The Creative engAGE Living Lab (ELL) community is happy to share art, poetry, photos, stories, and memories that are inspired by favourite recipes they enjoy eating, making, sharing, and ordering out.
Participating Artists
Alice Balka Alison Bowie Arianna Garcia-Fialdini Avy Loftus Brock Dishart Carly and Ashley McAskill Daryl Zoellner Edna Katz-Silver Eva Halus Gilles Chiasson
Hélène Arseneault Jack Nathanson Janis Timm-Bottos Jennifer Lee Lisa Potter Lynn Kerr Malake Ackaoui Mingyue Tao Monique Bee Muriel Herrington Naj Mahani
Nathan Ward Pandora Hobby Rachel Chainey Richard Chenier Rose Weekes Ruth Boomer Sasha and Laura Sharon Smith Sue Proctor Suzanne Melanson Yafa Goawily
Community Cookbook
Download the PDF version of the cookbook to get inspired by the recipes, stories, and images from participating community members.
My grandma used to make Sambosak and sending it to school when I was growing up. I love them so much. The sambosak and my grandma.
Yafa Goawily
In our Postcard in the Kitchen Art Hives, we exchanged not only recipes but talked about food choices, lifestyles, nutrition, gardening, harvesting and traditional foods. With the gift of Zoom, participants gathered from many corners of the world.
Sue Proctor
I love doing art and showing my work in art shows. I love painting on wine glasses, mugs, plates, vases, bookmarks and cards. It makes me happy.
Lynn Kerr
Vernissage and potluck
Vernissage
Cookbook presentation
When I need to reboot my creativity I often go the Jean Talon Market and soak up the beautiful colours and shapes of fruits and vegetables – a succulent rainbow of delicious carmine reds, saturated cadmium yellows, intense oranges and vibrant greens, velvety purples and indigo blues. I come refreshed spiritually and exuberant about the fine feast that awaits me. The spectrum of cornucopia spills into my dreams, then eventually in my paintings the following day. So, here’s staying healthy thanks to the gift of fruits and vegetables!
It is a Tuesday afternoon at the Hive Café in Concordia University’s Hall building. The atmosphere is suffused with the murmuring of visitors, golden light spilling through the windows and the sweet scent of coffee brewing.
It is a pleasant scene from first glance, but what catches the eye almost immediately is the displayed collection of art pieces that adorn the blank walls like jewels. This is the art exhibition titled “HOME-MADE-STUDIO: A WINDOW INTO OUR CREATIVE SPACES THROUGH TIMES OF ISOLATION”. The exhibition was organized by Concordia’s Art Hive in partnership with its Creative engAGE Living Lab and the Hive Café. Composed of multiple artists’ work, from both Concordia students and the Living Lab’s members, the collection is thematically tied by one prompt: create a piece that portrays your creative space of the last two years.
(One wall of the art exhibition “HOME-MADE-STUDIO: A WINDOW INTO OUR CREATIVE SPACES THROUGH TIMES OF ISOLATION” that is on display at the Hive Café until April 22nd / Maiya Butcher, Concordia News)
The idea was first conceived in mid-February. Monica Escobedo, Art Hive facilitator and an organizer of the exhibition, came across a painting on Facebook of a home art hive that inspired her to post it on the Hive’s Facebook.
“I asked if people would care to portray their own space and share it, and they immediately rose to the challenge,” Escobedo says over a Zoom interview.
The Hive Café soon after reached out to her colleague Rachel Chainey in want of art to showcase in their space. Chainey decided to revisit this idea of a “home-made studio” as the theme of the exhibition, to make the transition between creative spaces at home to those that artists inhabited before the pandemic.
“Now that we’re ready to go back to the outside spaces, I think it’s important to acknowledge the spaces where we have created for the past two years. They held us and helped us survive,” Escobedo says affectionately.
Escobedo’s idea ties into a broader theme of artmaking during the pandemic. A study from the project Art & Well-Being reported that around 85 per cent of the population was consuming different types of art as a coping mechanism during the pandemic, with 69 per cent doing creative activities daily or two to three times a week.
Art in the virtual realm
The home-made studios exhibition is not the first time the Art Hive was uniting artists in these times of isolation. It began conducting Zoom art meetings during the pandemic for students and seniors from the Creative engAGE Living Lab.
Natali Ortiz, a graduate from Concordia in Art Therapy, has been facilitating these online gatherings for the past year. She had not met most of the participants until the exhibition.
“Most of the people who participated were also meeting each other for the first time, so it was really special to get the chance to meet people you had been seeing online for so long,” Ortiz says, seated in the cozy Art Hive office downtown.
“It was like an ‘Oh, you’re real!’ kind of moment,” she adds with a smile.
The Hive also allowed artists to submit their work digitally, providing a hybrid model for those not comfortable returning to in-person yet. Even now that the university has opened in-person again, Ortiz continues to facilitate the Hive online once a week. She says it is their way of honouring the transition the world is still experiencing.
Finding introspection
An article from Science Direct about art and psychotherapy showed that art was made for various reasons during the pandemic. The four main categories that were found were artmaking for self-regulation, artmaking as embodying mental states and emotional expression, art as enabling creativity, imagination, experimentation and play and artmaking as related to time.
For two student artists involved the exhibition, sharing their artwork and seeing others’ work was an opportunity for self-reflection, similar to the second category of this study.
Carly McAskill, PhD student in Communication Studies and research assistant with the Lab, submitted a poem written pre-COVID that epitomized the theme of the exhibition for her.
(McAskill’s multi-media piece titled “Morning Pause” that introduces the online format of the exhibition / Carly McAskill)
She sees a creative space being more than just one with an easel and art materials.
“I think my creativity throughout the pandemic was embodied in these quiet moments, when you wake up and are present in that moment. I was also thinking about what other peoples’ experiences were like, having to spend a lot more time in your space, and how to honour, witness and embrace that space,” McAskill explains in an online interview.
Moh Abdolreza is an interdisciplinary Concordia student and also a research assistant at the Lab, who became interested in the exhibition based on the idea of the home versus public space.
(Abdolreza’s piece titled “Where is my body?”, which focuses on the idea of absence and presence of body / Maiya Butcher, Concordia News
“During the crisis, we were mostly working online and talking to each other’s images, not bodies. We were also working in a way in which our bodies were not connected. I started seeing my body as a fragmented thing beside technology, and how technology could both enable and disempower me,” Abdolreza says over Zoom.
Micheline Desmarteaux and Lisa Potter are members of Concordia’s Creative engAGE Living Lab who also found a sense of grounding in being a part of the Hive’s activities. They were interviewed together over a group Zoom meeting.
“Art was the link between everything. It was very important to me during the pandemic because everything stopped at once, but the Hive came to us at home,” Desmarteaux says.
(Desmarteaux’s pastel drawings that bring the theme of love / Maiya Butcher, Concordia News)
“I feel really involved and bonded by sharing my art, and it puts a smile on people’s faces,” Potter says.
For Gertrud Antoine Barwick, another senior who became involved with the exhibition through a neighbour at the Lab, art is her outlet for emotions.
“In sadness and happiness, in normal life and in pandemic, art is a wonderful thing,” she remarks over a phone call.
(Barwick’s two mixed-media pieces titled “A Jungian Kaleidoscope”, which explored the idea of the unconscious versus conscious mind / Maiya Butcher, Concordia News)
This pandemic is not the first time people have turned to art as a coping method in crisis.
An interview with Columbia University professors Franco Mormando and Thomas Worcester from Columbia College Today discusses the role of arts in the context of pandemics of old, such as the bubonic plague. The plague occurred frequently in 18th-century Europe, during which time artmaking was always present.
“In times of crisis, people like to see their experience mirrored through another medium […] which is visually striking, which moves to the heart. Art in times of social disaster represents reality and helps people understand that reality,” Mormando says in the article.
Times of crisis as opportunities for connection
For the artists and organizers of “Home-Made Studios”, the gallery served as this means of mirroring their shared reality. It brought them together in a singular way.
“When we go through personal crisis, it feels like we’re alone in it. This crisis was different; we were all hit differently depending where we were in the world, but we all went through the same thing. I hope everyone will share the art they made during this time,” Monica Escobedo says.
“In this exhibition we have different people with different backgrounds, but they can still gather together and express their ideas through art,” Moh Abdolreza observes. “I think one side of art is transforming our collective experience to our collective consciousness,” he adds.
“Everybody intentionally put their art in this exhibition, wanted to come together and share in this theme […] and I think that’s the thread that links us all together,” Carly McAskill says.
“Art doesn’t have to be beautiful or realistic…it’s more about the power of doing art together in a group context. In the online group, I didn’t meet these people but I still felt that we created a community,” Natali Ortiz shares.
“HOME-MADE-STUDIO: A WINDOW INTO OUR CREATIVE SPACES THROUGH TIMES OF ISOLATION” is open to visitors until April 22nd at the Hive Café in Concordia’s Hall Building.
“HOME-MADE-STUDIO: A WINDOW INTO OUR CREATIVE SPACES THROUGH TIMES OF ISOLATION”
The Creative engAGE Living Lab and the Concordia University Art Hives invites the community to represent in any 2D visual media the space(s) in which we have all been creating during the past two years.
Submissions
You are invited to represent in any 2D visual media the space(s) in which you have been creating during the past two years.
We will accept a maximum of 3 artworks per artist or a maximum surface of 24 x 36 inches. Depending on how many submission we will receive and the size of each of them we can guarantee to showcase at least one artwork per artist. Please bring your art ready to hang.
Open to all ages and abilities!
Drop-off your artwork at the Concordia SGW Art Hive (ER101)
2155 Guy, Montreal, QC on any of the following dates/times:
• Tuesday March 15th, 12:00 to 5:00 PM
• Thursday March 17th, 2:00 to 8:00 PM
• Tuesday March 22nd 12:00 to 5:00 PM
Following a suggestion from one of our community members, we are opening this opportunity for anyone creating digitally or wanting to join the exhibit “virtually” due to geographical distances or other circumstances.
Such artworks will be shown as QR codes, allowing the visitors to scan and see them directly on their devices.
The last day to submit an artwork in digital format is Thursday March 17th, 2022.
For any questions, please send us an email to cuah.exhibit@gmail.com
Vernissage
Wednesday March 23rd 2022,
3:00 to 6:00 PM
Hive Café Solidarity Cooperative (Concordia)
1455 de Maisonneuve W. H-239, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8
“Art was the link between everything. It was very important to me during the pandemic because everything stopped at once, but the Hive came to us at home,” Desmarteaux.
Home-Made Studio exhibit at the Hive Café. By Maiya Butcher
40 moments 40 espaces de mon quotidien 40 instants de créations Sur le bout de la table de cuisine Au chalet, dehors, sur la plage Simplement créer Créer pour vivre Vivre pour créer
Claire Chouinard
“Juste quelques espaces”. Photo collage. 2020-2022Claire Chouinard
“Making Space for Hope”
Medium: Photo taken with a smartphone, “Vivid” filter.
Description: “Martisor” or “Martenitsa” is a a small piece of adornment created from red and white strings, celebrating the beginning of Spring, in Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and other regions.
It is believed that the person who wears it would enjoy a prosperous and healthy year!
Diana vozian
“Making Space for Hope”Diana Vozian
“Five faces” (with metal) . 20-24
“Over the moon”. 30 x30
“Togetherness”. 20×30
All have a meaning of life at any age
Edna Katz
Edna Katz
“La Ruche d’Art sur Zoom”
Collage, Assemblage and Plant on cardboard.
2022
ESTelle Gagné
La Ruche d’Art sur Zoom, 2022Collaborating with moths and other unlikely partnersCollaborating with moths (detail)Janis Timm-Bottos
Rayonnants de sérénité? Quand la douleur nous assomme et le corps ne supporte pas ces graves cris Quand les dents du désespoir mordent l’esprit Quand la mort cannibale veut-elle faire de nous une bouchée Nous nous réfugions dans notre jardin intérieur Quelqu’un nous chante une berceuse et peu à peu notre je enfantin s’endort Nous retrouvons nos fidèles amoureux de jeunesse clapotant dans les eaux de l’Océan Tout d’un coup nous dansons la valse du couple joyeux Ou Nous tournons seules ou seuls nous apprivoisons nos peurs nous inventons l’état de grâce Malgré les maladies et les blessures Malgré le vieillissement et les accidents Malgré les tourments et les tourmentes La fête de la vie est encore au rendez-vous.
LAdy Rojas Benavente, 2022
Poem (SP)International Women’s DayAventura Cosmica y HumanaLady Rojas Benavente
“Ways to Connect on Zoom”
“Supporting Ukraine”
“My Creative Space”
Digital painting (Paint 3D)
2022
Lisa potter, Active engager
Ways to connect on ZoomSupporting UkraineMy creative spaceLisa Potter
Adios Puerto Vallarta!
Ce fut une belle expérience relaxante que de faire de l’art tous les jours durant mes vacances.
Malaka Ackaoui
Malaka Ackaoui
Mon espace de création
Depuis le 13 mars 2020, mon espace de vie et de création se sont fusionnés. Autant cuisiner pour nourrir mon corps, autant l’art visuel nourrit mon mental. Ma cuisine, sa grande table de bois, ses chaises solides, mon portable Apple ont été littéralement colonisés durant ces mois d’enfermement.
Le thème de l’exposition était difficile pour moi à illustrer en l’art visuel mais voilà la photographie d’une installation de l’autel d’art organisé qui illustre bien mon désordre créateur.
Bienvenue dans mon intimité sans virus.
Marguerite Dorion
Mon espace de créationSans titre. D’après J-P WitkinMon espace de création. VitrailMarguerite Dorion
Title: “Un espace libre” / ” A Free Space”
Collage mix media
8″1/2 x 12″
Démarche: Se créer un espace libre dans un monde changeant Avancer avec des repères vers l’inconnu Installation sur le balcon, sur fond stable et changeant
Process: Create oneself a free space in a changing world To move forward with reference points towards the unknown Installation on the balcony, on a stable and changing background
Melissa Sokoloff
“Un espace libre”Melissa Sokoloff
Créer dans le désordre Créer sous pression Partager, partager, partager Zoomer, zoomer, zoomer Tenter de représenter l’amour Sur un bout de papier Tout ranger Tenter de vivre l’amour, l’affection En PRÉSENTIEL
Micheline desmarteaux, 2022
AraTangoAtelier à la maisonMicheline Desmarteaux
“Where is my body!”
Medium: mixed media.
Drawn on paper with a pen and added the color with photoshop.
Moh abdolreza
Where is my body!Moh AbdolrezaAn infinite loop, 2020The spaces I inhabit, 2021What is real?, 2022Momo
Tryptic: “It takes a jungle to hold me”
Watercolor
2022
Rachel chainey
Rachel Chainey
Elegant Orchids. Watercolor. I love beauty from nature to add colors to my creative space
Prince. Pastel. My pets are a relaxed and cozy addition to my studio when I create. This image is my little Prince.
Blue Vase and Flowers Blooming. Pastel. Flowers have a spirit of their own that add energy to my creative space.
I appreciate the efforts from the beginning of going on line to the creative process that has resulted. Just like the process of creating art ! So pleased to see continued results. @sharonb.s
sharon b. smith
Elegant orchidsPrinceBlue VaseSharon B. Smith
“Une salle à diner, devenue salle à dessiner, à placoter, à partager. Échange de couleur, échange de chaleur humaine. S’enfermer chez soi, pour finalement connecter un peu plus avec le monde, quel paradoxe. Prendre du temps, prendre du recul, se poser.”
Un coin du jardin à l’automne. Encres végétales et crayons Conté.
Montagne à gravir ou descendre. Encre végétale.
Ma salle à diner, mon atelier. Crayons de couleurs.
Véronique Emerand
Un coin du jardin à l’automneMontagne à gravir ou descendreMa salle à diner, mon atelierVéronique Emerand
In-person gallery
March 23rd, 2022. @Hive Café.
Hive Cafe x Concordia’s Art Hives present: Art Gallery Night
THURSDAY, 14 APRIL 2022 FROM 17:00-20:00
THE HIVE CAFÉ AND CONCORDIA’S ART HIVES TEAMED UP TO CREATE AN ART GALLERY NIGHT, AT THE DOWNTOWN HIVE.
Participants had the opportunity to make art at the Pop-up Art Hive, check out the art on the walls, talk to the artists themselves, and enjoy a live poetry reading. FB event
This work is a creative response in that it has no drawing, but is free form painting in Acrylic. Color and forms resonate.
Artist: Zainab Iton
Title: London Swooper
Medium: Painting
Size: 24” x 36”
The work is a creative response to the idea that a kite is a predator that cleans up cities of vermin. This one was photographed in London U.K. in 2013. They tend to swoop upon prey.
Beauty always has another side – looking for balance in the song.
Artist: Sue Proctor
Title: Mosaic with suns
Medium: Felt tip pens and ink on paper
Date: 2021
The Covid pens were dry from being unused for so long, so I kept moving from pen to pen. The Mall and the Art Hive are so open to possibility – like a circus tent – anything can happen.
This work is a response to how these last 2 years have been hard and it is important to continue walking forward. I took these video clips to show my way of escaping the pandemic by hiking in nature.
I was inspired by how the colours of pink reflect beauty in magical creatures.
Artist: Robyn Goodman.
Title: Rocks on the Shore
Date: 2015 As an Artist I have always been attracted to the idea of how to create movement in my painting. I aim to illustrate how to move to of the haystack through gusty winds.
As I took a walk that evening, the moon seemed to have this blue hue reflecting in the trees, and then bounced off these flowers. To me it seemed that the trees and flowers were dancing I got inspired and created both hue, this is my interpretation
Artist: NicoleM
Title: Blue Tree Fiesta
Medium: Acrylic, silk flowers, sequins on 2 canvases
Size: 32” x 24”
Date: 2021
The diptych Blue Tree Fiesta is the continuing inspiration from the full moon. I was wowed by the seasonal “Blue Moon” that occurred on Sunday (Aug. 22) . I later found out that it’s the last time we will see this type of moon until 2023.
I made this painting to portray black feminine power and to honour black women, who had and continue to fight for social justice, with an intersectionality lens, which includes the different identity markers of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class and more.
Artist: Natalí Ortiz
Title: Nina
Medium: Mixed media
Date: 2021
I made this painting of Nina Gualinga, an environmental activist from the Ecuadorian amazon to raise awareness that Indigenous women and land defenders are exposed to multiple forms of violence, which too often remain in impunity . Nina is an example of how women in the amazon are coming together to protect their lands and bodies. As Nina writes “ we are nature, we need to let go of the idea that nature is an object for exploitation Indigenous people know this because we have been in connection with nature for thousand of years”
