Pre-Shrunk 2016: Both Sides Now

Our annual Pre-Shrunk show opened last night to great success. We want to say thank you to our community of artists and art supporters who made it such a fun evening. We have over 300 works by over 80 artists this year who just keep raising the bar. There are so many great pieces in the show, you can check them out ONLINE HERE, but you definitely have to come see them in person to appreciate the great textures and surfaces of the pieces.

Before we get any further in this post, I just want to take a time out to introduce myself. My name is Caitlin McGuire, some of you may know me as the new gal in the gallery. Some of you know me as the lady who's not Crystal (but if you mistake me for Crystal I will happily take the compliment). Some of you know me as an artist who makes very colourful works. I fully embrace all of these titles.

This was my third year participating as an artist in the show and my first helping with the install. It makes me so happy, as both an artist and a gallery assistant, to see how many people come and support this show. I managed to get one shot in before the gallery completely filled up.

We're also planning on sharing some "behind the scenes" process work from some of our artists this upcoming week, so I thought I would start and get the ball rolling. For Pre-Shrunk I created 9 pieces titled "City Levels". This is what the final product looks like:

For this piece I wanted to create PreShrunks that could work as individual pieces, as a whole piece, or as mix and match pieces. I like to explore the city on foot, and when I do I'm always taking pictures of things that catch my eye. For this piece I started by creating a collage from my photos (as well as few I pulled from online) on Photoshop that turned out like this:

After which I did a rough drawing to start plotting out the individual pieces, that I then coloured with crayons (because who doesn't love to colour with crayons):

The image then gets adjusted and redrawn onto boards that have been sanded and painted with an acrylic base colour and stapled together so they don't shift during the painting process. I prefer to paint on a coloured ground instead of a white ground as it can make the colours I lay down look a little too stark during the process:

Then comes my favourite part, the colour! I like to let the relationships of the colours and their tonal values guide my work as I go. Sometimes I know exactly what colour I want to use, but I like to let the colours around it inform the direction it goes in.

Once the paint is dry the edges get a coat of varnish and the staples come out to reveal the final piece!

Which can then be shuffled around and grouped for many fun arrangements! 

Check back in throughout the week for more process from our artists from the show, and don't forget to pop in to see the work with your own two eyes! Pre-Shrunk 2016 runs until February 13th, and our hours are Tues-Sat, 10am-5:30pm. 

Have a great weekend! 

Signing off,

Caitlin