Update [26 October 2009]: Drippytown was cancelled last week. In place of the exhibit, the AMS Art Gallery has expertly put together VANIMAUX, which opens today:

VANIMAUX explores the Vancouver animal in its native environment drawing other stories from six perspectives. The contemporary landscape is unpacked by six [local emerging] artists.

The show features Sad Mag contributors and family members Daniel Elstone, Kristina Fiedrich, Brandon Gaukel, Tina Krueger, Judit Navratil, and Katie Stewart. VANIMAUX further unpacks the idea of urban Vancouver, wiping the Olympics sanctioned hype away and showing the beast for what it is.

VANIMAUX. AMS Art Gallery. 6000 Student Union Boulevard. Exhibit opening October 26, 2009, from 5-8 pm.

RVSP

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Jeremy Jaud is nearly choking on his words. His excited phrases are gunning through the empty gallery and splatterings upon impact. Jaud is the art commissioner of the Student Union Building (SUB) Art Gallery at UBC.

Until recently, most UBC students knew the the SUB Art Gallery as the site of the annual poster sale. Today, the gallery is a fixture for art aficionados in Vancouver’s scene, in major part because of Jaud. After meeting the gallery’s previous art commissioner in an Art History seminar last spring, Jaud took over the position and oversaw dramatic renovations over eight months. Jaud is all passion and smiles as he shares what led him to this position. “I saw it as an opportunity to bear all my skill sets on one direction, having a background in art history, visual arts, budgeting, management, and volunteer work.”

Last month, the new space was inaugurated with the show “Vancityscapes,” featuring Morgan Dunnet, a local artist whose impressionistic paintings reveal the city of Vancouver in its simplest moments of glory—images you might recall from late night stumbles through the rainy streets of Gastown. The opening night of “Vancityscapes” saw over two hundred visitors, many of them students, like myself, who had been on UBC’s campus for years, never set foot in the space, but gushed at its reinvention. This was just the start of the gallery’s continuing celebration of Vancouver. Jaud, originally from Yellowknife, is drawn to Vancouver’s new developments and the sense of community it provides. “Vancouver is constantly changing, it’s always in the moment, it’s infectious.”

Jaud envisions the the SUB Art Gallery as a window on the landscape of art to the Belkin Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, Koerner Library, and beyond campus to the rest of Vancouver. He discusses the uniqueness of the gallery in its daily access to thousands of students—the future powerhouses of Vancouver—and its opportunity to initiate or foster artistic interest within them.

At the end of this month, the gallery is hosting an extension of an exhibition called “Drippytown: Vancouver Life Through the Eyes of its Independent Artists” at the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSC) at UBC. The exhibition showcases the RBSC’s collection of print comics created by Vancouver artists, including Colin Upton and James Lawrence, whose work together on a cover for the comic “Drippytown” gave the exhibition both its name and narrative. “Drippytown” presents Vancouver and its characteristic rain, gray skies, and silver linings, as seen through the eyes of six local artists using the comic medium. Like Vancouver, the collection seems dreary at first but is ultimately inspiring.

The exhibition is made possible by the coordination of several forces: students of UBC’s School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies program, RBSC staff, Francesca Marini – a professor within the department, the artists, and Jaud.

Says Jaud, “UBC has such a broad range of art producers and people already interested in the arts; conduits and reflectors. More bridges need to be built between these various groups so that our ideas can be shared, our messages can strengthen and access can blossom.”

The SUB Art Gallery is currently showing “Tragically Rescuing His Family From the Wreckage of a Destroyed Sinking Battleship”, works by Kevin Day, from Oct. 13th – Oct. 23rd.

“Drippytown” shows at the SUB Art Gallery from Oct. 26th –  Nov. 3rd and at Rare Books and Special Collections from    Oct. 23 – Jan. 31st.

-Rebecca Slaven for Sad Mag