Alice Vander Vennen

Alice Vander Vennen has worked as a professional artist since 1980. A child of immigrant parents who left war-torn Holland, Alice has used her art to capture stories of loss and hope; courage and strength. First trained as a sculptor at Calvin College, USA, with further training at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Alice now works in three-dimensional assemblage, participating in numerous exhibitions throughout North America. Her work is held in public, private and corporate collections in Canada, the United States and abroad. She is represented by the OENO Gallery in Prince Edward County, Ontario. “I work with multiple materials, such as fabrics, branches, wire, copper, paper and ceramic shards, creating an assemblage as part of a visual language suggesting a story. The narrative speaks of gathering the work of divergent cultures, histories and generations. Materials from around the world, created by many hands, are represented in a single multimedia assemblage. Fragile branches may be used as framing devices; tapering willow twigs and knotty grape vine tentacles are bent as if resisting the interstitial pull of perhaps a hundred different textiles, each attached with thread, strings, wire and weighted with smooth stones or other found objects. The assembled sculptural form may be reminiscent of a quilt, a canoe or a totem. I strive to have the materials form a new voice of a gathered people, a celebration of the human spirit in relation to its Creator, whether from secret spaces or the most flamboyant expressions."