Pam Baergen and Rick Rogers - Home, Home on the Brink
This October, we welcome local artists, Pam Baergen and Rick Rogers to The Carrot Art Gallery.
Artists Statement
It began with a conversation. We talked about the scarcity of clear choices while navigating our new normals. We thought of people being 'out of their element,' and adapting to otherness that they aren’t ready for. We talked about the edges of being human...what are we willing to change, or lose, to survive as a species? We imagined other worlds. We discussed how gains in resilience can come at the price of a loss of natural habitat. We talked about control. We discussed how distance can create otherness and lead to adversity. We saw value in visually exploring these concepts together, and so we agreed to collaborate at each stage of the creative process as safely as we could. Face masks were donned, hand sanitizer became as necessary a tool as our brushes and blades, and we took advantage of online tools like Pinterest and videoconferencing.
Even the show title was collaborative. It started with Old Ways for New Days as a proposed title and next came many ideas: Resettle, Remix; Evolution of the Commonwealth; Moving Forward, Standing Still and many more. When we discussed these we realized we wanted the concept of an alien-ness or change to be included in the title. This resulted in The Uncertain Frontier and Strange New Worlds, which triggered the words edge, verge, threshold and brink, and the title Home on the Brink. The addition of sentimentality and idealism in the form of a traditional song resulted in the exhibition title Home, Home on the Brink, an interesting shift of the same underlying theme as the original working title, but more evocative. And this title-finding process was an early indicator of success in our collaboration.
About the Artists
Pam Baergen obtained a Fine Art Diploma from Grant MacEwan University in 2005. During her studies, Baergen was exposed to a wide range of contemporary artists and artmaking practices, which inspired her to begin exploring visual art's communicative power and potential beyond reproducing a convincing image. She was compelled to learn more about the art that came before her - who made what, and why? What effect did it have? Enrolling in an art history program seemed like a logical next-step. In 2008, Pam graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Arts Degree with distinction, majoring in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture, and minoring in Christian Theology. To see more of Baergen’s work, visit www.livingportraits.ca
Rick Rogers’ background as a systems architect and scientist has been leveraged to experiment with various media, researching existing techniques and developing his own, and evolving his own processes for creating art. In Rogers’ words, “Science and art are never so far apart as our modern culture would make them seem. As an experimental artist, I see these ‘opposing’ bodies of knowledge as deeply intertwingled. The aesthetics and science of composition, the theoretical and practical pursuit of a deep understanding of the interaction of textures, and the physics and chemistry of paint manipulation are three areas in which I am particularly involved. My work is inspired as often by a scientific principle or an experimental eureka moment as it is by an aesthetic vision.” To see more of Rogers’ work, visit www.rickrogers.art
