Welcome to thaw.
It usually hits Montreal after everybody and their numbed extremities has had it up the yin yang with winter, but this year it spread across town like a gentle surf.
Perhaps that’s because here at Concordia we’ve had the fortunate distraction over the past two weeks of being able to absorb the Art Matters festival that rejuvenated both the Sir George and Loyola campuses.
It made them fresh.
It was hard, even for those who took little time to step away from their books and classrooms, not to notice that something artistic was amiss at school.
A snow sculpture, of three boys climbing up a ladder to place a huge snowball into the eye-socket of a snow-Christ, graced the field between the Vanier Library and the Administration Building at Loyola, while two gargantuan rectangular prisms balanced precariously in the foyer to the Webster Library downtown with the word “sexy” painted onto the bottom of one and the word “sweaty” on the lower face of the other.
Display cases in the libraries were full of goodies, like clay chilli peppers and the Hive turned into a week-long vernissage of assorted surprises.
Ambling into Reggie’s last Thursday, revellers were offered a short humorous play entitled The Forefathers Fiasco, about three guys on a quest to find the best way to break up with a girlfriend, followed by a rousing tribute to Aretha Franklin from The Superlocraine and a mellow set of light-ambient jazz from a superb quartet.
What an evening.
One that helped bridge the crisp leap from fall into the slippery muds of spring in the same way that it bridged the Fine Arts Faculty at Concordia with the rest of the community.
From the uncanny and unsettling to the poignant and flashy, the Art Matters festival offered Concordia students a fruitful two weeks of images, sights, sounds and spectacles.
An indoor garden one day on the Mezzanine, spoken word activities, a hamburger meat statue of a woman with chains on her ankles pulling her back to a pair of shoes behind her as well as theatre, improv and screenings dotting the campus.
It was an event that not only offered Concordia’s student artists a chance to showcase their talents but it also offered something even more precious to the rest of the Concordia community. The opportunity to appreciate the work of their fellow students in a school that could benefit from a splash of paint here and there to begin with.
The original goal of the festival was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
Perhaps, if the drive from the right people is here next year, Concordia students may even be lucky enough to see this turned into an annual event.
It usually hits Montreal after everybody and their numbed extremities has had it up the yin yang with winter, but this year it spread across town like a gentle surf.
Perhaps that’s because here at Concordia we’ve had the fortunate distraction over the past two weeks of being able to absorb the Art Matters festival that rejuvenated both the Sir George and Loyola campuses.
It made them fresh.
It was hard, even for those who took little time to step away from their books and classrooms, not to notice that something artistic was amiss at school.
A snow sculpture, of three boys climbing up a ladder to place a huge snowball into the eye-socket of a snow-Christ, graced the field between the Vanier Library and the Administration Building at Loyola, while two gargantuan rectangular prisms balanced precariously in the foyer to the Webster Library downtown with the word “sexy” painted onto the bottom of one and the word “sweaty” on the lower face of the other.
Display cases in the libraries were full of goodies, like clay chilli peppers and the Hive turned into a week-long vernissage of assorted surprises.
Ambling into Reggie’s last Thursday, revellers were offered a short humorous play entitled The Forefathers Fiasco, about three guys on a quest to find the best way to break up with a girlfriend, followed by a rousing tribute to Aretha Franklin from The Superlocraine and a mellow set of light-ambient jazz from a superb quartet.
What an evening.
One that helped bridge the crisp leap from fall into the slippery muds of spring in the same way that it bridged the Fine Arts Faculty at Concordia with the rest of the community.
From the uncanny and unsettling to the poignant and flashy, the Art Matters festival offered Concordia students a fruitful two weeks of images, sights, sounds and spectacles.
An indoor garden one day on the Mezzanine, spoken word activities, a hamburger meat statue of a woman with chains on her ankles pulling her back to a pair of shoes behind her as well as theatre, improv and screenings dotting the campus.
It was an event that not only offered Concordia’s student artists a chance to showcase their talents but it also offered something even more precious to the rest of the Concordia community. The opportunity to appreciate the work of their fellow students in a school that could benefit from a splash of paint here and there to begin with.
The original goal of the festival was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
Perhaps, if the drive from the right people is here next year, Concordia students may even be lucky enough to see this turned into an annual event.
