Geoff Sandhurst, Artist, Calgary, Alberta

Sunday, September 15, 2024

Hi Everyone, Its Geoff's wife Corinne. Geoff has an entry on exhibit at The Morton, in Grand Rapids, Michigan at ArtPrize,.org. You can see a few of the digital vingnettes of drawings from the digital display at this link. His Artist Statement is below..

https://www.artprize.org/entries#28811

Artist Statement

Throughout my life I have created what I imagined in various artistic mediums, particularly metal sculpting, in small and large scale. After suffering a debilitating illness in 2016, my health and stamina failed me. I turned my focus to drawing to satisfy my artistic passion. I began to experiment, and found an affinity with drawing on newsprint. A newspaper is stronger when the pages are bundled together. I also was stronger when "bundled" together with the people that support me. I found solace in this creation of “Seeing Things;” my attempt to keep myself relevant and connected to my family and the outside world. “Seeing Things” is composed of original drawings inspired by newspaper images. In these drawings, you will see the things revealed to me that dwell in the spaces, shadows, and hidden places of newspaper images. These works are influenced by my fascination with African, Mayan and Canadian West Coast indigenous art. I use soft graphite pencils to rough in the raw images and release what I see. I harden the image with black ink. I shade with blending sticks. The vegetable ink may be partially removed from the newsprint using an eraser. I use white pencil crayon to highlight. It may take two to four weeks to finish one drawing with an average of 20 to 50 hours per drawing and I work on 1 to 3 drawings at a time. In concurrence with the reduction of physical media, such as newspapers, the drawings are scanned and cropped to curated vignettes of what I “see”. I hope you enjoy seeing the world through my eyes.

Venue

There is voting once a day, if you would like to take an opportunity to support Geoff. Or just take a peek at all the amazing artists entered in ArtPrize.

All the best!

Corinne

Friday, August 16, 2024

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Alpine Skier Sculpture by Geoff Sandhurst

Geoff finished this Alpine Skier and is shipping it out to Vancouver soon. I look forward to some day getting a proper light box, so we can take better photos. It took 150 hours. It is not cast like a bronze. It's carved steel - done with an angle grinder and a great deal of patience and perseverance. Some of the finer details like the folds in the skin in his face is done with a separating disk on a Foredom jeweller's drill. The base is solid maple. I hope you enjoy! Corinne

A Winter Visit to the King George Under the Prairie Sky Sculpture and Artsplan.ca

Geoff and I popped down to see the "Under the Prairie Sky" sculpture at Christmas time. It was wonderful to see the contrast between the building and the sculpture with the overcast sky. We had some great conversations about all the wonderful memories made working with the students and staff.

It was especially comforting to see "Under the Prairie Sky" there, when we still do not know what happened to the sculptures Geoff worked so hard on for the old Creative Kid Museum at the TELUS World of Science. It was heart breaking for us to think that they may have ended up in a scrap heap after the auction. We think the three foot print totems did go at an earlier sale to another children's museum in Canada and hopefully they still exist. Let us know if you see them! Geoff and I made up a whole story about all the Alberta animal footprints that interacted on the blue plastic water pipe that made the spinning totems. If you search this blog for totems, yarn tree and Picasso Tractor, the blog entries and photos should come up.

We wish we had known that Picasso Tractor went up for auction. As always, Geoff's projects are family projects as his work impacts all our lives in this household. It's a sad for all of us to not know what happened. We have great pictures of our kids sitting on the 1950's Massey Harris tractor before Geoff disassembled it to create the sculpture on the giant gear box he made.

We were at CADA's Artsplan open house tonight and we mentioned the sculpture. It made me nostalgic for our time at King George School. It was an incredible experience and we so appreciated the students cards, and their amazing artwork created in their own challenge to design a sculpture of what was under the prairie sky. We have kept the cards, letters and pictures safe. Thank you for the wonderful memories!

I highly recommend going out to the Open Houses for Artsplan. Here is the link -
http://artsplan.ca/content/phase-iii-open-house-dates

There are great ideas coming out of it and I think its a great opportunity for all artists, all arts organizations and arts supporters of all disciplines to become aware of it and the possibilities and goals that are coming out of it. Thank you to CADA and the citizens panel for all their work on this. www.artsplan.ca.

Sincerely,

Corinne

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Video For the Global TV coverage yesterday

http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/video/prairie+sculpture/video.html?v=2240126906&p=1&s=dd#gil+tucker

Congratulations Geoff and King George School! From Corinne

Monday, May 28, 2012

Under the Prairie Sky Collaborative Sculpture Unveiled.

The King George School Collaborative Sculpture, Under the Prairie Sky, was unveiled today! The sculpture is a recognition of the Donors/Sponsors that made the school's new playground possible. Students researched, and suggested elements for the sculpture and hammered textures on aluminum aspen leaves that I riveted together to create the sculpture.

Gil Tucker will have a piece on Global TV, Channel 7 tonight at 6:55.

I appreciated the opportunity to work with the enthusiastic Students, Lara, Jodi and all School Council and School staff and Mme Samson, Principal. I will post pics this week.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Drawing finished

I finished the 36" Drawing - it took approximately 90 hours, and I just finished building the crate.

The hard part is shipping it to the USA to my client.

If anyone has recommendations on a good shipper, please let me know!

The Next meeting of the South Calgary Artist Network....Thursday, May 17, 2012 from 6:30-8:30 pm at the Fish Creek Library

All Welcome - Join artists of all disciplines and art enthusiasts for an informal, drop-in opportunity to mingle, network, and share experiences and projects. Young people are welcome and must be accompanied by an adult.