Roundness was coordinated by Susan Turner through an open, international call on Facebook to artists to reflect on the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The artists were asked to explore the idea of ‘roundness’ and then produce a piece in any medium they wished. Included are artists from Manitoba, Ontario, Japan, and the United States.A sincere and heartfelt thank you goes to Susan Turner for planning and organizing this. She basically did all the heavy lifting, including the graphic design, and continues to do so as she send copies of files to everyone. Additional images, including the one on the cover, are digital prints by Susan Turner.

THE ARTISTS

Graham Asmundson lives and works in Winnipeg. He has an abiding love affair with the circle and its sacredness in all cultures, its divine geometry, its sheer practicality in creating the perfect boundary for artistic expression, its primacy surfaces in his work as a delightful counterpoint and all other aspects of the picture plane and their attending frustrations. He became obsessed with the circle as a basic format for work about a year ago, and its charm has endured. His pen and ink pieces have been likened to exuberant pizzas and to viruses, which now seems uncanny and which now compels him in his work to seek the canny nature of his attending muses. He works by setting down a series of rules and limitations bordering on obsessive/compulsive, but if the impetus requires breaking the rules, he does not hesitate.  He has exhibited work in solo shows in Winnipeg and in group shows in Canada, North Dakota, Los Angeles, and in the Paris exhibition, My Winnipeg, curated by Plug In ICA curators including Noam Gonick. His videos have been screened internationally. During this time of severe limitations due to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19), Asmundson welcomes the opportunity to see how he and other creators can overcome these challenges and to carry the practice of art and the spirit of humanity forward.

Colette Balcaen (BFA, University of Manitoba, 2005) is a Franco-Manitobain artist. She lives and works in Winnipeg. Balcaen integrates textiles, drawing, sculpture, mixed media, and performance. Using fabrics as a base to express her heritage, she creates physical representations of narratives, stitched thread by thread. She is currently exploring felting. Balcaen has participated in group and solo exhibitions at venues including La maison des artistes de Saint-Boniface, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, La Galerie at Centre culturel franco-manitobain, the Womens Film Festival in Vancouver, the Canada Textile Museum in Toronto, the Creative Placemaking Challenge in the West Exchange District in Winnipeg, the Biennale international du lin de Portneuf in Quebec, and the World of Threads in Oakville. “Farandole”, an installation part of the Alliance française project about the Métis culture, was presented in February 2020 at the INSA (Galerie au Centre des Humanités), Lyon, France.

Leona Brown (B.Ed, University of Manitoba and also studied in Saskatoon) is based in Winnipeg and is a mixed-media artist, working primarily large acrylics on canvas. Brown has shown her work in solo shows at Gallery 240 in Ottawa and at Fleet Gallery and Gallery 757 in Winnipeg. She has participated in group exhibitions in Montreal and Winnipeg, in Fabriano and Rome in Italy, and in China. Brown is interested in delving into the personal aspect of roundness after having gone through some illness. She will be continuing to explore the voluptuous sexuality that is present in her work.

Connie Chappel (BFA, University of Manitoba) is a Winnipeg-based artist. Working in installation, she explores the human presence in the natural world as a study of adaptation, diversity, self-generation, the inescapability of physical death as well as the material evidence of time. She has exhibited in juried group exhibitions at the World of Threads Festival, Oakville and at the Orillia Museum of Art and History, both in Ontario. In 2016, she was commissioned to exhibit The Mulvey, a photo installation, for Transitions: The New Biennial for Art and Architecture, Botkyrka Konsthall, Tumba, Sweden. In 2019, she had her first major solo exhibition – Embodiment – at aceartinc, Winnipeg. Chappel built a sculptural work that will be assembled from photographs, printed as photocopies, of tree stumps and bark—round in their forms—that invite pathways for new life for overlooked, forgotten or discarded natural materials.

Berit Engen lives and works Oak Park, Illinois. She began weaving as a child in Norway. She now practices this ancient craft in the centuries-old tradition of making commentaries on Jewish texts and in creating artistic expressions to reflect Jewish. She gives frequent presentations on her ongoing (2007-present) project, WEFT and D’RASH – Weaving a Thousand Jewish Tapestries, which to date includes approximately 575 small-scale, linen-yarn pieces. Her work has been shown in a solo exhibition at the Spertus Institute, Chicago and is part of the collection of the Chicago History Museum. A commission consisting of ten tapestries is on permanent display in Temple Har Zion, River Forest, IL. She is a co-founder of Jewish Artists Collective, Chicago. Engen incorporated both her community in Oak Park and a tale about King Solomon into the concept of roundness. She wove a large tapestry on a homemade, simple frame loom outside in her backyard so passers-by can watch. The tapestry, Gam Zeh Ya’avor (This, Too, Shall Pass), was woven of hand-dyed rags.

Cliff Eyland is best known for making small paintings and drawings and very few round things, aside from his Facebook profile pictures. He studied at Mount Allison University and at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He lives and works in Winnipeg. Eyland has shown his work in public and secret installations in art galleries and libraries in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Solo exhibitions include those at the Art Gallery of Ontario, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, New School University (New York City), Winnipeg Art Gallery, Struts Gallery and Gallery Connexion (both in New Brunswick), Muttart (now Art Gallery of Calgary), Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, and in Halifax at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, eyelevelgallery, Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, and Dalhousie University Art Gallery. Group exhibitions include shows at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) and the Maison Rouge Museum (Paris) as well as in Florence, Manchester, and Lublin. Permanent installations include over 1000 paintings, Winnipeg’s Millennium Library (2005), 5000 paintings, Halifax Central Library (2014), and 600 paintings, Meadows Library Edmonton (2014). He has written criticism for Canadian art magazines since 1983. His curatorial work includes nine years as a curator at the Technical University of Nova Scotia School of Architecture (Daltech) and freelance work for various galleries, including the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg). Eyland was the director of Gallery One One One (now School of Art Gallery), University of Manitoba from 1998 to 2010. In 2018, he retired as associate professor of painting at the University of Manitoba School of Art.

Susan Gold lives and works in Windsor, Ontario. She was born and educated in Detroit and Baltimore and became a Canadian Citizen in 1985. She is Professor Emerita in Visual Arts at the University of Windsor, where she taught drawing, painting, and senior and graduate studies. Recent  exhibitions include, Decorating the End of the World, a solo exhibition at the McIntosh Gallery and Observations IN installation at the University of Western Library, London Ontario; the collaborative exhibition, Dwelling, at Artcite Inc , Windsor; the travelling group exhibition, Land Marks at the Thames Gallery in Chatham, Art Gallery of Windsor, and Peterborough Art Gallery; Plant and Seed exhibition and travelling project, originating in Burgdorf, Germany; and the currently travelling Bravo Sud exhibition,  À la croisée chemin. For some time, Gold has placed images, objects, and mixed media into petri dishes and placed them in windows to reference the scientific eye on the material enclosed. She responds to what she senses is lost when materials are collected, reframed, and represented in the translucent petri dish. Gold continued her work with the petri dish in order to explore the concept of roundness.    

Rafael Goldchain (MA in Art History, University of Toronto, 2017; MFA, York University, 2000), and a Bachelor of Applied Arts, Ryerson University, 1980) is a Canadian Toronto-based photographer. His photographs have been published in several books including Ann Thomas and John McElhone’s The Extended Moment (Canadian Photography Institute, National Gallery of Canada, 2018), Andrea Kunard’s Photography in Canada 1960-2000 (Canadian Photography Institute, National Gallery of Canada, 2017), Ho Tam’s Frontline (Modern Press, Beijing, 2011), William Ewing, Face: The New Photographic Portrait (Thames and Hudson, 2007) and Joan Murray, Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century (Dundurn Press, 1999). Goldchain’s work is the subject of two book monographs: Nostalgia for an Unknown Land (Lumiere Press, 1989) and I Am My Family (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), and of a documentary film entitled Beautifully Broken: The Life and Times of Rafael Goldchain (Willing Mind Productions, Vladimir Kabelik, Director, 2013). His photographs have been exhibited across Canada, the United States, Chile, Cuba, Germany, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, and México. His work is included in private collections including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Portland Art Museum, and the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego. Goldchain teaches in the Honours Bachelor of Photography program at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario.

John Gurdebeke (BFA, University of Manitoba) lives and works in Winnipeg. He works in film and is primarily noted for his work as a picture editor and sound designer. In relation to  roundness, Gurdeke explored the idea of ‘occurrence’. Picture Edit Work of Note: Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room, feature film (2015), Best Canadian Film, TIFF; Keyhole, feature film (2011), Philip Borsos Prize: Best Canadian Film Whistler Film Festival; My Winnipeg, feature film (2007), best Canadian Feature (2007) TIFF, #10—Best films of the decade, Roger Ebert (2009), #3—Top 10 movies of 2008, Time Magazine; Brand upon the Brain, feature film 200, theatrical release & live show (guest narrators including Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Crispin Glover, Eli Wallach), New York Times Critics Pick. Isabella Rossellini’s My Dad is 100 Years Old, short film 2005. Sean Garrity’s Borealis, feature film (2015); My Awkward Sexual Adventure, feature film (2012); Lucid, feature film (2005). Director of Photography: Jody Shapiro’s How to Start Your Own Country, feature documentary (2010). Awards: The Forbidden Room, nomination, Canadian Screen Awards: Achievement in Sound Editing (2016) and nomination, Indiewire Critics’ Poll: Best Editing (2015); How to Start Your Own Country, nomination, Grand Jury Prize, Miami Film Festival (2010); My Winnipeg, nomination, Cinema Eye Honors: Outstanding Achievement in Editing (2009); The Notorious Mrs. Armstrong, winner, Blizzard Award: Best Editing—Non-Dramatic, (2003) and nomination, Gemini Award: Best Picture Editing in a Documentary Program/Series (2002).

Gilles Hébert (BA Honours, University of Manitoba; Ontario College of Art and Design) began his career as an artist making such things as object graffiti on construction fences in downtown Winnipeg and Toronto while studying film and history at university. He works with things that intrigue purely on the basis of their physical qualities and their received value/meaning. Through various manipulative strategies, including alteration, he develops new visual messages while altering the received understanding of the objects. Hébert has had several solo exhibitions, most notably at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art and at the Rivoli inToronto. Over the years his work has been included in group exhibitions at various institutions in Canada. In June 2015, the installation PullFreight was presented at Actual Contemporary in Winnipeg. The following year an associated version of the installation was presented at Espacio Obierto in Havana. In 2018, a third iteration of the PullFreight project titled PullFreight Congress was one of Winnipeg’s Nuit Blanche presentations. He has also produced several video/film projects presented at the Media City Festival in Windsor and Detroit (2009), at the My Winnipeg group show at Plug In ICA and Maison Rouge  in Winnipeg and Paris (2010-12), and in the inaugural project of the Lewyc Institute for Contemporary Art (LICA) in Winnipeg. He participated in SPACE/ESPACE, 2019, the ARTA project at La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, Winnipeg and in Wasagaming.

Philippa (Pippi) Johnson (MArtEd, California College of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley, California and studied art at the University of Manitoba and the Forum Art Institute) arrived in Canada as a young child and was raised in Winnipeg—a city that was full of culture and opportunity in the 50s and 60s. Johnson taught for more than 30 years at a high school in Kenora, Ontario and received an award for outstanding teaching from the University of Manitoba in 1997. She now teaches painting workshops to adults throughout Canada and on cruise ships internationally. Johnson is represented by the Lacosse Gallery, the Birchwood Gallery, and Chenier Fine Art. She has participated in many group shows. At 75, she is curating a retrospective scheduled for September and featuring work by her students. Johnson is interested in expressing her personal vision, capturing a mood or a feeling, and swirling inward. Her painting journey moves through oils, acrylics, watercolours, and image transfers. Her lines and shapes spiral in and across the surface. For this project, Johnson created a mixed-media collage with images of virus shapes and front-line hospital workers.

Nora Kobrinsky (BFA Honours from the University of Manitoba) is a Winnipeg-based painter, printmaker and sculptor. Solo shows include Wired World, Hole in the Wall Gallery, Winnipeg (2014); Small Works, Semai Gallery, Winnipeg (2012); Left Behind, Wasagaming Community Arts Centre, Wasagaming (2011). Selected group shows include Space, La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, Winnipeg and Wasagaming (2019); 9^th International Printmaking Biennial of Douro, Douro, Portugal (2018); Imago Mundi Great and North, Venice, Italy (2017); and Object and Complement, cre8ery, Winnipeg (2017). Kobrinsky is interested in the natural world, paradoxes of modern life, and what lies beneath the surface of things. In thinking about roundness, the satisfying quality of a round musical tone immediately occurred to her. “Roundness” suggests fullness, richness, comfort, satiety, a sense that something is complete in itself, universality as well as perfect geometric simplicity. For this project, Kobrinsky explored these concepts in painting.

Sacha Kopelow (BFA from NSCAD University, Halifax and degrees in International Development and Environmental Studies from University of Winnipeg ) was born and raised in rural Manitoba, but currently lives and works in Winnipeg. In 2019, she had her first solo show Touchless at La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, Winnipeg. Her practice is primarily cast glass, metalsmithing, oil glaze painting, and silverpoint drawing. Regarding roundness, Kopelow considered the curvature of the earth itself and of the landscape. Our earth has achieved a hydrostatic equilibrium as its mass has been rounded by gravitational force. The curvature of the earth is echoed in its rolling landscapes, mounds of rock and soil upon which we build our lives. Kopelow smithed a miniature brass telescope that uses minute Stanhope lens technology and light to allow the viewer a tiny glimpse just over the curve of the world, focusing on one small mound, one bubble encapsulating the roundness of everything, distilling down the sizeable concepts of isolation and interconnectedness to a pinpoint clarity.

Alan Lacovetsky (BFA, MFA) lives and works with pottery in Manitoba. Clay and fire being sacred goes back hundreds of millions of years. It’s almost a religious experience working with them. People still use them so he still makes them. He is happy getting his hands right in there to make beautiful things that people will use every day. Lacovetsky started working with clay 47 years ago on Texada Island, BC. With no running water or electricity, he built a kick wheel and a wood-burning kiln and then he went about digging up clay.  Needing to learn more, he attended the University of Manitoba and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Lacovetsky then travelled to Australia and lived in Sydney for almost 18 years. He returned to Manitoba in 1996 and settled near Oak Hammock Marsh. Together with potter Dave Krindle, he built a studio and wood kiln there. Lacovetsky has worked and exhibited worldwide, and recent exhibits in 2019 were held in Thailand, Korea, Croatia, and China.

Jillian McDonald (BFA, University of Manitoba and MFA, Hunter College, New York City) is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Much of her work is video, but she also makes drawings. In isolation April 2020, she is drawing holes in ice and earth, in pencil crayon on paper. Solo shows include those at Lilith Performance Studio in Sweden, the Esker Foundation in Calgary, and Air Circulation in New York. Her work was featured in group exhibitions at the Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Germany, the International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Venezuela, Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Centro Cultural Montehermoso in Vitoria, Spain, and the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. She was featured on CBC’s Ideas and also reviewed in The New York Times, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, Border Crossings, and Canadian Art. Residencies include those at Glenfiddich in Scotland, Headlands in California, KIAC in The Yukon, LMCC Workspace in New York, and the Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard.

Mark Nisenholt (HBFA, University of Manitoba and MFA, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York) is from Winnipeg but has worked and lived in Thunder Bay, Ontario since 1979. In 2007, his exhibition of 80 inkjet prints, Stranger in Paradise, was shown at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario and then travelled to the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. In 2011, three of his images were unveiled at Prince Arthur’s Landing Pier 2 at the Thunder Bay waterfront as components of the permanent public art installation, Lanterns. He has exhibited annually in regional venues, notably the Definitely Superior annual members exhibition. At Pratt, he completed large charcoal drawings of “planets” and related round or spherical forms. He has returned to the theme often and completed circular, spherical, or orbital works as drawings, watercolours, etchings, and computer graphics. Nisenholt’s intention in this project was to explore metaphoric associations of the form and its inversions: as a planet, a head, a porthole, a portal, a mouth, a cave, or other items. He then convincingly destroyed the flat plane of the paper or the computer screen so as to pull himself and the viewer into the imagined realities explored in the forms.

Carol Philips lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a colorist who works two dimensionally with acrylic paint and collage elements to create non- and semi-representational work. Her purpose is to explore materials, composition, and relationships between her inner and outer worlds. In her forty years as an artist, Jewish mysticism has been the most recurrent theme. Her work has been shown throughout New England and New York, including Jewish Art Salon exhibits. In response to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19), Phillips is making 3’x4’ paintings that feature images of angels plummeting and falling apart with the virus.

Link Phillips lives and works in Winnipeg. His visual art is based on computer images, sometimes printed flat, sometimes folded into 3D structures including pyramids and boxes. He is primarily interested in movement and how a flat image can invoke the impression of activity. He has frequently referenced wallpaper patterning, using it as a visual haiku to provide a constraint within which he can express himself. He also uses patterning as a figure/ground conundrum combined with digital photography so that figure and ground are equally available yet elusive. Phillips is interested in abstraction in visual art as well as reading, recitation, as well as subsequent and audio recording of literary work—in particular James Joyce’s Finnnegan’s Wake. Recently in his visual work, he has been exploring collections of straight lines. Phillips had a major solo exhibition, 111 views of Winnipeg, at Semai Gallery, Winnipeg and has participated in several group shows including previous ARTA projects.

Cynthia Beth Rubin (MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, BA Antioch College) lives and works in New Haven, CT and also works in Narragansett, RI. She is an early adaptor of digital imaging, transitioning from paint in the 1980s. She is a new media artist whose works evoke imagined narratives through interwoven layers of representation and abstraction, frequently combined with augmented reality and interactive experience. Her prints, videos, and interactive works have been shown on the ICC tower façade in Hong Kong, the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Cotton Club screen in Harlem, the ICA in London, and the Jerusalem Biennale, as well as in numerous international festivals featuring digital art. She is past chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community, past co-chair of the SIGGRAPH Asia Art Gallery, and a former Board member of ISEA. Her work has been widely published. Rubin creates work to bring out meanings in juxtapositions, layers, and in associations that move beyond specific representation and into the space of spiritual echoes and the recognizable associations. Recent prints and videos explore the question of how we bring empathy, awareness, and curiosity to the unseen or rarely seen life of the ocean and of microscopic life.

Judith Stevens (BFA from the University of Manitoba) is a Winnipeg-based artist who works in painting, pastel drawing, drawing, and ceramics. She has participated in MAWA’s Artist Mothers group, MAWA’s member exhibitions, and the Pembina Trails Art Teachers group (2008-2019). She has an education degree and currently teaches art and graphic arts to students aged 10 to 14 years in the public education system. She is also a climate activist involved in events with the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition. Stevens explores the natural world and the landscape as well as the human figure through portraits and relationships among people. She has recently been looking at moss seen through the lens of a microscope. Her canvases are round ion an allusion to planet earth and the life cycles of nature.

Leesa Streifler (BFA Honours, University of Manitoba & MFA, Hunter College, NY) lived in Winnipeg until 1986 and then accepted a teaching position at the University of Regina, where she taught painting and drawing until her retirement in December, 2019. She returned to Winnipeg, where she was born, and is pursuing her art practice full time. Currently working in painting and drawing, Streifler’s practice also includes text- and photo-based work. She has always followed a feminist trajectory, and the focus of her work is the female body and social connection. Empathy and human fragility are important considerations she addresses. Lately she has been focusing on the two extremes of end of life and infancy. Her work is informed by abstraction and expressionism, inspiring her interest in vibrant colour and expressive mark-making. Among other venues, Streifler has had solo exhibitions at Moose Jaw Museum and Gallery (forthcoming); Christine Klassen Gallery, Calgary; Lessedra Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; and Art Gallery of Regina. Her work has been included in two-person and group exhibitions at Gallery C103, University of Winnipeg; Angus-Hughes Gallery, London, UK; the Gallery/Art Placement, Saskatoon, and Gallery One One One (now known as the School of Art Gallery), University of Manitoba.

Susan Turner (BA, BFA, University of Manitoba; typographic design, London College of Printing, England) lives and works in Winnipeg. She works digitally and produces archival inkjet prints as well as videos and print-works that intertwine text, voice, and image including imagined covers for imagined books. Working in abstraction with both vibrant and delicate colour, her interests are the ephemeral, the unreachable, and the liminal spaces and connections between the known and the unknown. Her recent images of orbs take their references from nature and from the spheres in Kabbalah, a school of thought in Jewish mysticism. Turner will show the “Orb” prints at a two-person show with ceramist Alan Lacovetsky at Buhler Gallery, St. Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg, Winter/Spring 2020/2021—originally scheduled for June 2020 but delayed because of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). Solo shows include Winnipeg Art Gallery Studio Series; Dunlop Gallery, Regina; Ace Art, PlugIn (Winnipeg); Charter Oak Cultural Center, Hartford, CT; White Water Gallery, North Bay; University of Waterloo Arts Centre; Sol Lewitt Gallery, Chester, CT. Group exhibitions include Spinoza: Marrano of Reason, Amsterdam); Americas All Media, North Dakota State University, Minot; MiniPrint Cantabria, Spain; Abstract Mind, CICA Museum, Seoul; Crossborders, Windsor Printmakers; Pinnacle Gallery, Rochester; Winnipeg Art Gallery; and videos screened in Canada, Rotterdam, Japan, New York, and Italy. She has completed residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Turner was a sessional instructor at the School of Art, University of Manitoba and has been active in numerous capacities in Winnipeg’s artist-run centres.

Calvin Yarush has based his artistic practice primarily in Winnipeg for over 25 years, exploring the theory of drawing, print, and the delineation of spatial and emotional territory. He taught design and drawing at the University of Manitoba from 1987-95 before pursuing independent practice. He has lectured and exhibited painting, printwork and sculpture across Canada, in the United States, and in Europe. Yarush currently lives in Grandview, Manitoba, Canada. Memories, either collective or individual, create associations with and enable interpretations of the colours, materials, subjects, and forms of the works. Most of his 2D work involves the process of gesturing through blending, erasure, covering over, juxtaposition, melting away, and combustion sometimes on a red-oxide primed support. Red oxide references the corporeal reality and the blood of the body, and effectively transforms the support into a skin that accepts the scarifications and deposits of experience, metaphors for the ways in which experiences are processed in time. Memory creates the space or territory in which one lives. Roundness is often thought of as fullness but in some cases, it can be considered to be something hollow or empty like the inside of a bell or the vault of the sky. Yarush’s work is often concerned with this kind of emptiness or translucency of space; that is, the space between conditions.

Michelle Zacharias is a Canadian visual artist (BFA Honours University of Manitoba) based for 20 years in both Saitama City and Kitakyushu, Japan. Zacharias always seems to be on the outside looking in. Is she a Canadian or a Japanese artist?  She works primarily in etching, colour pencil, and natural pigments such as dust. In the nebulae of unidentifiable curves and shapes, her nearly abstract motifs deal with formless and ephemeral phenomena such as air currents in an effort to bring what is usually unseen into the domain of our perception. Solo exhibitions include shows at Cafe 104.5 (Blue Note Japan) and at Gallery Camellia in Tokyo, Japan. Selected two-person or group exhibitions include Chroma at Konya in Fukuoka City; Now Lounge Creative Community at Hotel Il Palazzo, Fukuoka City; as well as many others in Tokyo, Yokohama, Chiba City, Kyoto, Shimonoseki, and Winnipeg. In terms of roundness, Zacharias has been working on pieces that, by depicting circles and dots, focus both on the cosmos and a view from a microscopic lens.

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I still cannot believe I am included in this group of amazing artists. Several were professors at the University of Manitoba, and all have extensive CVs and enviable talent and vision. I think I met the challenge of rising up to their standards or at least I hope so. To respect their individual ownership of the copyright of their images, I am not including them within this post, but you can view the entire project for free as an online magazine at Roundness.

This project was sadly the last one that Cliff Eyland participated in before he passed away this year. Eyland was an invaluable member and contributor to the Winnipeg art scene, and he will be greatly missed. He and I unfortunately had never met but were friends online as one does in the 21st century.

Derecho was a piece specially created for Roundness. Being both verbal and visual, this originally what I wrote as the description for this painting.

A derecho comes from the Spanish word with the same spelling that means ‘straight’. In English, a derecho is a widespread, long-lived wind that moves rapidly in a straight line and is associated with a series of severe thunderstorms. Downburst clusters may be embedded inside the storm. Derechos can strike suddenly and cause great disruption and destruction, making it a perfect metaphor for these times.

The drawing itself features the flow of winds through Asia in May 2020 and dust collected in Japan as a natural pigment, indicating those winds. Dust in spring often has a yellow tinge since annual winds blow in from China. The winds in the anthropocene area carry chemicals, plastic, soot, and other pollutants along with dust from the Gobi Desert, causing Zacharias and many others to experience health problems and the volume creates havoc in industry.