Mount Pleasant’s City Centre Motor Hotel, now the City Centre Artist Lodge, housed the One More Life Gallery and the fifth annual STICKY show this past weekend. The space was small, and the close-set walls were populated with sticky notes in grid-like patterns, each with unique illustrations.
This was the second weekend of STICKY, where artists created original works on the 3” x 3” canvases of sticky notes. What sounds like a limitation appeared to bring out even more creativity. A myriad of distinct styles and mediums could be discerned: textiles, colour pencils, paint, ink, cut-outs, realistic and abstract, amongst others. As a miniature enthusiast, I was enthralled.
Though the show began its journey as the Post-It Show at the GR2 Gallery in Los Angeles, show organizer and One More Life Gallery founder Flavia Chan was responsible for bringing it to Vancouver in 2019. She goes on the hunt for artists via Instagram as well as through the old-fashioned way — attending galleries, markets and events. This year’s show featured a truly stunning turnout; over 900 sticky notes were put to good use by around 120 artists. Fairy-godmother-like, Chan aims to provide a platform for newer artists, as well as the many returning artists.
One More Life and the STICKY show were created with community in mind. “I absolutely love and enjoy [having] a dedicated time and space for artists to gather and talk about their work and enjoy that time together, because I feel like more and more spaces are dwindling for artists to be able to come together,” Chan said. As an artist herself, she is intimately familiar with the intense work that goes into creation.
At STICKY, though artists created multiple pieces, the artworks were not grouped by artist or similar styles or themes. This randomized curation was purposeful, allowing the viewer to digest the uniqueness from sticky note to sticky note. The anonymity of the show — with titles and artist names absent from immediate view — let the viewer take the art for what it was.
One of the artists featured in the show was Alejandra Morales, a UBC MFA graduate who primarily works on larger canvases with acrylic and oil paints. Despite this, she enjoys the process of creating smaller works, which usually require less time and workspace. Morales works with the themes of identity, nostalgia, beauty and immigration. Using metaphor, her work often includes birds, flowers and fruits.
For a majority of her youth, she took art classes with housewives in her birth country, Mexico. Spending hours in conversation with these women, she noticed the rigid social expectations and the generational pattern of getting married young and having breadwinner husbands. She explained that she was trying to convey that sort of over the top feeling within her paintings, “but if you look closely at my paintings, the flowers are sometimes not even flowers, they are accumulations of things that look like flowers,” said Morales. “And sometimes I'll do drip, so it looks like the skies are melting, and the colors maybe shouldn't go well together. I'm trying to make it so that it's beautiful, but also almost unsettling in a certain way.”
The iconography of fruits and floral backgrounds arises from her identity as a Latina. “"I think there's this idea that ... Central and South America is this paradise where you can make money really easily, and everyone's just very relaxed ... people see it through a lens of escapism,” she said. “What I'm thinking about when I'm doing these fruit paintings, is how yes, Mexico and Latin America [are] very beautiful, very folkloric, but then there's also a lot of precarity ... [and] a lack of stability.” Morales’ sticky notes featured portraits of women and animals, but what stood out was the colours she used. They were vivid, satisfyingly deep and wonderfully chosen for each illustration.
As I scanned the walls, I saw several notes featuring the same characters; a boy with a crown on his head and anthropomorphic hearts and stars baring their teeth in a smile. These were created by artist Jude Pachiorka, a UBC alum with a BFA in visual and performing arts.
Pachiorka’s style is cartoon-like, inspired by his childhood. When connecting his style — somewhat enmeshed with nostalgia — to topics he wishes to address, Pachiorka said, “as a kid, there's a bit of innocence and ignorance where you don't understand everything… I want to be able to have people see my art, and even if it is talking about a more serious subject, I want them to be able to see the light kind of shining behind … and all around it.” His work for the STICKY show was mainly ink illustrations on white notes, devoid of his signature striking colours, but not of eccentricity.
Pachiorka’s art harbours a depth, yet he wanted the audience to enjoy it without having to employ introspection or close-reading. “I want to create pieces of art [for] someone who, not in a bad way, doesn't want to do the intellectual labour of finding out the background or the history of the piece, [and] can just appreciate it … I'm trying to address more serious subjects, but I don't want people to feel forced to have to learn about that in order to enjoy my piece.”
Across the walls, several notes featured otters drawn in ink. This was Crashout Otter, a principal character in Milo Ira’s work. Ira’s journey as an artist is somewhat unconventional. He was taught how to draw by his grandfather and later attended art school. Taking a course in anatomy and physiology eventually led them to UBC’s biomedical visualization and communication program. As someone with autism and ADHD, they said they experience difficulty in translating emotions and experiences, which a representational medium like art lets them express.
“Sharing art to me is so important. It's about sharing your story and a little piece of yourself,” said Ira. Citing Beatrix Potter and Scott Hampton as their inspirations, they often use watercolours and animals in their illustrations. As a PhD candidate, Ira currently works on accessible health services for trans and autistic people.
All four artists mentioned the importance of accessibility in art, which the STICKY show provided — the exhibition was free, all artwork was priced at $25 and artists of all experience levels were granted a platform. Smaller canvases — like sticky notes — allow artists to work from home rather than renting or finding larger studio spaces. Ira brought up a unique perspective: sticky notes, unlike finer, more expensive materials, create lower stakes. They allow artists to experiment.
Taking Morales, Pachiorka and Ira’s advice, I internalized the passion for art that existed in this space, walking slowly through the show and leaning in to notice the brushstrokes, shading, layering of three-dimensional work. I walked past One More Life several times, and naturally speed-walk past exhibitions at most galleries and museums. But the STICKY Show and the artists that were a part of it have reminded me to look closely instead.
