Week of March 27, 2008, Issue #649
ARTS
Art and Life
Sleczkowska hopes to bring more Art into your Life
AGNIESZKA MATEJKO / agnieszka@vueweekly.com
Whenever I travel to another country, I’m amazed how challenging the simplest tasks become. Just buying bread in Québec became an Ativan-popping experience when my French brought furrows of surprise to the sales ladies’ brows. Since then I have had abiding admiration for newcomers who thrive and who contribute gloriously innovative ideas to Canada. Ania Sleczkowska, the owner of a new arts company, Art and Life, is precisely one of those creative immigrants who may well change the face of art business in Edmonton.
Sleczkowska came to Edmonton about 15 years ago with a suitcase, rudimentary English and a deep love of art. She had an art history degree from her native Poland and extensive experience in curating cutting-edge exhibitions. But, oilrig workers being more sought after than curators, Sleczkowska held a variety of jobs all the while dreaming of a way to turn her art background into a career.
Eventually, after landing a job with Gene Dub (one of Edmonton’s leading architects) placing art in buildings and doing some interior design among many other duties, an idea began to dawn. Perhaps there was a way to combine her curatorial experience with a new design business. After all, installation art is not so different from turning a dull office into a breathtaking interior, or turning a private home into a warm, inviting gallery.
Sleczkowska decided to take the plunge and launch a company. It wouldn’t be just another interior decorating business: she wanted to take some of the most innovative art in the city and place it seamlessly into homes or businesses. To prove that it could be done, Sleczkowska set out to create an inaugural exhibition.
Fortunately an opportunity for a space opened. She was able to use one of Gene Dub’s dazzling Seventh Street Lofts as her gallery. Dub’s striking interior retains fragments of an old warehouse that are transformed by modern elements: semi-transparent walls of glass that shed an eerie glow, a polished cement floor that looks like an entrancing abstract painting, oversized doors that make us feel like we’re following Alice through Wonderland. Everything here becomes art: even an old plumbing pipe protruding from a wall seems like it could be sold for thousands at a New York art auction.
Into this spectacular space (one Sleczkowska helped design by creating the colour scheme and selecting furniture) she placed the work of three emerging artists. Right away, you know that this is not ordinary interior design; at the entrance you find yourself standing amidst Sherri Chaba’s seven-foot tall columns of wire that shed undulating shadows onto Dub’s expansive walls. Jewel Shaw’s delicate prints hang up to the ceiling like in a French salon, while Kelly Johner’s large wood sculptures extend through the glass wall onto a patio. Sleczkowska even plans to throw back projections onto translucent glass to complete the exhibition. The overall effect is nothing like stereotypical law firm landscape decor.
Is Edmonton ready for cutting edge, New York-style interior design? Can this small woman with limited resources and big ideas help to change corporate attitudes to purchasing art? It’s so easy to be cynical; but then every new idea has to step over a chorus of cynics. Who knows, perhaps the next time we visit our accountant we will see not more prairie landscapes, but dancing shadows of wire sculpture on the walls. From the bottom of my heart, I hope so: it is my wish that Sleczkowska’s dream becomes reality. V
Thu, Mar 27 (12 pm - 2 pm, 4 pm - 8 pm)
By appointment to Sun, Mar 30
Art and Life
Curated by Ania Sleczkowska
Featuring works by: Jewel Shaw,
Kelly Johner, Sherri Chaba
Loft 131, 10309 - 107 st
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