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Artists offer downloadable new works as part of Herringer Kiss Gallery's Inisolation exhibit

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There’s a smartphone screensaver based around skull imagery by Dan Hudson. Marjan Eggermont offers a mini-zine called Life on the Island of Disbelief. Jason Frizzell has produced a digital drawing and photomontage that you can hang in your window while self-isolating. Fiona Ackerman has provided music for a video called Night Driving that features paintings from a series of the same name. Aron Hill has designed an illustration that you can download and colour.

The artists, who are all represented by Calgary’s Herringer Kiss Gallery, are offering these pieces of art for free; all downloadable from their gallery’s website as part of a new digital exhibit called Inisolation.

“They are the people who are best-suited for something like this,” says gallery owner Deborah Herringer Kiss. “They are naturally adapted to being alone in the studio, to being isolated. They are probably doing better than some of us. They are definitely anxious and worried about things but they continue to make work.”

So Herringer Kiss reached out to her roster of artists, first to see how everyone was doing, but also to encourage them to post plenty of in-studio pictures and photos of whatever pieces they might be working on.

From there, Aron Hill — a Calgary-based artist who works in installation-based projects using drawing, painting and sculpture — picked up the thread and suggested artists offer downloadable art.

Many of the artists, including Hill, have decided to explore new territory with this assignment.

“Often in these types of times, artists tend to do a lot of work,” Hill says. “Everyone I know, myself included, have been in the studio quite a bit and more so than normal. The work does start to change a little bit for whatever reason. We tend to work in isolation anyways. For me, at least, when you create more boundaries as this whole process has set up for everyone, there’s a little bit more freedom in a strange way. There’s an opportunity to work differently. So a lot of the artists who expressed interest in this particular project, the work they are producing is different in the sense that it is digital, but they tend to be different than what they usually do. It tends to open up possibilities. There’s less pressure in a certain way.”

More than a dozen artists from Herringer Kiss have participated already or have works in progress for Inisolation. While COVID-19 has certainly inspired artists, the subject matter is rarely a direct response to the virus, Hill says.

“I think it’s more reflective of the general, cultural sense that is going on,” he says. “As opposed to speaking to it, it’s more a reflection about it. That’s so far been the response. No one has taken it on as an issue. So far we are seeing it as more personal and about day-to-day lives, about how they are experiencing this as opposed to it being an issue.”

Since all the downloads are free, this is not a money-maker for the gallery or its artists. But Herringer Kiss says it is a way for the artists to stay active and in the spotlight. The response has shown, and not for the first time during this crisis, how important the arts are in times of crisis.

‘The amount of sharing of art and creativity that we’re seeing on social media is a message to us that we are so important,” she says.  “I think during times like this, I think it’s when people realize how important the arts really are. The arts are getting people through this.”

Visit herringerkissgallery.com

Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020

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