Housewarming - An Exhibition by Karine Giboulo

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Last weekend, I visited Karine Giboulo’s Housewarming exhibition at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto with my husband and our daughter. We were fortunate to get a tour guide to give us deeper information about the art.


Housewarming means you invite family and friends to show them your new home. In Germany, it is customary to bring bread and salt for good fortune for the hosts and their homes. Bread is a staple food, and salt is a formerly expensive mineral used as a preservative.


Karine Giboulo, a sculptor from Montreal, created more than 500 miniature polymer-clay figures during the COVID pandemic. She displays our living conditions during isolation with insecurity about food supplies and the battle against the disease.


The installation at the Gardiner Museum resembles a home inspired by the artist's residence with a kitchen, pantry, living room, bedroom, bathroom, playroom and garden.


In each area, the figures tell stories, some closely related to Karine Giboulo's experiences during physical isolation. The confinement was even worse for her because she had just been diagnosed with a restricting illness. Suffering from mobility loss and pain during sleepless nights caused her to feel like a young person caged in an old body.


The artist portrays the limitations of our daily lives during the pandemic. She also critiques our consumerism, showing the impact of human activity on nature, visible in pollution, destruction of habitats, and climate change. Her observations offer lots of thought-provoking reflections on our actions.


You can visit the Housewarming exhibition until May 7, 2023.


To see some of the art, check out this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/0tCEzvaU9h4.

Happy Easter!

Blog 15

 

What are your plans for the long weekend? Will you travel to see family or have a big feast at your home? Do you plan to set time aside for creativity?


If you want to create some relaxing Easter art, I have a couple of templates to get the whole family to colour with you. When you are finished, you can create a collage of all the family artworks as a keepsake you can share.


Please click here to access the free egg colouring pages


If you have needle felting supplies, check out the beautiful needle-felted eggs:

You might be wondering how I managed the perfect shape of the eggs. While you could create the eggs entirely out of wool, I took a shortcut and used a Styrofoam egg for the inside.


Check out my Tuesday Creativity Tip posts on my Facebook page for more creative ideas.


Have a wonderful long weekend! Relax, create and enjoy the company of loved ones. Maybe, you can even enjoy some fresh air and look for the first signs of spring. Most of our garden is still snow-covered, but I was excited to spot the first crocuses close to the south wall of our house.

HAPPY EASTER!

Sketching People

 

Blog 14

This past month, I created a lot of sketches of people. Our theatre season began again. We sit in the first row and usually have enough light to draw. Sometimes, I only have time for a quick outline because some actors move a lot. Usually, when I draw sketches with more detail, I don’t create them in one go. Instead, I go back and forth between different characters. I continue with each when they are in the same spot as when I started sketching them. For the production of Sense and Sensibility, sketching was more demanding because of the large number of characters on stage. I love drawing at the theatre because it helps me remember the plays better.

I also draw often during Zoom calls when I know a speaker is featured. I attempt to get a likeness which is challenging because the facial expressions change with every movement. I prefer to catch them with a closed mouth because drawing teeth is even more demanding. Sometimes when I get too frustrated, I take a screenshot and rework the drawing later with the photo.


When I tried to draw the actors of the German movie Die Dienstagsfrauen, I also started sketching the actresses simultaneously, then went back and forth whenever they were in a similar position on the screen. I am happy with two sketches, while the other two renditions show hardly any likeness. Nevertheless, I captured enough information to remember the four very different and distinct personalities the actresses played.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It was a fun exercise I might repeat in the future to practice. I still want to work on more abstract renditions to concentrate less on the actual appearance and more on the actions of the characters to make my sketches more dynamic. This way, I might sketch a variety of people quickly in public. I am still too concerned about achieving the likeness instead of capturing the mood and movement. However, I enjoy the challenge of simplifying, which feels uncomfortable.

Is there anything you want to learn that feels out of your comfort zone?

Many Parts Make a Dog

 

Blog 13


When I recently posted the above picture on my Facebook page, some people got curious about my needle-felted sculpture of Alex, a miniature version of our Australian Shepherd.

Alex was our foster dog. I picked him up from his former owner after neighbours had complained to a dog rescue organization that they had seen that the owner kept Alex in a crate in a garage at all times and dragged Alex back home on his collar if he managed to escape his confinement. I loved Alex from the first moment I saw him, and I am sure it was mutual.


It took me a couple of days to convince my husband that we should keep him because we already had a Golden Retriever. We live in the country, and space was no problem, but we had to figure out if we could afford a second dog. In the end, Alex's zest for life won us all over.


He and Candy were a good match. Candy was exceptionally laid-back, more a cat than a dog, and hated exercise. However, Alex's infectious personality brought out the dog in her. Both Candy and Alex lost a lot of hair. However, for many years we threw it out like probably most people. When I spent more time felting, I read about the possibility to needle-felt dog fur. I started – to my family’s horror – to collect our hair for future projects.


I was curious how the fur would perform for needle felting and began to create a model of Candy’s head. When she died unexpectedly, I put the sculpted head and the rest of her fur in a box in the basement where it still awaits further attention.


After Candy’s death, I started a sculpture of Alex. I stopped several times - either because I had to wait for Alex to lose more fur or because I got busy with other projects. Twice our cat, Miko, ripped my work apart when he kneaded the body to create a comfortable nest for a nap. Miko loved cuddling up with my sculpture, while he usually was too scared to search for the closeness of the actual dog.





The whole body is out of his fur. Most of it comes from his undercoat, so the felted dog is lighter than Alex. Only the nails, the dark areas around his eyes and the snout are wool. I formed his nose out of air-dry clay and gave him glass eyes.

I stopped counting the hours once I passed 100. I still worked on this sculpture long into the night before his death, with him lying at my feet. I cherish these last quiet hours with him.


The sculpture is a tangible memory of our beloved Alex. Whenever I pet his soft fur, it makes me feel at peace and happy. 

While I only create needle-felted sculptures of our family members, I accept commissions of needle-felted paintings of your beloved pet. To receive more information, contact me at info@KerstinPeters.ca.