Electric City Culture Council Announces Bierk Art Fund Bursary Recipients

The Electric City Culture Council (EC3) has announced that two $1,000 Bierk Art Fund (BAF) Bursaries have been awarded to local high school students Zijian (Suzanne) Tian of Lakefield College School and Ava Cummings of Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School.

photo courtesy of ec3, facebook.

Tian will pursue studies at Parsons School of Design in New York, and Cummings will attend Durham College’s Animation Program.

The BAF is an endowment fund at the Community Foundation of Greater Peterborough (CFGP), established to recognize arts champion and supporter Liz Bierk, and to honour the contributions she and her husband David Bierk have made to the arts in Peterborough.

EC3 says that many people from many walks of life have contributed to this fund over the years, and it has now grown large enough to support the Bierk Art Fund Bursary Program, which provides two bursaries of $1,000 each to graduating high school students living in the City or County of Peterborough.

These students’ works demonstrate great promise and artistic, showing a serious commitment to pursuing further studies at the post-secondary level in the visual or media arts.

Tian was born in Shanxi, China, and continued her high school studies at Lakefield College School. She has been accepted at the Parsons School of Design, and will pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in their Fashion Design program. She works in media such as watercolour, 3D print, pottery, photography, collage, and fashion design, and says her dream has always been to become an artist.

Ava Cummings is graduating from the Visual Arts Program at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School and will be attending Durham College for 2D & 3D Digital Animation. Between her love of drawing and her fascination with animated episodic productions and feature-length movies, Cummings says she feels drawn to the animation industry.

The Bierk Art Fund Bursary Program application process asks students to present their art portfolios to an assessment committee/panel of local artists and arts professionals. This year’s panel was comprised of professional artist and educator Cyd Hosker, and AGP Curator Fynn Leitch, who were impressed by the talent and potential demonstrated by Zijian (Suzanne) Tian and Ava Cummings.

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Art Gallery of Peterborough Acquires Late Artist David Bierk’s Painted Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II

The Art Gallery of Peterborough (AGP) announces the recent acquisition of the late David Bierk’s Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to its Permanent Collection.

David Bierk and Members of the Major Bennett Chapter of the IODE as his portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was installed at the Memorial Centre on Jan. 9, 1980. Photo courtesy of Trent Valley Archives from the Major Bennett IODE Fonds.

The painting was made for the Peterborough Memorial Centre and was installed on Jan. 9, 1980, where it presided over countless sports games, concerts and events until the State Funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 19, 2022.

The painting was commissioned by the Major Bennett Chapter of the IODE for the Memorial Centre to commemorate the group’s 60th anniversary with matching funds from a Wintario Grant.

David Bierk was selected from a list of potential artists by jurors Illi-Maria Tamplin and Zoltan Temesy, then director and chair of the board of the AGP. The original commissioning documents, which are held at Trent Valley Archives, state that if the painting ever needed to be removed it should be donated to the Art Gallery of Peterborough, or the Peterborough Public Library, whichever was preferred.

With these documents the City of Peterborough provided information to the AGP that was reviewed by the AGP Acquisitions Committee. The Committee considers all collection offers and makes recommendations to the AGP Board of Directors, which is the owner of the AGP’s Permanent Collection.

Councillor Alex Bierk, chair of the City’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Portfolio, shared “Growing up, I saw my dad’s massive painting of the Queen at Pete's games, high in the Memorial Centre. My brother Zac told me how players tried to aim for it with pucks during practice. I find it special how the painting intersects my dad's love of sports and his life as an artist, and how it hung over my brother Zac’s head in goal as he played for the Petes. The public reacted strongly when it was taken down. I'm so happy that it ended up in the collection of the Art Gallery of Peterborough to be kept safe and continue to live on in our community.”

The Art Gallery of Peterborough received designation as a Category A Collecting Institution by the Department of Canadian Heritage in 1981. Chair of the board and acquisitions committee, Catharine Blastorah says, “The AGP makes collection decisions very carefully following best practice standards. Whenever we accept a work into the Collection, we make that decision for our and future generations. This painting, which is based on a photograph of the Queen taken during her Silver Jubilee visit to Canada, is a welcome addition to the gallery’s collection, which holds very few early works by the artist.”

The AGP Board of Directors approved the acquisitions committee’s recommendation to accept the donation on Dec. 15, 2022. Gallery staff and the AGP board of directors worked with staff at the City to safely relocate the work from the Memorial Centre to the AGP’s Collection storage vault. There it will be cleaned and integrated into the gallery’s Permanent Collection where it will join over one hundred works by Bierk.

David Bierk (1944-2002) was born in Appleton, Minnesota, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. David immigrated to Canada and in 1972 took up a teaching position at Kenner Collegiate and Vocational Institute. After two years teaching high school art he moved on to teach at Fleming College, where he remained for 5 years.

In 1974 David became a founding member of Peterborough’s artist-run-centre, Artspace, of which he was the Director until 1987. In 1998 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Artists.

David was posthumously awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and his work is held in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canada Council Art Bank, and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

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Peterborough's Music & Arts Scene Rocks (Exhibit A: Bear Trees)

Bear Trees are a new local pop band, spreading their collective wings across the local music scene. The band is lead by Mike Duguay, a multifaceted scenester who seems to display an unending energy to explore all facets of his creativity. On any given night, you might find him and his band opening for any number of touring musical acts passing through town. Then again, you might find him taking the stage for a play or performance piece as part of a local, improvised theatre troop.

It’s people like Mike Duguay, and projects like Bear Trees, which are forever springing out of the local arts scene. The lush arts community we are blessed to witness here in Peterborough on a daily basis would be nothing without people like Duguay and dozens just like him.

This town is ripe with folks wanting to collaborate, organize, promote and spread the gospel of the talented folks who create here. Peterborough's vibrant arts scene is a known calling card across this country. This town has long been a draw for artists of all disciplines, bringing great music, leading edge visuals and dynamic performance to venues across the city.

Renowned painter David Bierk and a team of like minds put Peterborough on the visual arts map when they initiated Artspace in the mid-seventies. Artspace was and remains a cutting edge nest of creativity where local and touring visual ideas brew. Recently, the much lauded debut album by roots-centric band Evening Hymns was born from a series of recording sessions within those same art covered walls.

You needn’t look very hard to discover music in this town. The Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, choral groups, and singer-songwriters alongside punk and metal bands carry on a thriving existence here. Welcoming venues are peppered throughout the city, hosting live music on a nightly basis.

It’s this tangible, communal, supportive nature which benefits both the artists and performers as well as the audiences who have witnessed the spoils of this for decades.

--Jeffrey Macklin, PtboCanada contributor

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