The Pearl Company

Amanda McIntyre: From Abstract to Figurative. On the walls now! We will have a “Closing Party” for this show, May 23.  Amanda is an emerging Hamilton Artist. She has an Honours Bachelors Degree in Fine Art, Studio Visual Arts, from York University and has made it her goal to show the world her art. For the past two years she has been part of 11 group shows and 10 solo exhibits. She has curated several group exhibits, commissioned to complete over 30 commissions and sold another 80 pieces. Amanda tends to dabble in all types of mediums from intaglio and woodcut printing, to painting of all sorts, and photography as well. The themes of her work change as often as her choice of medium, ranging from social comments, to contrasting religion and society, to pure abstraction. This exhibit, at the Pearl Company, will be a display of paintings from abstract to figurative. www.amcintyreart.ca

Keeping the Dream Alive! Support The Pearl! Saturday, February 16. 7:00p.m. Give What You Wish. (From a Toonie to a Tune.)  To the numerous well-wishers and supporters who sent love and offers of help, who passed on their dismay, distress and outrage and who have asked us what they can do, we have never needed your support more. This particular event, being pulled together by ‘Allies of The Pearl’, will be a mini-support-and-funds-raiser to help us get past both the trauma of the horrendous events last week (we need lots of hugs and hand-holding…), and to help get our feet back under us financially. Feb.16th was to be DJ (former VJ) Michael Williams’ Dance Party and Michael has graciously agreed to still be here with the dance music, but this is the only possible date we have until the end of March and we need to use it. Much will be added over the next while; art, music and contributions of… (do you have something you would like to share?) If Gary can manage it, he too will play. We would normally have food, but we are looking for help with that as well. It would be great to have a potluck!  We are inviting all who can to drop by for 5 minutes, an hour, the entire evening, just to show your support and concern for a plight that was as bizarre as it was violent.

Over the years we have put our heads and our hearts on the line. We have insisted on keeping a wonderful, ambiance-laden structure that seems to have been built for powerful acoustics and warm gatherings, and the dream has been to keep it as a voice for the arts! The Pearl Company has filled a number of necessary roles in its neighbourhood and its community. It is a stage for budding, mid, and realized talent in the music, theatre and visual arts fields; it is a place for community gatherings and celebrations; it fosters numbers of creative undertakings from gutsy new ideas to rehearsal space to festivals.  And, it could be so much more!

There is another simple answer if you can’t make it on the 16th: Continue to support by coming to events; tell your friends, your neighbours, your co-workers.  Thank you so much. Hope to see you soon, Barbara and Gary

“Eclecticism”: Five Diverse Women: Opening Saturday, January 26 @ 7:00 ‘til 9. No charge. Grace Loney, Sandi Ewasiuk; Renate Min-Oo; Callie Archer, Ruby Lockett. These talented local women have it all.  Colour, texture, variety; it’s a visual feast of acrylic, encaustic, fabric, found objects, decoupage. Grace Loney uses acrylic, oil pastel, water colour, and painterly mixed media to create depth in abstract expression. Her paintings are intuitive and alive with colour and rhythm. http://www.graceloneystudio.com; Sandee Ewasiuk specializes in exploring everyday scenes turning them upside down, backwards and sideways. Vibrant reds, yellows, and blues are used to create tongue in cheek landscapes populated by puckered lips and gravity-defying hair where fantasy and reality merge. http://www.s-ewasiuk.ca; Renate Min-Oo is an award winning textile artist who combines geometric forms, colours, contrast and different fabrics to create new designs. As an equally accomplished potter she also brings Raku and textile together to enhance and complete her highly original works. http://www.renate.ca Callie Archer paints with watercolour and acrylic; she’s a colourist with a loosely representational style, who is particularly sensitive to the shapes and textures of landscape, capturing the light, the calm and the ambiance. Ruby Lockett is a local landscape artist painting in acrylic and specializing in waterfalls; her work pulls the viewer directly into the composition.

Opening followed at 9:00 by “Down The Rhodes“ A musical and visual tribute to the Fender Rhodes electric piano.

The Art Bus is Sponsored by Judy Marsales Real Estate Brokerage:

First 2 Fridays of every month! Check out Hamilton’s unique and constantly evolving art scene!  Call Barbara (905.524.0606) or email (info@thepearlcompany.ca) to reserve your seat.  Next dates: January 11.  Cost: $15/$10 students/artists.  Start: 6:30 from The Pearl.

• December 7: (Gallery on the Bay, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, L’Arche Studio & Gallery, 205 Studios & Gallery for the 2^nd annual Sculptor’s Guild Show) Once again we travel our own path catching a number of exciting shows at some of the unique galleries that dot Hamilton.
• December 14: We’ll start with a visit to the multitude of artist’s studios and galleries at 270 Sherman (The former Imperial Cotton Mill) where they are having their holiday Open House. Then to the James North Art Crawl with its blocks and blocks of studios, galleries, eclectic shops, music & more… Finishing up at the Tiger Group Studio Gallery for more great art and a warm and genuine finale to the evening.

• (more…)

“Compilation” Art Opening: Friday, November 30. 7:00 to 10:00pm. No charge. Curated by Amanda McIntyre. From watercolor, acrylic and sculptural paintings, The Pearl Company is hosting an exhibit of 10 talented artists. The exhibit “Compilation” will be on display from November 30th (opening night) until mid January. Artists include; Elizabeth Gosse, Robin Pulver-Andrews, Danuta and Kasia Niton, Amber Aasman, Amanda Immurs, Heidi Perron, Beverly Sneath, Callie Archer and Amanda McIntyre. Come check out these talented artists and maybe find something special for someone on your list.

Art Opening: Women of Fire, Women of Snow: Friday, October 19, 7:00pm. No charge. Three Women; Three Points of View: The Pearl Company & Mansang ArtStudio invite you to an Art opening by Colombian Artists Eddyth Gaviria, Idalid Parra and Dora Restrepo. Giving artful expression to their many memories and dreams on canvas, their works present a polychromatic mirror of imagination, sensuality, poetry and music bordering on the mystical. These three Columbian women, now living and making their vibrant, personal art in Hamilton, display their different visions of the world around them. 

Roxanne Potvin: Saturday, June 9: 8:00 pm $15 / $10 students/artists: When last at The Pearl, Roxanne blew the audience out of the theatre with an utterly delightful and eclectic display from her talented self. With her latest album “Play”, Potvin has achieved something that few artists ever succeed in doing – she’s expanded her style and grown as an artist while still keeping the grit and authenticity that is so appealing about her music.  Her smart and sassy new album Play, finds the Montreal-based artist pushing new buttons and continuing her evolution from a stylish, bluesy guitar slinger to a more tuneful pop-orientated performer, free-spirited and varied.  Steve Dawson encouraged her in her decision to shift direction and helped her keep the songs on “Play” ambitious, while never losing the loose limbed joyful feeling that inspired them.  She says about her aggressive, energy-driven hooks of Play, “I had been listening to all different types of music and learning to approach writing as a discipline. I found myself going back to the Beatles and Beck.”  Roxanne can rock with the best of them when she wants! www.roxannepotvin.com

Alignment: Saturday, May 12, 7:00pm start! $15 at the door: A multi-disciplinary event brought to you by PENTA (People Engaging and Networking Through the Arts), Nationless Minds, and the Burlington Slam Project: Hosted by the dynamic Greg “Ritallin” Frankson, Alignment  converges on 2 floors of The Pearl Company and brings you a stellar line-up of performers and artists exploring where various artistic expressions intersect and align with spoken word.  Spoken word is getting more attention all the time. Performers like Ian Keteku are at the forefront of this movement and PENTA is happy to have him join their first installation piece “Alignment”. The night will be filled with inspiring talents like Truth Is…, Prufrock, Shadowrunner, Hyf, Brad Morden, Electric Jon, The Burlington 2011 Slam Team, and Komi Olafimihan.  Being a PENTA show, these poets will be surrounded by photography, music, film, movement… What better way to experience a painting than to see it made from beginning to end while hearing the influences around it?  PENTA fills beautiful spaces with all the senses. Tickets: Available in advance at various spoken word events throughout April in southern Ontario, or contact PENTA at: we.are.PENTA@gmail.com for online purchase. http://www.wearepenta.com

Stephanie Vegh: Revisions: Gallery Opening: Thursday, April 12.  (7pm to 10pm) No Charge. Respected Hamilton-born, McMaster graduate, artist and writer Stephanie Vegh has an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art.  Her body of work has been shown from Toronto to Leeds, England. Her playful, drawn interventions into history books are both humorous and unnerving. These drawings are both a direct creative response to the book’s contents and a subversive act in which the status of the book as inalienable fact is undermined by the interpretation of the reader.  While playful in the spirit of the idle student’s textbook scratchings, Stephanie Vegh’s  interventions into history books reveal a serious stake in civilizations defined by their conquerors. Her labour-intensive drawings of diminutive subjects at an excessive scale in relation to their illustrated environments refuses the logic of these books, forcing a fusion between their history and another, more fantastic possibility.  www.stephanievegh.ca
(more…)

SW Austin: Fresh New Work! Wednesday, March 21.  (7pm to 10pm) No Charge. Spring is in the air and with that,  FRESH NEW LIFE! SW Austin celebrates again by showcasing several NEW WORKS! -so new we wonder if the paint has even dried! Come and celebrate the NEW and enjoy LIVE JAZZ with the energetic fury of Errunriv (pron: river run)! Meet the artist, and connect in the Pearl’s wonderful historical environment.
A very exciting display of talent, SW Austin’s declared concern is the paint itself – the physicality of the paint, the traces from the movement of his brush. This is as important to the final picture as colour and shape. Steve Austin creates this new work through a layering and extracting process that results in a thick hide of paint on the canvas. The image is created when the artist scrapes paint away from the resulting strata, revealing in a picture that is neither landscape nor still life, nor pure abstraction, but a study in contrast. He now lives in Hamilton and is excited to show his new works for the first time in Hamilton at The Pearl Company. Runs through March 31st.  www.swaustinart.blogspot.com

SW Austin: Recent Work. Opening in The Pearl Gallery Thursday, March 1.  (7pm to 10pm). SW Austin’s declared concern is the paint itself – the physicality of the paint, the traces from the movement of his brush. This is as important to the final picture as colour and shape. Steve Austin creates this new work through a layering and extracting process that results in a thick hide of paint on the canvas. The image is created when the artist scrapes paint away from the resulting strata, revealing in a picture that is neither landscape nor still life, nor pure abstraction, but a study in contrast. He now lives in Hamilton and is excited to show this new work for the first time in Hamilton at The Pearl Company. Runs through March 31st.  swaustinart.blogspot.com

Jaron Freeman Fox and The Opposite of Everything: Saturday, February 11. 8:00pm. $15 / $10 students/artists.  Described as “Gogol Bordello meets The Mothers of Invention”, The Opposite of Everything somehow combine bluegrass with Indian music, African beats with sea shanties, or klezmer with the blues, and make it sound like the most natural thing in the world.  With a diverse cast of Toronto’s finest and most adventurous musicians, the band is led by maniac violin virtuoso Jaron Freeman-Fox known for his celebrated solo album Manic Almanac.
“Jaron Freeman Fox  & The Opposite of Everything electrified the Blue Skies stage. It was an instant dance party.  The music was both challenging and superb. A definite highlight of the weekend.  Jaron’s creativity and talents are simply amazing…” –Joel LeBlanc- Artistic Director, Blue Skies Music Festival
“Jaron Freeman Fox and the Opposite of Everything electrified the crowds wherever they went at Live From the Rock. The exuberance, talent, creativity and controlled insanity demonstrated by this exciting Toronto conglomeration was a joy to behold.” –Jennifer Ives: Artistic Director, Live From the Rock   http://theoppositeofeverything.com

The Art Bus is Sponsored by Judy Marsales Real Estate Brokerage:

First 2 Fridays of every month! (Except January when it is only the second Friday…) Check out an art scene which changes every single month and which will leave you breathless!
Seats available for upcoming buses.  Next dates: February 3 & 10.

January 13: We will start with a stroll down Ottawa Street – Earls Court Gallery, Under the Moon, Allsorts Gallery, and Sketch Gallery .  We will then head to the James North Art Crawl with its blocks and blocks of studios, galleries, eclectic shops, music  & more… Finishing up at the inimitable Tiger Group Studio Gallery; more great art and refreshments!

In the Pearl Company Gallery: The Waterfall Show. Opening November 18. 7:00 – 10:00. Our unique
geography surrounds us with waterfalls; Artists find them irresistible! Paintings, sketches and photographs: The Tiger Group, Michael Babyn, John Davies, Rob Laffier. Also showing: Private Collection Sale: Prints, lithographs, some originals, featuring such well-known names as Benjamin Chee Chee, Ken Danby, James Fraser.  No charge. Through December.

The Art Bus is Sponsored by Judy Marsales Real Estate:

Next Tours: December 2 and 9

November 11: Off first to Ottawa Street to take in the multitude of galleries, antique stores and excitement now making this street one of the “best streets in Canada”.  Then for something completely different, we will stop at the Sheraton to catch the vibrant and transcendent artwork of Hamilton-born Toller Cranston who’s presenting his art as the ‘Artcracker’ part of the upcoming Nutcracker.   Then we’ll head for the James North Art Crawl for more excitement and blocks and blocks of artists studios and galleries!

•    Starting at 6:30 from ‘The Pearl Company’, 16 Steven Street @ King William.
•    Please reserve a spot via email or phone, and purchase your trip ($15.00/$10 students/artists) when you arrive
•    We finish up at The Pearl for an après-tour wind-down which includes a tour of the building or whatever event is  happening on the theatre floor