CUPE’s Art Collection

The CUPE collection consists of primarily emerging professional artists (exceptions are Farouk Kaspaules and Daniel Sharp).

The CUPE Collection

For CUPE Don Monet set out to choose artists that have shown an empathy for the international union movement and solidarity with workers. They have all worked either in Mayworks or have shown a support for unions. It is also important that they create work that is aesthetically pleasing. Art that workers can enjoy over a long period of time. They are after all significant elements of the “feel” of any workplace.

The Artists

The art in this collection was chosen by union curator Don Monet of Cube Gallery. (CARFAC)

Ground Floor Entrance(large south wall)

Farouk Kaspaules

Farouk Kaspaules (CARFAC) is an Iraqi-born Canadian artist who has been exhibiting since mid-1980s, and has been actively engaged with artist-run centres, organizing and curating exhibits on political and cultural themes. His interest in the events shaping the political and social situation in the Middle East influenced his work that found an expression in the 1995 exhibit Non Sequitur, at SAW gallery in Ottawa which dealt with the issue of the Gulf War. In 2001, he participated in the exhibition The Land Within Me – Memory of a Place, at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Farouk participated in group exhibitions in Latin America, most notably in Brazil (2001) and Chile (2002). In 2003, Farouk exhibited State of Things, which dealt with the condition of the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq. He has had exhibits in Cairo, Egypt, and Amman, Jordan. In 2004, Farouk held a solo exhibit in the USA dealing metaphorically with issues of global violence. More recently, Farouk participated in exhibits in London and Ottawa, Ontario, and Bordeaux, France. He worked with the ODLC for a piece in the Union~Art show part of Mayworks 2004.

Employees’ Lounge Ground Floor

Hawa Kaba

Born in Burkina Faso, Hawa spent her childhood in many West African countries including the Ivory Coast and Guinea. She moved to the United States when she was 18 and subsequently to Canada where she has remained for almost 20 years. Ottawa is where she developed her passion for painting.

“My art expresses my sense of being an African woman, using mixed media and the visual language of western art. I incorporate design elements that I learned when dyeing textiles with my older sister, as well as the suggestions of forms that I observed in locally produced sculptures and masks from my village. I interweave those elements with layers of texture, a rich variety of collage materials, acrylic paint, modelling gels, and sometimes mementos and images that hold special meaning. Many of my paintings are pictorial metaphors – visual poetry. My work comes from an inner spring that delights in the patchwork interplay of colours, shapes, textures, and symbols.”

A series of four small pieces such as the one above - for the

lunchroom 14” X 10”

Judy Darcy BoardroomGround Floor

D. H. MonetD. H. Monet (CARFAC) is a community-based artist/activist – his practice includes cartoons, posters, fine art, exhibition curation and education. Don's photo collage paintings have appeared at union art shows The Labouring Body Artcite (Windsor) and the CUPE BC convention. His work is held in collections across the country including CUPE ON, the Gitxsan Chiefs Office, and by artists Susan Point and Bruce Cockburn. His acerbic political cartoons have received critical acclaim at home and abroad. His political cartoons, posters and workshops have been used by CUPE, PSAC, ODLC (winner 2002 CALM award), Calgary hospital workers, Innu and Gitxsan Nations, CBC, NOW Magazine, Ottawa Citizen and the National Gallery, to name a few. His groundbreaking book Colonialism on Trial, is an illustrated documentary about the Delgamuukw land title trial. Don has organized a number of labour-friendly cultural events, including exhibitions for Mayworks 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 1999 and 2003 he organized Art Against War and in 2001 Crime Seen; group exhibitions at Gallery 101 to protest war and globalization. He is the editor of the Mayworks artists' directory.

Sisters in Solidarity

acrylic, holograph and photo transfer on birch

48” X 48”

Second FloorCommunications, Legal, Equality,

Union Development

Jennifer GibbsJennifer Gibbs (CARFAC) was born in 1970. She was raised in the country in eastern Ontario until 1990 when she moved to Ottawa where she received a degree in Classics and English. Jennifer is inspired by physics, mathematics, poetry, mythology, biology, and other artists – ancient to contemporary. Her art often deals with ontology and the perplexing nature of existence. Other times Jennifer seeks to create portraits of powerful women. Some of her images reflect the importance of a love of simple things and a sense of childlike wonder. She has shown at numerous galleries and has been included in the Mayworks as well as Art Against War exhibitions.

Works proposed for the second floor are from a series exploring what was considered traditional women's work.

Blue Sisters

acrylic on canvas

30” X 40”

Second FloorCommunications, Legal, Equality,

Union Development

Jennifer Gibbs

Disquieting Muses

acrylic on canvas

30” X 40”

Second Floor(boardroom)

Marc Dubois Dan Rivaud

Emotional Landscape #4

oil on canvas

36” X 36”

The Striker

acrylic/fibreglass on board

24” X 30”

Third FloorResearch, Health and Safety,

Job Evaluation

Kim HaydenFlower petals are dripped onto canvas, squirt bottles replace paintbrushes, and painterly gestures are beaded. Red beaded dots stitched onto canvas reference drops of blood, a needle pricking one’s finger in the process of beading, and the struggles of the Métis to defend their rights and to be recognized as an Aboriginal people.

In this series, I deconstruct traditional Métis floral beadwork and integrate it into layers of dripped and poured paint—a loose, gestural style attributed to American artist, Jackson Pollock. Built on a grid of copper leaf, the visual perception of layers is blurred by reflected light, three-dimensional media, and competing layers of colour and texture. This work considers the influence of place, culture and perception on personal and national identity—a landscape created following a year spent living, working and musing in Japan. Kim Hayden is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation, Redboine Local. She holds a BFA with distinction from Concordia University, Montreal (1996) and an MEd from the University of Ottawa (2008).

Flower Beadwork Series: I dreamt that Jackson Pollock was Métis and lived in Japan. Sakura (Cherry Blossoms). Kumamoto Castle. 8/9. 2007. glass beads, waxed nylon thread, copper leaf, acrylic on canvas90 x 90 cmass beads, waxed nylon thread, copper leaf, acrylic on canvas90 x 90 cm

Third FloorResearch, Health and Safety,

Job Evaluation

Kim Hayden

Flower Beadwork Series: I dreamt that Jackson Pollock was Métis and lived in Japan. Sakura (Cherry Blossoms). Kumamoto Castle.

9/9. 2005.

glass beads, waxed nylon thread, copper leaf, acrylic on canvas

102 x 102 cm

Fourth FloorFinance and Administration,

Technology, Convention, Accounting

Daniel SharpDaniel Sharp (CARFAC) has a long practice of abstract painting. His work oscillates between measured structure and gestural form, researching colour, balance, order and improvisation. The exploration of desire is the subject of these personal, social, sensual paintings. Paintings that aspire to poetry.

He has been a part of several Mayworks art shows, as well as having done a major commission for CAPES in Ottawa. Installed at the union headquarters in downtown Ottawa, he created five banners with five colours/patterns that reflect values of the union.

The artist lives in Ottawa, is the father of two children, and works for Foreign Affairs in the management of a collection of fine art.

Transformer Panel Blue

oil on panel

78” X 24”

Fourth FloorFinance and Administration,

Technology, Convention, Accounting

Daniel Sharp

Transformer Panel Yellow

oil on panel

78” X 24”

Fifth FloorNational President’s Office

(corridor)

Jean JewerJean Jewer (CARFAC) is a painter whose imagery is based on the landscape.

Growing up in a small outport of northern Newfoundland has given her a great love and respect for the environment and the ever-changing drama of the land and the sea.

Her artwork is a response to this natural world with all its beauties, diversities, and hostilities. The paintings emerge like a performance of nature itself, “I pick, I scrape, I slash, and I leave my mark on my surfaces.”

Each painting is an “act of remembering.”

Oppidian I

oil on paper

40” X 32”

Fifth FloorNational Secretary-Treasurer’s Office

(corridor)

Jean Jewer

Oppidian II

oil on paper

40” X 32”

Fifth Floor(boardroom)

Rebecca MasonEchoes

63” X 18”

A native of Chelsea, Quebec, Rebecca Mason studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto where she first developed her unique painting style. Working on large sheets of Japanese paper, Mason takes inspiration from her natural surroundings with trees, canoes and mountains as the central themes, and she records them in a very free, expressive manner. Rebecca has exhibited her work in Ontario and Quebec since 1988. She has participated in a wide array of exhibitions at galleries, juried exhibitions and special art events. Her work can be found in private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe.

“Watercolour on Japanese paper is the medium I work with. Responding to my environment as an expressive colourist, I use nature as my inspiration. Wetting and lightly creasing the handmade paper, I then let the painting unfold from my mind's eye using the creases as my pathway. The results are somewhat like writing a poem on the page, but I use watercolour and brushes as the vehicle to capture my sense of place.” Becky Mason 2005

Fifth Floor(boardroom)

Marc DuboisEmotional Landscape 11

30” X 60”

Marc Dubois is a self-taught artist from Gatineau, Quebec inspired by Velasquez, Nerdrum, Chardin and Morandi. His medium is oil on canvas and his subject matter includes portraits, still lifes and urban landscapes. The overriding theme that dominates much of his work is the interrelationship between extremes, such as passion and reason, or abstraction and representation.