About Me

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MICHAEL SCHREIER Michael Schreier is a professional artist and photographer who has dedicated his considerable professional career to the celebration of both the public and private hero. Recent work includes Storyteller, Waiting for Words at the Ottawa Art Gallery, curator Emily Falvey, 2009, and the curating of the exhibition Dave Heath, A Heritage of Meaning, 2013 at the Ottawa Art Gallery. Selected works are represented in both public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the National Archives Photography Collection, the Agnes-Etherington Art Centre, the Canadian Portrait Gallery, Visual Studies Workshop, (Rochester, New York), Light Works Workshop, Syracuse New York, Carleton University Art Gallery, and the University of Ottawa Library Special Collections.

Sunday 21 February 2016


Camera Obscura is dedicated to Dave Heath and Jim Borcoman


Post # 5


(cursor on photograph, for detailed viewing)



Thoughts concerning Authorship:





Vienna, City of Thoughts



(available at Blurb.ca)
Michael Schreier
2010




A cursory response to Justin Labelle's previous e-mail blog #4: my answer in bracketed italics





Hi Michael,

I noticed in your blog posts that you are providing a rather intimate reading into your family and family dynamics..(Yes of both the privileged and social)  In reference to art as a whole, do you think that the strongest art is always personal to the creator?  (Yes)  I think that we tend to love artists that delve into their psyche and try to grasp the psychological underpinnings of the creative process.. (Shouldn't  there always be an inner search ?!)...That might be why so many people do not "understand" or immediately dismiss certain types of modern art... Opinions?Why dismiss so quickly as it might just designate work as entertainment...work should challenge both the artist and the beholder )
 Looking back on your career as an artist, do you think the work that you are most proud of generally touched on personal matters? 
( Always )  I know your master's project heavily involved your family and your recent books also create a dialogue with your mother's paintings... Do you feel this is the most rewarding way of making art?  (  Most rewarding as new implications are raised and continuity is extended. )

 Likewise, have you ever created something purely for money and how did you feel with the finished product? ( No and I always remain challenged )
I anxiously await your reply,

Justin

However, these questions require much more serious consideration:





La Parole sans Langue
( Utterance without Code )

From Series, Corner rooms,
2016

Michael Schreier




   From series, (working title; The Differend)

2016
            
Collection of the Artist, Michael Schreier
                               

Rosemarie Waldrop's phrase, Utterance without Code, a translation of La Parole sans Langue,  suggests an engaged silence similar to Lyotard's Differend, proposing that a right to voice is granted through disciplined study. So, an artist's engagement may include any of the following, the familial, the social, that of introspective thought including a sensitivity for both the sacred and profane: the code being granted as language and intuitive insight coincide. Justin Labelle's questions reflect a young artist's critical effort to rationalize his formal experience and practice while embracing a personal search for a clarification of (his) ethics. Questions focused on my mother's work provide for a consideration of disclosure, privacy and the development of the iconic myth. Such concerns may constitute one's rationale for work and I would suggest their presence continues throughout one's career, as they impact with an increasingly subtle nuance. An artist's career may reflect early hubris followed by a profound appreciation for doubt in one's senior years.


Collection of the artist:
2014



Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest 


(available at Blurb.ca, Michael Schreier, 2014)

Original artwork, collection of the artist, Michael Schreier

Cover Photograph
(Michael Schreier, Blurb.ca)

Yad


Edmond Jabès' Book of Questions challenges the idea of absolute laws, reflected in the introductory layout. The rules of engaging with art demand a clarity for personal values, to be tested, and appreciated in the broader creative arena. However they have little to do with a pragmatic resolution and more to do with the mysterious embrace of knowledge and wonder as each generation's experience, whether of comedy, tragedy or the lost sense of place imagines an embrace of the privatized with the social. The "Innere Stadt" must remain fluid as it provides a witnessing of the quotidian.



(Vienna shadows, window light)

from

Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest

(Blurb.ca, Michael Schreier)



Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest

Photograph layout, Michael Schreier
Drawing, Hilde Schreier

I have always been intrigued by my mother's drawing as it touches on the very core of Carl Jung's Night Sea Journey, displaying a dawning, that initial moment of utterance. These figures appear on one page, are not edited nor arranged. They offer an artist's insight for the development of conscious thought from intuitive insight. It rings true my concerns for the reflection of an original idea, linked to the broader community of mythology, just as architecture might reflect a latent witnessing of its history: sunlight might suggest a still to be acknowledged silent presence for memory of a city's past military insignia. 






The next Installment:

The Tableau, the Anti-Hero.

February 28, 2016

Monday 15 February 2016




Camera Obscura is dedicated to Dave Heath and Jim Borcoman



Post #4  


(cursor on photograph, for detailed viewing)


From Margin to Proscenium:


Considering the layout,    privileged landscape    with Storytelling




Vienna Window
(tabula rasa)

2007

Collection of the Artist, Michael Schreier



...the unstable state and instant of language wherein something which must be able to be put into phrases, cannot yet be...

The Differend: Phrases in Dispute
1983
Jean-François Lyotard



Turtle Theater
Tears for an Empty Desert

Artist book, 2006

Michael Schreier


#28

from 
Stations, 1-28
2016

Collection of the artist, Michael Schreier

                                        


 Traditionally, those characters of epic proportion, represented in a History Painting, are associated with mythology and its historical reference. In contrast, from Margin to Proscenium suggests to me a passage from silence to voice, as a theater's stage provides the window to storytelling and experience. History is yet to be discovered. Rosemarie Waldrop's remarkable work, Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès describes La Parole sans Langue, an utterance without code, as the door to voice, with introspection its key.  



Storyteller/Waiting for Words

Artist book, 2006

Michael Schreier




How to balance an artist's intuitive insight with the rational: as T.S. Eliot implies in his master work, The Family Reunion, storytelling, while revealing history, might propose ethical boundaries. Editing has always required a significant consideration of intuitive thought with truth. In order to offer continuity one must accept the responsibility surrounding disclosure. Personally, I believe this to be the source for abstraction. The artist always gauges objective truth, evidence with the associated myth and intent. 



The Reader

from

Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest
2015
Collection of the Artist,  Michael Schreier 

note: Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest is available at
Blurb.ca, Michael Schreier


(In this intuitive layout, the linkage from one set of images to the next), I have just noticed that in arranging this installment, I have vertically sequenced, beginning with the table as an introduction   Tabula rasa < Clear-blue panel in turtle < stations #28 ( theater) rectangular frame on right < square window light accent in page layout < book on the edge in The Reader, each panel placed at the margin, directed to the anonymous reader,    I might suggest that the book on the edge offers a subtle introduction to the Apron Stage. This layout is placed at a critical point in the book, Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest suggesting the role of the reader shifts from audience member to that of director, from observer to participant.  



From series, 
Palimpsest,the Museum Works.
2015
Michael Schreier



                                                                                                                                          




It is a privilege to include this recent reflection by James Borcoman:






Eugène Atget
 


Although Eugène Atget may be seen as a continuation of the concerns of the nineteenth century photographer, he is, in fact, an artist for our own time. He did more than any other photographer to prepare the way for our acceptance of the complexity of layered meaning in the photograph. No other photographer has ever surpassed the subtlety with which Atget combined the image as descriptive information with the image as expression. He did so through photographs that are provocative, evocative and sumptuously beautiful. Even to this day, however, he is thought of primarily as a street photographer with a social agenda and with facts exclusively.
 
The occasional glimpse of expressive imagery may be seen as early as 1907 in some of his St. Cloud Park photographs. But not until after the First World War does he appear to be more concerned with personal imagery than with the needs of clients whose concerns were factual documentation. One of the earliest of the late images that are both poetic and elegiac, is Saint-Cloud (NGC 21237), made around 1920. Trees as subjects for his botanical series appear as early as the end of the nineteenth century. Some he photographed over and over again across the years and through the seasons. We cannot avoid the feeling that he saw them as a life force. However, the mood of foreboding that we see in Saint-Cloud is new and typical of this late period. The natural disarray of the overarching branches create a dark arabesque against a lighter sky. In the gloom of the woods, a lone tree blazes with light. Did Atget, like Dante, see himself as lost in a dark wood? It is easy to see his tree photographs as metaphors for his life. The late pictures show a complicated, troubled artist, whose concerns ran deeper than the literal.
 
James Borcoman


                                                                 


Post #5


February 21, 2016

Thoughts concerning Authorship:



Page layout from Artists Book,
  
Vienna City of Thoughts

(available at blurb.ca, Michael Schreier)


Justin Labelle

Hi Michael,

I noticed in your blog posts that you are providing a rather intimate reading into your family and family dynamics... In reference to art as a whole, do you think that the strongest art is always personal to the creator? I think that we tend to love artists that delve into their psyche and try to grasp the psychological underpinnings of the creative process...That might be why so many people do not "understand" or immediately dismiss certain types of modern art... Opinions?
 Looking back on your career as an artist, do you think the work that you are most proud of generally touched on personal matters? I know your master's project heavily involved your family and your recent books also create a dialogue with your mother's paintings... Do you feel this is the most rewarding way of making art?

 Likewise, have you ever created something purely for money and how did you feel with the finished product?
I anxiously await your reply,

Justin



                                                                                       

















Monday 8 February 2016




Camera Obscura is dedicated to Dave Heath and Jim Borcoman



Post #3  



The Constructed Image/Directorial Mode and the Sequence

(another point of view)


(cursor on photograph, for detailed viewing)

To begin with, an anecdote:

While teaching a summer session at the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1979, I learned that the magazine Arts Canada was planning an issue on the Canadian Artists  Vera FrenkelCharles Gagnon, and Michael Snow. The issue would focus on the metaphor for passage, storytelling and memory. Vera asked if I might photograph her in support and I agreed, stipulating that she be seated  by a window. In concert with the completed portrait, I and several others eagerly accepted a proposed challenge: a collaborative effort, directed by Vera    to offer another moment in the assumed life of Cornelia Lumsden. During the arranged video-shoot in the illustrious Banff Springs Hotel conference hall, and while in casual conversation, Takao Tanabe, the Canadian painter, aware of the circumstances surrounding this production, and with some, I suspect, intended mischief, unassumingly divulged that the Banff Springs Hotel has a room without a door.  His further revelation that there had been a woman resident in the hotel during the late 40's, early 50's, who in order to cover expenses, would sell a work from a selection of "degenerate" art she had salvaged from Europe during the second world war, provided us with additional intrigue. Naturally, in connecting these two unrelated musings, we conjectured that this room without a door housed critical art works associated with numerous contemporary masters. Regrettably, Wikipedia would reveal that this Room was the site of a murder, simply confirming that architecture could indeed be witness to both fact and fiction. These casual ruminations encouraged my work, From One Room, completed during my stay at the Banff School. At the time I had little idea of its significance within my developing body of work as its production was simply intended as an illustration of my professional concerns for my students.

The secret life of Cornelia Lumsden

Snapshot of an Event, Possibly,
or  
A Concert for the Silent Witness, Character and script to be improvised!

my working title including credit for Ara Rose Parker, photographer,
  with profound appreciation and tender thoughts for a passing memory)


    
   

(From One Room)
Collection of the Artist


From series 
The Daly Building Porftfolio

In-camera cibachrome photograph,
1980, Michael Schreier

National Gallery of Canada

   Michael Lesy's  Time Frames:The Meaning of Family Pictures, and Carl Jung's Symbols of Transformation have provided me valuable insight concerning the origin and perception of an idea. As an aside, one's Family Album may contribute its own unique Symbols of Transformation. My experience has demonstrated that poetry, visual or otherwise encourages one towards a deeper empathy for continuity and the value of place. To that end, I have considered Gottfried Leibniz's  reflections on the notions of authority and hierarchy: matters which directly affect our understanding for the origin of thought. An Authority to Voice offers a simple perception, best illustrated by acknowledging that    as one reads this text an idea may be provoked, and then, just as quickly replaced. The former is its author, the latter, both its defender and potential challenger, the process to be repeated. Any formal structures used by the artist, including elements such as depth of field, texture, light and dark, scale, perspective invoking a transition from one space to another, provide the reader with similar experiences. Simply, one recognizes the process of seeing/perceiving as an acknowledgement of both stasis and change, each element enthusing a metaphor of passage. Similarly, while still harbouring notions of vulnerability and doubt, Art History and the family album continue to offer an opus, a witnessing to their time.



Sion
Freud's Window,

Tears for an Empty Desert 

2006, Michael Schreier

Edmund Jabès'  Book of Questions offers a remarkable philosophical journey, of both exit and entry to Plato's Cave. He underscores the value of the exile and nomadic experience:



Untitled
Michael Schreier, 2002


                                 
                                                                          Returning to the Archivist's Muse:




   the archivist's muse    
 Tears for an Empty Desert 

Double-page layout edited to adjust for blog.
2006, Michael Schreier



  

                                           Jacob Jordaens,                                                         Family Album,                                                                                                                                                                                             
This detail from the Jordaens painting emphasizes the father playing and by association, passing on that sense of voice to the younger child. The grandmother, in concert, sings the song " A New Song from Kallo" dedicated to those extraordinary individuals lost in combat. Jacob Jordaens' allegory asserts the value of history and voice to storytelling. He encourages the role of the witness. This history painting, reassembling the structure of the family snapshot, underscores a sequence of events: the senior flutist gazes at the silent viewer a virtual witness, possibly complicit, uninvited      

      a chair in the foreground laden with fruit, however turned inward preventing access: Oh Yes!    please, with some licence for hyperbole    all that music, song and hidden voice proposing a Concert for the Silent Witness and we are relegated to rest at the proscenium. On the other hand, and in partnership, Family Album places a young boy, pausing, at the edge having the potential for entry to an undisclosed room, a Camera Obscura.  I am overwhelmed by the surrounding silence and anonymity    the doors offering little sanctuary. Contrary to the Jordaens, as this young boy gazes out, one is made aware that any evidence of ritual other than the immediate encounter is lost. Instead, we are given silence, as any external circumstances are neither present nor potentially acknowledged. Much later as an artist, I would engage a body of work titled "Storyteller,Waiting for Words," perhaps partially informed by a similar experience. "From One Room" notes that for a restricted period of time there is both entry and exit to an outsider's space, both exiled and critical to solitude. 
  
Much has been discussed in the History of Photography regarding both the directorial mode and the constructed image. I would suggest that the process of abstraction be considered as a means to engage an objective reality with its translation    rendering either an abstract or figurative reference    neither of which replicate an objective moment but transfer the original experience. Formal constraints direct the viewer to engage with the work, which may either be participatory, or a silent musing. 




 Portrait of Lea  
                                                                                            2015

                                                                 From series, (working title; The Differend)
                                                                                                 Collection of the Artist, Michael Schreier        



 Disappearing Numbers
from exhibition, 
Storyteller/ Waiting for Words, 2009

Ottawa Art Gallery, Curator, Emily Falvey
Collection of the artist, Michael 


Post #4

From Margin to Proscenium:

Considering the layout    internal landscape    with Storytelling:

February 14, 2016