in-animate
Amelia Butcher
Saskia Jetten
April 10 to 26, 2025
Noon to 5 pm
Tuesday to Saturday
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 12
2 to 4 pm.
A shared curiosity about the vital spark connects new work by artists Saskia Jetten and Amelia Butcher. Jetten’s hand-printed paper puppets are inspired by the theatre principle for actors to fill the character to its fullest. Butcher’s ceramic objects query boundaries between sculpture, function, science and art.
Amelia Butcher Artist Statement
My dad had a campfire game he liked to play called Jack’s Alive. First you had to find just the right kind of stick. Then when the fire was ready, with nice hot embers, he’d put the end of the stick into the fire and pull it out when the tip was glowing. Holding that bit of brightness up to his face in the dark, he’d gently blow on it and say - Jack’s alive. Then the stick passes to the next person who blows, says Jack’s alive, and passes it on. Jack goes around the circle, dimming steadily, until suddenly Jack is gone. If you’re caught holding Jack when he dies, the rest of us get to draw on your face with the sooty end of the stick. Then back it goes in the fire and - Jack’s alive.
I loved this little game of life and death and brightness and heat, when an object becomes inhabited by a soul, joins the circle, vanishes, may return again at any minute.
Looking back at the old days when science, art and folk magic were more or less the same thing, I found all kinds of these games and experiments. Scientists used electricity and glass and animals and objects to go looking for the spark of life, wondering at the boundaries between there and not-there. We believed in spontaneous generation and animal electricity and the vibrations of thoughts. I’m interested in holding these stories up against my own sense of making, my feeling that an object I make can be alive and active and at the same time fixed and cold. Soft clay seems vital, exhales water, is transposed in the kiln’s heat, then gathers more presence, emerges a changeling. Pots are immutable but become animated by use, living new lives unseen by the maker.
Bio
Amelia Butcher is a British Columbia-based visual artist with a sculptural and drawing practice centered in clay. She graduated from Emily Carr University in 2013 and is a founding member of the Dusty Babes Collective. From 2015-2021 she lived and worked out of their communal space in the former studio of the late great Don Hutchinson. Now based in Vancouver, she is a maker, instructor, technician, parent and dedicated volunteer with the Potters Guild of BC community kiln.
Studio #255 in the Mergatroid Building, 975 Vernon Drive
Saskia Jetten Artist Statement
Saskia Jetten’s work is rooted in drawing and printmaking and internationally acclaimed for an explorative character. Her work touches on themes related to theatre, identity, and interpersonal relationships.
She works in a wide variety of media including graphite, charcoal, inks and watercolour resulting in contemporary fine art drawings. The direct, personal, revealing character of drawing is close to her heart.
Besides sketching with her drawing supplies, she uses printmaking techniques both in her creative process and for production of works that are either unique or editioned. Saskia honed her skills over the years in a variety of print media and applies them to diverse papers and fabrics. Prints, installations and (stop-motion) animations are the (unconventional) fine art outcomes. Her series of unique hand printed shawls and scarves as well as her hand bound books balance on the threshold of fine and applied arts.
The characteristic labour intensive, slow process of printmaking is exactly the speed and hands-on work that Saskia so intensely enjoys.
Saskia’s latest body of work in printmaking is a series of paper puppets called ‘Fill the Character’. They are inspired by the theatre principle for actors to fill the character to its fullest in order to portray the personage in the most real way. The various paper characters explore their persona in genuine, absurd and poetic ways by filling their bodies with life. You are invited to imagine their movements and animate the puppets in your mind.
Bio
Saskia Jetten is a contemporary fine artist and printmaker who gratefully resides in the swiya of the shíshálhNation (between Jervis Inlet and Howe Sound on the south coast of British Columbia) where she operates a printshop and artist studio.
Continually pushing the boundaries of printmaking with drawing at the base of it, Jetten has exhibited widely in Europe, Canada, China and the US.
She was awarded honourable mentions, the Dutch Printmaking Prize and twice a grant from the Dutch Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture to support her practice.
She immigrated in 2012, mid-career, with her husband from the Netherlands to the Canadian West Coast to build upon her experience and skills, shake up, broaden and challenge her views and art practice. Saskia nourishes the roots from both worlds in her being.
Coinciding with her immigration to Canada she won here two prizes; the best welcome to her new homeland.
After settling in rural British Columbia she was invited for a solo exhibition at the Burnaby Art Gallery, the only gallery in Canada focussing on works on paper. Malaspina Printmakers offered her the tribe she needed and where she continues to share her stone lithography skills in classes on Granville Island. Canada Council for the Arts supported her work through the initial years of the pandemic with two grants.
Saskia has a broad experience of thirty-five years international teaching at university level and is a passionate tutor/coach, instructor and art educator.