{"id":8265,"date":"2014-10-10T00:07:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T07:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=8265"},"modified":"2014-10-09T19:21:24","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T02:21:24","slug":"barrable-segal-brings-printmaking-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2014\/10\/10\/barrable-segal-brings-printmaking-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Barrable-Segal brings printmaking to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jocelyn Barrable-Segal (photo by Olga Livshin)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Jocelyn Barrable-Segal was raised by parents with two vastly different professional backgrounds: her mother was an architect and her father was a pilot. Following her own path, Barrable-Segal managed to combine the two in her own career. For 35 years, she has been a flight attendant with Air Canada. Several days each month, she flies around the world. The days she is not in the air, she is an artist, and you can find her at Malaspina Printmakers, a printmakers\u2019 workshop on Granville Island, where she creates unique lithographs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMalaspina is an artist-run centre,\u201d Barrable-Segal told the Jewish Independent<\/em> on a recent visit. \u201cIt started in the early \u201970s with three or four artists. Now there are about 60 of us.\u201d She went on to explain that Malaspina is equipped for a dozen different systems used in printmaking, but she uses only one process, the ancient technique of stone lithography. \u201cI love to draw,\u201d she said, \u201cand lithography is the only technique that requires drawing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrable-Segal does that drawing on stone. The technicalities of embedding an image into stone and later transferring it from stone to paper are not for this short article, but it\u2019s important to point out that each image can have many layers, each layer introducing one additional color plus whatever details the artist wants to add or alter. The process is time consuming and labor intensive, but Barrable-Segal said she doesn\u2019t conceive of working in any other art form.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith lithographs, you can change the image if you change your mind, have layers of drawing and colors,\u201d she said, \u201cwhile in painting, as soon as you\u2019re done, that\u2019s it.\u201d She also likes to be able to have several copies of the same print, although she never mass-produces them. \u201cI make limited editions, no more than seven copies of one print.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her prints are mostly flowers or landscapes but they are never life-like. They hover between abstract and impressionism. \u201cI\u2019m attracted to metaphors,\u201d she said. She uses multiple sources for her pictures, including photographs from her travels, but she transforms the imagery through the creative filter of her imagination, enriches reality with emotional and esthetic folds. Her artistic touch converts memory into art.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why she keeps flying, to bring back more visual mementos, more nutrients for her lithographs, she explained. \u201cI see different countries, and each happy place finds its way into my images. Of course, no photocopies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frequently, she draws flowers and floral compositions. \u201cI buy live flowers at the public market and look at them,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s how it starts.\u201d Flowers are the predominant theme for her work in the In Wait show that recently opened at Burnaby Art Gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Wait is a collaborative project of the Full Circle Art Collective,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are seven of us in the collective, seven women: Heather Aston, Hannamari Jalovaara, Julie McIntyre, Milos Jones, Wendy Morosoff Smith, Rina Pita and me. We all met at Malaspina, but then some of us drifted apart. We reunited for this show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inspiration for the show came from the story of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, she said, and it took the artists three years from the idea to the vernissage.<\/p>\n

\u201cPenelope was waiting for her husband to return, but her suitors were insistent that he was dead and she should choose one of them. She said she would weave a shroud before she married again. All day long she wove and then, in the night, her ladies-in-wait would unweave what she had done. The shroud was never completed. She waited. We all wait for something in our lives. It\u2019s a universal theme for women.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her, another sad theme overlaid the waiting \u2013 the theme of grief. Her parents passed away recently, and working on the show helped her deal with her sadness. \u201cFor me, grief associated with poppies. I needed to find solace. I drew lots of poppies for the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women friends and their collaboration and support were another aspect of the show that came from the story of Penelope and her faithful maids. \u201cEach one of us would make a piece and pass it on to the others. The others would add something, change. They would say: what does it need? Perhaps this detail or line or color should be added.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes three or four people would contribute to the image before it returned to the original artist. \u201cWhen you get your image back with someone else\u2019s input, you think: what do I do now? It\u2019s different. How to keep the integrity of the image? How to bring our combined visions together? This way, you\u2019re always creating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art making is ingrained in Barrable-Segal\u2019s life. \u201cI started flying because I didn\u2019t want to be a full-time artist. It\u2019s not realistic, even though I have a master\u2019s degree in fine arts. But I would never abandon art. I do it for myself. I would continue even if I didn\u2019t sell anything. I always have my sketchbook with me. When I play golf with my husband, I\u2019m not interested in the ball. I look at my shadow on the grass and think how it would look in a lithograph.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Wait is at Burnaby Art Gallery until Nov. 9. For more on Barrable-Segal, visit jmbs.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Olga Livshin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jocelyn Barrable-Segal (photo by Olga Livshin) Jocelyn Barrable-Segal was raised by parents with two vastly different professional backgrounds: her mother was an architect and her father was a pilot. Following her own path, Barrable-Segal managed to combine the two in her own career. For 35 years, she has been a flight attendant with Air Canada. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[2185,2184,2186,2182,2183,2181],"class_list":["post-8265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-bag","tag-burnaby-art-gallery","tag-full-circle-art-collective","tag-jocelyn-barrable-segal","tag-lithography","tag-malaspina-printmakers"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}