Katie Ohe
Moonsoon, 2006
Polished welded steel, automobile paint, internal mechanical rotary system, Dimensions variable

Artists’ Roundtable with Robin Arsenault, Isla Burns, Katie Ohe, Evan Penny and curator Katherine Ylitalo from MONSOON.

Robin Arseneault is a graduate of the Alberta University of the Arts (formally, Alberta College of Art & Design (BFA, 1998)) and the Edinburgh College of Art (MFA, 2005). A semi-finalist for the Sobey Art Award in 2007, Arseneault received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award in 2008 and has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Arseneault’s practice includes sculpture, drawing, photography and collage. She has an active record of exhibitions including within Canada, USA, Scotland, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands. In 2011, she collaborated with Paul Jackson to complete the public sculpture commission, Hunting Blind for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, that was on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta. Her work is represented by Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary, AB.

Isla Burns was born in Calcutta in 1952. She has a Diploma in sculpture from the Alberta College of Art, a MVA in Sculpture from the University of Alberta, and an extensive working experience as a welder in the aerospace and oil industry. Burns travelled frequently between five cities: Bombay, Monghyr, Saharanpur, Calcutta and Gauhati. This time and these places left an indelible visual memory which later became a deep source of inspiration in her sculptures. While steel is Burns’ main medium, she has a longstanding interest in portraiture and the figure which are often incorporated in her work. Burns has been teaching at the University of Alberta since the early 80s. She received the Beta Sigma Phi Award in Art and Design in 1978, an Award for Excellence from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2002, and was inducted into the Cultural Hall of Fame in Edmonton in 2013. Burns has widely exhibited in Canada, and has worked and exhibited in the UK, USA, Spain and Greece.

Katie Ohe is considered one of Alberta’s pioneers of abstract art. Her six-decade career working in sculpture in a range of materials including steel, concrete, epoxy and chrome has spearheaded the abstract sculpture medium in Alberta. Ohe has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and internationally, and her sculptures are found in numerous public collections. Ohe has had significant positive influence as an artist, educator and philanthropist and is a fiercely beloved teacher and mentor. She has taught sculpture at the Alberta College of Art and Design since 1970, and her students include many successful and high-profile artists with international careers. Now in her 82nd year of a very diverse, creative and exceptionally giving and nurturing life, she continues to experiment and remains an influential and driving force in Alberta’s contemporary art scene.

Evan Penny was born in South Africa in 1953, and immigrated to Canada in 1964. In 1975 he graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary with an Honours Fine Art Diploma. Two years later, he returned to the Alberta College of Art and Design and completed Post-Graduate studies in sculpture. From his earliest sculptural busts in the 1970s through to his first nude sculptures in the early 1980s, Penny has devoted himself to an examination of how the concepts of sculptural realism have been influenced by classicism, romanticism, and - most importantly for the artist – by the advent of traditional and digital photography. Over the past fifteen years Penny has stated that his interest has been to explore the discrepancies between the way we might experience each other in real time and space and the way we might imagine the equivalent in an image.