June 9 to June 26, 2021 — Main Gallery 

The Beetle and the Cat

2021 Georgian College Fine Art Graduate Exhibition
Catherine Bechard Abbi Meyers

Catherine Bechard is a multidisciplinary artist, living and working in the lakeside hamlet of Alcona in Innisfil, Ontario. 

"I am a multidisciplinary artist, living and working in the lakeside hamlet of Alcona in Innisfil, Ontario. Working in painting and drawing, textiles and sculpture, I most often use the materials that are present and readily available to me in my immediate surroundings. Using among other things, fabrics, threads, ink-blocks, and dyes to create art pieces, I incorporate found objects, collage, and a folk sensibility into my work. To find a lonely piece of someone’s finer trash on the side of the road, for me is like finding an abandoned puppy and giving it a home, a new life to be valued and admired.It’s all experimental and unknown territory.
       Renew, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink are an intricate part of my process. I have traveled extensively and have seen firsthand the impact of the excesses of humans on our planet. As a visual artist I feel privileged to be able to share those works so close to my heart and perhaps inspire others to see a second life for the worthy things we so readily deposit in our landfills."

Abbi Meyers is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in print media, drawing, and painting. Her work is developed through personal narratives and the heavy symbolism that embodies her interest for beetles. Their physical features call to her as an artist, urging to be recreated over and over. They act as protection, their shells acting as shields against vulnerability, a safe place to hide behind.  But also as an example of growth, transformation, change, and the institutional need to survive – a metaphor for the human condition. She is drawn to self-portraiture as a way to embrace and represent the symbolism inherent in her work as a mechanism of self-coping. Created through a process of practice-based research and experimentation, she will often combine and 

June 9 to June 26, 2021 — BHCV Gallery ​

This is how I remember it (but it's not for  you) 

The work of Mar Merrall University of Waterloo BA Thesis  ​

Mar Merrall
This piece was created as my BA thesis piece at the
University of Waterloo. Due to the onset of COVID-19 it was never installed and has sat in a box for the past year.
This piece is made up of 75 small love letters (of which 70  are displayed here) to my partner, each one engraved on its own 4x4 plexiglass tile. So much of my experience around coming to terms with my sexuality has been rooted in the negative aspects of it - rather than celebrating the many wonderful things that it has brought me. This piece acts as an ode to 75 moments thatcapture and celebrate the tenderness of this love; a way to recontextualize the experience of coming out into a reward that is worthy of the action.
I can’t wait to share that with all of you.
​
Material: pink, orange, yellow plexiglass