are nearly identical, especially when viewed from afar. But a closer observation will reveal a collage versus a mark-made. In both images the girl holding her friend appears stern, gazing at the viewer, whereas the other glances calmly. Although the blurring and splattering of Confetti signify some physical/emotional changes with age, but the girls remain clinging onto each other. I thus interpret Grossman’s goal is to tell us that spiritual relationships overwhelm contrasting physical appearances and outlast physiological transformation. However, the subtle variants of the images pose challenges to distal viewers to unravel the hidden message. Consequently, the images lead to either various interpretations or reactions due to little context about the work.

            Girls Walking and Confetti fit in the exhibition theme of transformation, as Grossmann successfully demonstrated the power of mixed media in the reincarnation of archaic objects into new art forms with their own life cycle.