The Blueprint Art Gallery celebrates their first year at Blueprint Records as of Arts Days 2011, Sept. 30-Oct. 1.
 Word is slowly spreading about this new little gallery.

“Sometimes people, look up from the records. But some come in just to see the works,” said curator Mike Maguire, examining the latest exhibition “Invasion” by artist Bonnie Patton, which has been up since May 31 and will continue until Arts Days when a new exhibit will open.

 It is an exception to the rule as  instead of music themed exhibits, this one features a variety of different synonyms for the word “invasion” written on the walls of Blueprint’s vinyl room.

“She brought out the thesaurus and looked up words for “invasion” and used an overhead  projector from a school to display them on the wall,” Maguire observed.

“It’s not a music based exhibit.”

He went with “Invasion” for a couple of reasons — he liked the concept and the walls needed to be repainted and repaired after the previous exhibits.
“We had to fill in a bunch of holes and repaint it anyways, so we decided to actually paint this one on the walls,” he said.

 Art is as much about people’s reaction to a piece of art as much as it is about the piece itself according to artist Collin Zipp. It is one of many reasons he and artist Mandy Espezel are looking forward to their exhibition at the Dr. Foster Penny building downtown. They will be the University of Lethbridge‘s first MFA art major graduates. Their joint exhibition, to run Sept. 15-30, is the final component of their degree.

Collin Zipp, who is originally from Winnipeg, took quite a few years off from school and exhibited his works across the country, before coming to Lethbridge for his masters degree.

“For me, it was because there were a lot of artists who I really respected like Janet Cardiff and David Hoffos, and it’s close to the mountains,” Zipp said of applying to be one of the first Lethbridge’s first MFA art students.

Mandy Espezel, originally  from Fort MacMurray, jumped right into the masters after earning her undergraduate degree at the university.

“I moved here and I knew everybody right away. They were so supportive,” she said.

 Audience reaction is an integral part of both artists’ works— especially Zipp.

 Zipp is influenced by “performance artists” like Andy Kaufman, who considered  audience response to their works.

“I’m influenced by people like Andy Kaufman who used to use trickery to deceive their audiences. They weren’t really considered to be performance artists then, they were considered to be jokesters,” Zipp said.
“I like artists who use humour in their work.”

The second edition of Todd Lacharite’s  Shuffle Up and Deal fundraiser went very well, July 23.

A good sized crowd including a table full of Snowbirds members  enjoyed a roast beef dinner and a really well done art auction at the Lethbridge Legion.

While things started slow, it was a full house by the end of the night including many members of the local art community.