Coming soon - Art In Archer!
Express your creativity by bringing the University of Regina’s unique herbarium collection to life through watercolor, pastels, or digital art. All art materials will be provided - just bring your imagination!
Submissions will be eligible to win one of three prizes, and everyone is welcome!
Thursday, Oct 23rd, 2025
11am - 2pm (drop in)
Archer Library Regina/Wascana rooms (LY 107.32/33)
Now on display at the Archer Library, main floor display case (next to IS Services): "A Song of Clay and Fire," ceramic works by Chengwu Wang, a ceramic artist, lecturer and visiting scholar from Central China Normal University in Wuhan. The works were created at the U of R ceramics department and are inspired by the forms of water, including the surging of sea waves, the tranquility of lake water, and the ripples of raindrops. These works aim to integrate the natural water, soft clay, and passionate fire into the creations through manual craftsmanship, converging into a "Song of Clay and Fire." Susan Johnston, Ruth Chambers and Michael Shires curated this mini exhibition.
Come into the library soon to see this, as it's only on display until September 28th!
Curator and Preparator - President's Art Collection
We are pleased to announce that Julia Krueger is the new Curator and Preparator of the University President’s Art Collection! Krueger is an independent curator & craft historian, and was previously the Registrar for the permanent collection at SK Arts. Welcome aboard, Julia!
Our “Still Life” contest ran from March 18 to April 6, and we received many creative ideas for Still Life table objects and Still Life uploads. A big thank you to the undergrads and grad students who entered the random draw — we loved seeing your artistic spirit!
Curious who won? Visit the “Still Life” Contest guide below to see the lucky winners of the book Dark Chapters: Reading the Still Lives of David Garneau (signed by the artist and donated by University of Regina Press) — plus the 10 library goody bags!
https://library.uregina.ca/librarycontest/stillife2025
Artist Statement
European Art Academies positioned still life painting at the bottom of their hierarchy. Being the depiction of the things of everyday life, still life was considered a poor container for the lofty concepts found in history, portraiture, and even landscape painting. Dark Chapters challenges this assumption and status. These realistic paintings consist of things that are ready to hand: rocks, stones, bricks, books, flowers, water, hammers, mirrors, fabric, flags, honey, fish, teacups, jars, boxes, string, rope, and chains. And some less homey items: skulls, bones, smoke, ancient stone tools, sashes, bees, flies, rotting fruit, and hand cuffs. The objects are arranged to suggest meanings beyond representation. Books, for example, stand for book knowledge, universities, and professors. Rocks represent Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, and, sometimes, Indigenous persons. Some rocks are stones or Grandfathers.
A rough red stone is tethered by twine to a tin can. “Listen to the Land (Record Mode),” considers how difficult it is to encounter nature without physical or conceptual mediation. Perhaps it critiques anthropology. Or does it celebrate ethnomusicology? “Transmogrification” may remind you that many tons of bison (Pile of) Bones went to Britian to be made into bone china. “Hammered (School Brick)” features a brick from a demolished schoolhouse caught between an ancient Plains stone hammer and a rough rock. Rocks are grandfathers in the wild. Stones are rocks converted to human use. Bricks are civilized clay.
I am Métis, a professor, curator, and theorist of Indigenous contemporary art and identity. My mission for the past six years has been to translate into pictures ideas I have worked out in my writing. Occasionally, the translation goes the other way and paintings inform essays. Dark Chapters, the book that accompanies this exhibition, features 17 writers ‘reading’ my paintings. Their poems and essays embody this inspirational play between images and texts.
Before painting, I compose. In dreams, in notebooks, but especially with my subjects. Three times a year, I take a week to commune with my non-mental subjects. I observe them, hold them. What do they want? Who do they want to be nearby? What might they mean to and with each other? Today, a round stone the size of a child’s cranium wants to be cradled in bubble wrap. Tomorrow, it asks to be bound in twine. Next day, “leave me alone, unpictured.” Admittedly, sometimes, my subjects become objects and are made to do things I rather than they intend. I still feel bad about drowning that dictionary. Antique teacups and jugs are smashed with a stone hammer for a point I want to make. Sealing smudge smoke in a bell jar needed doing—but maybe not. No book wants burning but, one day, one may.
I think I am an analytic painter, a conceptual artist. I feel this may be an after-thought. David Bowie was suspicious of artists who claimed their work had deliberate meanings. The proof, he said, was that artists title their works after they make them. When a dozen or so paintings are dry, I bring them from my home studio to the university for varnishing, framing, and naming. Christening takes hours. The philosopher Arthur Danto explains that the main difference between works of art and mere real things is a title. Naming grants special status. Freed from my studio, but accompanied by my intentions (titles), these pictures are now their own beings waiting on you to get to know them.
David Garneau March 2025
Participate in the "Still Life" Contest for a chance to win:
one of three signed copies of the book Dark Chapters: Reading the Still Lives of David Garneau, one of ten Archer Library goody bags.
This contest is open to all registered students and the deadline is April 6, 2025!
Don't miss out- enter today! 🎉
For full contest details, visit: https://library.uregina.ca/librarycontest/stillife
The Dr. John Archer Library & Archives and the University of Regina Press are co-hosting a discussion about Faculty of MAP professor David Garneau’s new book titled Dark Chapters. He will be in conversation with MacKenzie Gallery curator John Hampton and artist, curator, and recent U of R alumnus and Brianna LaPlante. Just as the paintings in the book are a spark for reflections on art and decolonization, this conversation will highlight how Indigenous artists and curators have conversations about legacy and contemporary indigenous experiences and sensibilities through and in art.
