Ann Beam: Making materials epic

Manitoulin Island artist Ann Beam, at La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, incorporates a variety of traditional and recycled materials in her mixed media works. Express Wagon (above), the same name as the show, uses a recycled child’s wagon, garden gate, prayer flags and plywood.

-High Altitude Prayer, 84” X 108,” acrylic and recycled prayer flags, on canvas

Based in M’chigeeng, Beam’s world is strewn with spinning globes, glowing rainbow auras, star-filled skies, horses and caribou standing against backdrops of aurora borealis, contrasting with statement-pieces springing from the artist’s social and environmental preoccupations.  – Exhibition Notes

-Earth Incorporating, 4’ x 6′ -recycled packaging and found objects, acrylic and canvas on panel

Do Not Drop (above) is typical of Beam’s  work with industrial cardboard, revealing its wavy, uneven innards to be covered with acrylic paint.  Many pieces make use of a window that “holds an alternate possibility, a threshold, a space that draws curiosity,” Beam says.

New Vision = New World, 40” x 60” – acrylic, photo transfer, canvas, recycled corrugated paper, birch bark and window, on panel

Ann Beam is also a writer, book designer, lecturer and Director of Neon Raven Art Gallery

See more on her website, here.