On March 20, the Webster Library atrium was filled with Concordia students selling their art, from prints to dream catchers. Concordi’ART was hosting its first art market to offer art students an opportunity to showcase their work.
Neltje Green, a Concordia design artist, held a stand where she sold her acrylic paintings. She paints interior spaces on wood panels, playing with perspective and colours.
“I’m still trying to find the words to explain my art, but it’s like a mix of minimalism, abstraction, and classic hyperrealism,” Green said.
While some painted spaces are inspired by dreams or visions, others are places she has lived in, like her apartment.
“I wanted to archive the space because I can’t go back,” Green said. “When you have an old family home, your grandparents’ place, or an old apartment, and you have all these memories, you want to remember the space.”
By adding a light, a shadow, or objects that seem to have been recently used, she creates the feeling of a presence without including people in her paintings.
“Most of the stuff that I have made has doorways, or it looks like it’s leading somewhere. I want it to look like just around the corner, there could be someone doing something,” Green said.
Similarly, Rachel James Carrière, an animation major who sells anything from dream catchers to clothing to dolls, also uses her dreams as an inspiration.
“I lucid dream pretty much every night, and in my dreams, I fly, so a lot of it is just based on my ability to fly in my dreams,” she said.
Carrière is also a tattoo artist and has owned her business for six years. Her recent tattoo designs, like her other work, are also dream-like and playful.
“For the older designs, I was just trying to figure out what it was I wanted to tattoo,” Carrière said. “It did take some time to figure out how to translate my art into something tattooable in terms of technique and style.”
Out of the spring art market, she hoped to network and have people approach her art with curiosity.
“I hope that when people look at my things, it [awakens their] inner child, you know? It excites that part of your brain,” Carrière said.
For her part, Isabel Yung, a psychology and painting and drawing student at Concordia, enjoys the art market because it’s a way for her to fund her practice and get exposure.
“I feel like I’m still in the early stages of my career, so I don’t have enough paintings to sell yet,” said Yung.
Concordi’ART also had its own table filled with homemade baked goods made by the team. All the money collected from the bake sale will fund their student exhibition on April 3.
