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Item List

Carolanne MacLean

​Carolanne MacLean was born in Toronto in 1949. She is a graduate with honours of the Ontario College of Art in Fine Art and has a B.A. from the University of Toronto. Her large encaustic abstract works are a study in light, colour and texture, sometimes involving the figure, often nonrepresentational. Her City Souls paintings capture moments, passing expressions on the faces around us.

She pursues the beauty of the figure through a regular sculpture practice.

Artist's Statement: I feel I am working with energy, whether painting or sculpting. I am interested in the healing value of colour and the surprising beauty of the accidental mark, and intrigued by the very existence of our response to beauty.

E-mail: cmtoronto@pm.me

Don Frost

Peterborough born Don Frost had his future path laid out for him by winning first prize in a city wide art exposition at age six in grade one. The following year at age seven, Don had a group showing at the
Peterborough Public Library. Public school had its usual trials and tribulations and it was not until grade 10 that Don discovered that he was colour blind to all but the primary colours. At this point Don’s life took a right turn and sculpture was all that he focused on. Don teamed up with a friend in grade 11 who became his art agent and they enjoyed considerable success in the Peterborough area. After high school Don took some time off to do his art and apprentice as a mechanic for a year.

In 1973-74 he attended Sheridan Art College followed by a decision to become a professional sculptor having just received a major commission for a large 15' tall sculpture for a new mall being built in Peterborough, Ontario. This was followed by the creation of the largest sculpture in Canada in 1983 by winning a competition for an indoor work for the Michael Starr Building in Oshawa, Ontario. Always seeking new outlets for art Don acquired an art agent in Ottawa which led to an introduction to a patron who kept Don busy creating more than 40 sculptures in a period of twenty years.

Don’s work internationally was recently a commission for four large works for a garden in Club Medjulis in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Previously to this in an expansive design project by the late King Hussein for a 1.6 km wall of huge relief panels commemorating the history of Jordan, Don’s work on six of these panels was accepted by King Abdullah. Experiencing greater notoriety for the global uniqueness of his art, Don was presented with awards from Peterborough County and commemorated in the Walk of Fame. Presently Don has art representatives across the United States and Canada.

Email: don.frost@sympatico.ca

Peter Wehrspann​

Peter is a skilled designer, metal artist and wood worker. A graduate of SITAL, he has twice received the Betty Kantor Scholarship Award for students who display excellence in the program. Before studying furniture design, Peter received a degree in Communications from Wilfrid Laurier University. Born in Toronto, he has been able to widen his perspective by traveling and living abroad in Japan, Switzerland, and Denmark. Peter has also studied design in Denmark where his work was exhibited at the prestigious Denmark Design Skole. His work has been exhibited online, in print media, and at Fluid Living, Distillery District location. Peter is energetically involved in the Toronto craft and design community, most recently is his involvement with Designers Walk Home and Style Studio Tour where his work is displayed at Weavers Art. In the time of his young career, Peter has been developing working relationships with residential clients, interior designers, and architects.

Email: peter@holtzundmetal.com

Phillip Vander Weg

Work Decommissioned in 2017

Phillip Vander Weg is a professor of Art at Western Michigan University. He has held that post since 1989 and has been chair of the Department of Art for most of that time Vander Weg is also director of the WMU Sculpture Tour Program, which he founded in 1991. He received his MFA in Sculpture from The University of Michigan’s Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies in 1968. He also has a BS in Design from The University of Michigan. As an artist, Vander Weg has been exhibited regularly since 1969. Venues include Frederick Meijer Sculpture Park and Gardens in Grand Rapids, Cleveland State College, The University of Tennessee, Clemson University, and The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C. Awards and honors include a Purchase Award at The 1996 Allegro Festival Exhibition, winner of The Vanderbilt University Sculpture Competition for Heard Library Interior in 1986, and a Purchase Award in the Art Of The Eighties competition at The Tennessee State Museum (Nashville) in 1982. Since 1972, he has had in excess of 25 private commissions (completed) of major sculptures for clients in the Midwest and Southeast, and his works are in the public and corporate collections of, among many others, The Butler Museum of Art, Tennessee State Museum, New York State University at Potsdam, and Gulf & Western Industries in New York City. He is an active member of The National Association of Schools of Art and Design, The College Art Association, FATE: Foundations in Art: Theory and Education, and The International Sculpture Conference.

Carole Turner

American artist Carole Turner, who lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey, creates contemporary sculpture in stone, steel, bronze, and wood. She carves, fabricates, and models with abstracted and geometric design, as well as voluptuous figurative and organic form.

Carole's sculpture is exhibited internationally and her many monumental sculptures can be found in the collections of museums, municipalities, sculpture parks, and corporations in Italy, Argentina, Germany, Vietnam, Russia, South Korea, Austria, Poland, Romania, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, China, Chile, India, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Greece, and the United States.

Carole came to Haliburton as part of the Carved on the Canadian Shield Sculpture Symposium in order to carve her sculpture. Celebrating Canada, Ontario, and Dysart 150, four artists came to Haliburton to carve a piece out of limestone representing Canada and the Canadian Shield.

Doug Stephens

Doug Stephens has been carving stone since taking a course in Haliburton in 1998. Years before he had worked in the set department for film and television and then went on to study sculpture in Halifax at the Nova Scotia School of Fine Art, but had not settled on a medium that had any real meaning for him. That changed when he studied in Haliburton with George Pratt, who then invited him to spend some months in Vancouver apprenticing at his studio. Later that year, Doug opened his own studio in Muskoka and has had his work shown in galleries in Bala, Gravenhurst, Rosseau and Haliburton. Every summer since then he has taught at the Haliburton School of The Arts. In May of 2001 he moved his studio to Belleville and began working as a full-time sculptor for the Campbell Monument Company, carving sculptures for the local and North American market.

Tarzan Sithole

Tarzan Sithole is a third-generation Zimbabwean stone sculptor. His works are also on display at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens and the Kew Gardens in London.

Richard Shanks

Born in England, Richard is the son of a master stone mason who creates industrial masterpieces and functional designs in brick and stone. His mother was an artisan-craftsperson who appreciated beauty in a variety of found objects and nature. Richard’s sister has a similar talent which is being carried on today. As an adult, he his artistic desire led him into the restoration of vintage cars and the building of custom vehicles. In 1989, he married and moved to Nova Scotia where he transformed a century-old sawmill into a unique space, The Mill Gallery Art, Crafts & Curiosities, which was to exhibit their own works and those of local artists. In 1996, they returned to Ontario where Richard took this creativity further, building a studio suitable for the production of various materials including blacksmithing. Richard became a certified Artist Blacksmith in 1999 at Sir Sandford Fleming College in Haliburton. He now creates unique works of art, sculpture and furniture in a variety of media such as steel, stone, wood and glass. They operate, Just Mad Innovative Design—a family business, inspired by their children Justice and Madison who have give them guidance through their own creativity. Anything is Possible!

Leo Sepa

Leo’s foray into metal art began some thirty years ago. Though the urge to create with fire and metal remained strong throughout the years, Leo’s talents were relegated to weekends and holidays at his Haliburton cottage until he retired. In 1997, he and is wife Hilary fulfilled a longtime dream by establishing Iron Jive Studio in Moore Falls, Haliburton.

Leo is a participant of The Haliburton County Studio Tour, where art lovers watch him demonstrate forging techniques and visit his home gallery. Many of Leo’s ideas are conceived and captured on film during outings of rural Ontario, especially Haliburton. He is continually developing and exploring new ideas, which are reflected, in his artwork.

Leo’s paternal grandfather was a blacksmith in Estonia (in fact, the name “Sepa” is derived from the Estonian “Raud Sepp” which translates as iron smith). Like his grandfather, Leo uses traditional blacksmith techniques. But he also employs the use of an oxyacetylene torch, a Mig welder, a plasma cutter and various other modern tools. He works in both recycled and new materials where he sometimes uses natural patinas creating a wide variety of pieces. Though the elder Sepa was a traditional blacksmith, forging tools and farm implements, Leo figures a little of his grandfather’s craft rubbed off on him.

Leo was born in 1947 in Sweden after his Estonian parents fled to the nearby country to escape Soviet repression after the USSR invaded the Baltic. He came to Canada when he was three.

Andrew Rothfischer

Andrew Rothfischer has studied art both in Canada and abroad. While he has been on the artist's path for many years, in 2009 he finally graduated from the Haliburton School of Arts with a diploma in Visual Arts. Andrew specializes in two seemingly disparate areas; pastel paintings of landscapes and outdoor sculptures.

His paintings often highlight places in nature that we tend to overlook or take for granted. In 2004 he produced the exhibit, “Jackson Creek – Travels through an Urban Watershed” that featured 25 paintings depicting the hard realities and the beauty that shape urban waterways today. Since that time, this idea of special places has evolved into the theme of “Sense of Place" that has continued in the the current series, the "Warsaw Project".

Andrew's sculptures are almost exclusively created for the outdoors. They are designed to live in a field or in a garden. They are sometimes functional garden accents like dividers, bird baths or benches. The materials used are kiln formed glass, stone, cement or metal retrieved from the local junkyard. He works with these hard materials - fusing, casting, molding and shaping, reclaiming -, to create new forms that both startle and delight the viewer with their simplicity and beauty.

So how do these two disciplines tie together? For the artist, the paintings are "of the land"; recognizing and capturing the essence of those special places that stir us. The sculptures take these impressions a step further. They play with those same colours and shapes and light, creating forms that are "on the land". Both forms, however, in their own way, celebrate and pay homage to the landscape around us.

For information about the purchase of Lissome#5 or other of Andy's works visit andrewrothfischer-art.com or contact info@haliburtonsculptureforest.ca

John Shaw-Rimmington

John Shaw-Rimmington has, in the past, specialized in restoring historic stone buildings. After working for the Uxbridge museum he extended his focus to using stone in landscaping and building dry stone walls. His knowledge of designing with stone has developed after years of masonry practice in Canada and comprehensive research into traditional dry stonework in Britain where he worked with a number of professional wallers. He teaches walling in southern Ontario and has designed and built many dry stone art installations across Canada as well as built a number of dry stone bridges in Ontario and Quebec. As well as doing many demonstrations and lectures, John is the president of the Dry Stone Walling Across of Canada (www.dswac.ca), and also writes of a daily blog called Thinking With My Hands.

Marianne Reim

Marianne Reim (BA, SCA, SSC) graduated with a B.A. in Art & Art History from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She has been Artist in Residence in Japan, Yugoslavia, Italy and British Columbia, Canada. She has had many solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows.

She exhibited her sculptures from 1994 to the present at such prestigious venues as: Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton, Sculpture Society of Canada; Canadian Embassy, Tokyo; Gallery Fukashi, Matsumoto, Japan, Künstlerhaus, Ulm, Germany; Dante Centre, Ravenna, Italy; and at the Crawford Arts Centre, St. Andrew Scotland,

Her works can be found in public and private collections.

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