Leila Armstrong

Sneak preview of Coyote Pack.

2011-09-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

Click here for Must see official Ojai Valley Taxidermy TV Commercial.

Flexus Maximus opening Friday, September 23, Kenderdine Gallery.

2011-09-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Artists' talk prior to opening, 8 pm.

Opening, 9 pm - 11 pm.

Kenderdine Gallery, 51 Campus Drive, 2nd Level - Agriculture Building.

Three layered Flexi Moose.

2011-08-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

Flexus Maximus

2011-08-08T09:25:00.001-07:00

A sample of the paintings/illustrations I'm currently producing for 12 Point Buck's "Flexus Maximus," opening at the Kenderdine in Saskatoon on September 23rd. "Flexus Maximus" is an homage to Western Canadian folk painter Levine Flexhaug.

Lovelorn, Young Love, True Romance.

2011-07-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

Pen and coloured pencil on top of vodka ink jet transfers, 2009.

Winter Shadows

2011-02-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

Click here for Bobble Buck video.

EXHIBITION/AUCTION OPPORTUNITY: SPIN!

2011-01-17T09:37:00.000-08:00

Artist’s Exhibition/Auction Opportunity in Celebration of Record Store Day, Saturday, April 16, 2011:

“SPIN”

In 1938, Columbia records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director and the concept of covers and cover art was born. In 1948, 10” and 12” LPs first appeared and box sets of 45 rpms soon followed. With these formats came a commitment to original album cover design as both a marketing tool and as a means for artists ...to further communicate the album’s intent. The development of album art, gatefold covers, inserts, lyric sheets, etc., soon made album covers a collectable commodity in their own right. Notable covers include Andy Warhol’s banana cover for “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” The Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street” which had a gatefold cover and included 12 perforated postcards, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph of Patti Smith on the cover of “Horses.”

Now it’s your turn to revive the 12” LP cover format which reigned from the 50s through to the mid-80s. Design an alternative cover for an existing album or devise a cover for an artist/group of your own creation. All submissions should be approximately 12.375”x 12.375”. Include your name, phone number and/or email address, and medium when you submit the work.

HERE’S THE KICKER: The works will be auctioned off at a SPIN Party with ALL proceeds going to the artists!!!
So, please include a minimum bid when you drop off your work.

Exhibition venues: Blueprint Entertainment (519 - 4 Avenue South) and Owl Acoustic Lounge (411 - 3 Avenue South).

March workshop TBA.

Drop off submissions at the Bowman Art Centre on or before Saturday, April 2, 2011.
Bowman Art Centre, 811 – 5 Avenue South, Lethbridge, AB, T1J 0V2.
For more info contact organizers Todd Lacharite: toddlacharite@hotmail.com or Leila Armstrong: leila.armstrong@shaw.ca
Co-sponsored by The Bowman Arts Centre.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: CABINET OF QUEER-IOSITIES

2011-01-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:CABINET OF QUEER-IOSITIES: Lethbridge Pride 2011.

Cabinets of Curiosities (or Wunderkammers) were collections of objects which would later be separated into the distinct categories of geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, and antiquities. During the Renaissance such collections were shown together in what are now considered the early precursors of the modern museum.

Cabinet of Queer-iosities is an exhibition of small format works celebrating GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered) history and pride through a diverse range of subject matters and approaches. The exhibition will appear in the oak display cases at the Bowman Arts Centre from May 28 through July 10, 2011. Works that play with the Wunderkammer concept are encouraged.

This call is open to everyone but submissions should in some way address GLBT history and/or pride. Given the limited space and physical size of the cabinets, 2D and 3D pieces should not exceed 18" in any dimension.

The showcases are in a public hallway frequented by small children. Artists are asked to take this into consideration when submitting work for any exhibition in this space.

Deadline for Submissions: Saturday, May 21, 2011.

Drop off or mail in work to:
The Bowman Arts811 - 5 Avenue South
Lethbridge, AB,
T1J 0V2

For further information contact Leila Armstrong (bowmanreception@hotmail.com) or Darcy Logan (darcy@artslethbridge.org) @ 403-327-2813.

Fair Grounds

2010-10-18T11:18:00.001-07:00

Diabolical Bunny.

Alien Chihuahua.

Hipster Bug.

Wild, Wild Life at Harcourt House.

2010-08-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Ice Break.

2010-08-11T11:19:00.000-07:00

Further evidence of global warming found in the Crownest Pass.

12 Point Buck Nicholas Sheran shoot.

2010-08-08T21:51:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait with Bison Head

2010-07-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

The first rule of Bear Fight Club ...

2010-07-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

Museum of Miniature Bear Violence And Deer Leaping, Cardston, Alberta.

Buck You!

2010-07-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

The Works, 2010.

GenderBlender opens June 13, 2-6 PM, 1424 - 23 Avenue NW.

2010-05-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

A little somethin' somethin' for GenderBlender

2010-05-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Dancing Bear Short Short Story

2010-05-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in a fantastic and magical land, a brown bear learned to dance. His reward was a collar and a leash. And the instant the collar was slipped over his head, all the whimsy and wonder in the land evaporated and was never seen or heard from again.

Image: A dancing bear performing in the United States, c. 1900, from the Hugh Mangum Archives.

Final sketch for Badger Boy

2010-05-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

Portrait of Troy Nickle as Badger Boy.

While attending a recent Dr. Sketchy's event, Troy Nickle showed me a photograph he had taken of himself in his skivvies. While I instantly remarked that I thought he looked like Bobby Hill, my next thought was that I desperately wanted to transform the image into Badger Boy. It seems to be a logical progression from the idealised masculinity in the Buckheads to portray the flawed and vulnerable body given character by the addition of an animal head chosen to convey the specifics of the individual portrayed.

12 Point Buck: Wild Wild Life in Canadian Art's See It.

2010-04-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Canadian Art link.

With 12 Point Buck @ Nouveau Gallery, Regina

2010-03-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

March 26 - April 17, 2010

Buckhead 2

Buckhead sketches

Weissmuller sketch
Buckhead 5
Buckhead 3
Buckhead 2, 1, and 5

I began working on the Buckhead series as drawings incorporating the same buck’s head. I’m an avid collector and spent months tracking down a myriad of buck, deer, and fawn stamps from across North America and England but always returned to this particular image as it best represents the model buck: majestic, stately, and proud. It was also a head begging for the addition of a body. I decided to explore this concept of the masculine ideal in the wilderness with the epitome of human masculinity: the classic Hollywood actor. The resulting mash-up, while both idiosyncratic and amusing, allows for a juxtaposition that further explores the constructed-ness of “nature” and it’s link to particular notions of beauty, rugged-ness, and virility. The plywood support for the paintings provides a literal foundation of manufactured rawness on which these nature/culture hybrids float.

Cariboo, Deer, Moose.

2010-03-22T13:47:00.001-07:00

Head Hunter

2010-03-03T10:35:00.001-08:00

NATURAL ARTIFICE: Elinor Whidden and 12 Point Buck. Dayna McLeod's essay in no more potlucks

2010-03-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

http://nomorepotlucks.org/article/beast-no8/natural-artifice-elinor-whidden-and-12-point-buck

Natural Artifice @ Gallery 44

2010-01-11T05:11:00.000-08:00

Link to catalogue essay by Dayna Mcleod:

Natural Artifice

Duck Toile

Deer Me

Grizzly Mauling of Goat Girl.

2009-11-15T19:09:00.001-08:00

Wood Duck

2009-10-23T21:24:00.001-07:00

Atlas Buck

2009-09-13T19:36:00.001-07:00

June 23rd - July 1st, 2009

2009-09-13T18:16:00.001-07:00

Michael Jackson

Ed McMahon

Karl Malden

Billy Mays

June 23rd through July 1st saw the passing of several popular American icons including Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett (both on June 25th). These deaths -- which monopolized the mainstream media for weeks to follow -- spawned a series of Sharpie drawings characterizing each individual. I chose to depict Michael pre-surgery because I hated the way his beauty was destroyed by his desire to transform into himself God-knows-what through numerous needless plastic surgeries.

Recent Drawing

2009-04-20T13:37:00.001-07:00

12 Point Buck at Parlour

2009-03-06T04:59:00.000-08:00

2009-02-17T14:03:00.000-08:00

TNG +15 exhibition, August-September, 2008

2008-09-06T15:26:00.000-07:00

Having grown up in Vancouver, I never ceased to be amazed by tourists attempting to hand feed skunks at English Bay. Since coming to Southern Alberta, I have similarly witnessed people leaping out of their minivans to snap pictures of a bear with cubs at Waterton National Park. The Disney-ification of wildlife has created storylines in which dreadful, enduring odours and gruesome maulings are replaced with anthropomorphism. Animals exist for entertainment purposes, even outside animated films and zoos. They are wandering around beaches and beside roadways in order to enhance our vacation experiences. I do not think it is any coincidence that I began working on Plastic Animals in Fake Nature during a residency at the Banff Centre in 2005.

It is very important to me that my work is both playful and accessible while addressing the theoretical discourses and social issues attached to it. With Plastic Animals in Fake Nature, I examine the popular desire to represent wild animals as cute, pint-sized, and harmless. In the closed theatre of the digital print and the mini-diorama, the problem of scale disappears and the tiny toy replica, situated in the imaginary landscape, gives birth to its own storyline. This process of miniaturization is typical in collections -- if we cannot possess an actual object, we possess the copy and use it to create our own closed narratives. As Susan Stewart explains, “[The toy] is a device for fantasy, a point of beginning for narrative. The toy opens an interior world, lending itself to fantasy and privacy …” (2001). Like all narratives, however, it is ideologically laden. By transforming a much larger, more problematic (dangerous and/or endangered) original into a toy, we replace our social responsibilities to the original with the amusing diversion of the miniature.

Art galleries and museums are the products of underlying principles of order, taxonomy, decontextualization (or recontextualization). They highlight objects as art with an educational or critical emphasis. Plastic Animals in Fake Nature satirize traditional museological strategies and scientific methods of presenting classification systems as factual representations of reality rather than as ideologically informed contrivances.

Deer ... Foraging

2008-05-17T05:54:00.000-07:00

PRESS PLAY ARROW.

A short silent film by 12 POINT BUCK (Leila Armstrong and Chai Duncan).

Latest Plastic Animals

2008-05-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

The plastic animals have left the studio and can now be found in parks, gardens and various landscaped locales.

Dear Leila

2008-04-07T17:55:00.001-07:00

Portrait by Chai Duncan.

Plastic Animals in Fake Nature

2007-12-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

Melody Time Ranch in Calgary.

2007-09-18T13:24:00.001-07:00

Melody Time Ranch is at Stride's + 15 exhibition space October - November, 2007.

More from the Ranch

2007-08-27T15:13:00.000-07:00

Here are two mini-dioramas from Melody Time Ranch. The first is "Solemn Canyons" and the second "Cover Me". I like to think of them as narrative blips from which viewers can build their own stories.

Melody Time Ranch

2007-08-21T12:18:00.001-07:00

My flat, colourful paintings transform found images in order to gently satirise the conservative gender roles and exaggerated machismo found in classic Western iconography. Cowboys huddle closely together at the rodeo and a gunless Lone Ranger is rescued by his side-kick Tonto. In small dioramas, I construct narrative fragments which transform the flatland of comic books into 3D playgrounds where guns point outward at imaginary enemies. Comic strip-style voice bubbles are augmented by longer texts drawn from sources such as Zane Grey's "Amber Mirage" (1929) and Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" (1998), calling into question the simplistic Romanticism of the genre and suggesting more complex relationships between characters. The title Melody Time Ranch is drawn from the name of Gene Autry's legendary Melody Ranch and Disney's animated classic Melody Time (1948), referencing both the golden age of Westerns and the whimsical, cartoon-like quality of the work. Melody Time Ranch invites a broad audience to explore their own nostalgia for the wild, wild West and to engage with issues of gender and sexuality in a framework designed to inspire open dialogue rater than divisiveness.

'Boris with Voodoo Doll' in upcoming Moody Idols exhibition

2007-08-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

'Boris with Voodoo Doll' art toy was created for the upcoming 'Moody Idols - the Urban Vinyl Toy Movement' show. Boris is a customization of Ted Stilson's Moody mounted on a base with four miniature black-light floodlights. The lights cast an eerie glow on Boris as he clutches a purple plush voodoo doll. I am in the process of building my next Moody custom, tentatively entitled 'The Bride of Boris'.