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Spring is Sprung, The Grass is Riz (I Wonder Where the Birdie is?)

Spring is Sprung, The Grass is Riz (I Wonder Where the Birdie is?)

Erin Pankratz & Karen Klassen // 2018

Mosaic
Dermott Park

About

Spring is Sprung, the Grass is Riz (I Wonder Where the Birdie is?) is a playful piece reminiscent of a vibrant spring garden. Vivacious coloured flora and a variety of greens create a pageant of liveliness. The interactive component of searching and finding the hidden fantastical birds creates an engaging experience for everyone.

Artists Erin Pankratz and Karen Klassen have based this piece on this sweet and humourous (anonymous) poem that Erin’s late bird-watching father used to recite every spring:

Spring is Sprung, the Grass is Riz
I Wonder Where the Boidie is?
Da boidie he is on da wing!
Ain’t dat absoid, I thought the wing was on da boid?

The work aims to be touchable, spontaneous, and includes nuances that continually draw people in.

Erin Pankratz & Karen Klassen

Karen Klassen was born in Edmonton, and grew up on an acreage in Namao, just north of the city. Playing outside, climbing trees, and playing with the dogs, horses, and her pet goat, gave her the appreciation for the simple things in life. Growing up with such a creative mother and entrepreneur parents provided Karen with the foundation to dream, succeed and live life to the fullest.

Moving to Edmonton after graduating, she began working full time in the family owned flower shop. At the age of 20, Karen became the owner of the flower shop and her artistic and business career flourished. After a 13 year success, Karen sold the business to start a family and began to explore many art mediums. In 2005 she discovered mosaics and began developing her skills.

2007 was Karen’s first solo show at the Art Beat Gallery, in St. Albert. Susan Jones of the St. Albert Gazette writes, “Colour flows through her art the way a river might flow over rocks and stones. Some of her mosaics appear as if lifted from a desert, while others are more reminiscent of the sand mandalas made by Buddhist Monks”.

Her goal is to create works of art that are inspirational, timeless and can transport us temporarily to
a higher level of consciousness. Karen’s mosaics can be seen at current events, galleries, and festivals throughout Edmonton, and Canmore. Her mosaic “cells” was selected for permanent display at the Edmonton Cross Cancer Institute.

Erin Pankratz attended the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in the early 90’s, even having the opportunity to tour with the company, but at the age of 20 found it was no longer her dream and left for art school. She attended Alberta College of Art and Design from 1995 to the end of 1996 in the sculpture department. In 1998 she began to explore mosaic as a way to fulfill her need to make art. After spending a decade developing her skills and helping others to gain experience in the medium, she decided to become fully professional in 2011.

Shortly thereafter she won her first public art commission, a large mural in the US departures area at the Edmonton International Airport. In just 3.5 short months she created a 436sf mosaic, Everything Flows, Nothing Stands Still, which captures the changeability of Edmonton through the seasons. The mural was installed at the end of 2011, and has since had over a million viewers per year.

Erin has traveled extensively for teaching, speaking at conferences, participating in invitational symposiums, and her work has exhibited internationally. She has won the Innovation in Mosaic award in the Society of American Mosaic Artists’ Mosaic Arts International Exhibition twice now, both in 2013 and 2016, for her works Penance and Defrag (Undone), respectively.

Erin exhibited her first solo show at Enterprise Galleries in downtown Edmonton, part of the University of Alberta Museum Galleries from August to October of 2015, and attended the 1^st International Symposium of Contemporary Mosaic in Ploaghe, Sardinia, Italy as one of 9 invited international mosaicists.

She exhibited in the Prix Picassiette exhibition in Chartres, France, October 15- November 6, 2016, and another piece was shown in the Kyto Mosaic Exhibition in 2016.

Erin believes that art sets down a distilled expression of the human spirit, one that‘s tangible in form
and accessible.

Dermott Park

Spring is Sprung, The Grass is Riz (I Wonder Where the Birdie is?)

About

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