Fredericton’s favorite art exchange and reception is back! Tickets are now on sale for Gallery Connexion’s popular annual fundraiser. Put Your Heart Into Art will take place February 11th at 8pm in the Connexion showroom. Buy a ticket and walk away with a piece of original artwork, for you or your valentine.

Artists are busy making work for the event. Arts patrons buy a $75 ticket and exchange it for a dart. The dart is thrown at a wall full of balloons with a number attached to each balloon. The dart thrower takes their number to a counter at the gallery and receives a box that contains artwork. Then the real fun begins. The buyer can decide to keep the artwork or exchange with another contestant!

Not interested in buying a piece of art but still want to come and party? Tickets to the reception are on sale now for $20. Either way, you’re supporting local artists and supporting the centres that support these artists. It’s a chain of happiness and friendship.

This year’s event will feature work from Whitefeather, Trudy Gallagher, Raymond Biesinger, Carol Collicutt, Ann Manuel, Adam MacDonald, Jim Boyd, Meredith Snider and many more!

Gallery Connexion is Fredericton’s only Artist-Run-Centre, supporting local artists and providing a venue for socially engaging artwork since 1984. For more information, contact Megan MacKay connex@nbnet.nb.ca or 454-1433

There are presently two (2) artist/office spaces available for rent in Gallery Connexion. The spaces average 170 square feet in size. The monthly rental fee is $200, heat/lights/internet included, with access to a shared tool room and a/v equipment. 24-hour access with a wheelchair accessible entrance by request. All studio rentals require a yearly lease.

Gallery Connexion’s artist studios provide opportunities for artists to learn and share through informal contact with each other’s practice as well as connect with the many exhibitions and activities that make Gallery Connexion an amazing artist-run centre and community hub. New cafe on site too!

For more information on how to join us in our basement palace, contact Candace Mooers, Executive Director, at (506) 454-1433.

Rooted/uprooted is a selection of drawings by Linda Kelly which depict trees from the area close to her home in Fredericton. The aged maples are on her family farm and predate her grandfather. The elms are nearer to her home and, though much younger, recently succumbed to the elm disease that has spread outward from city center over the past several years. “I think we all share a love for the presence and companionship of trees,” Kelly said.

Miramichi 1953 is a collection of photographs by Rachael Flett using black and white film initially created with images of women from the 1950’s. The negatives were hand-processed in a traditional darkroom. Flett began experimenting by shooting different models in various settings. “The strongest images came from one model: Crystal,” Flett said. She decided to use her as a subject for the remainder of the project. “As I shot, the story that unfolded was about one woman’s ambivalence towards leaving home and creating her own life,” Flett said. “The images are a projection of my feelings of displacement and conflict about where and how I want to live.”

The Annex Gallery is an initiative between Gallery Connexion and the Fredericton Playhouse to provide a juried exhibition space for Gallery Connexion members and for the Playhouse to include programmed exhibitions in its galleries.

The Annex Gallery is organized by a Gallery Connexion committee and facilitated by the Fredericton Playhouse. For more information, contact Candace Wilkins or Megan MacKay at (506) 454-1433.

Teachings features work from established indigenous artists Tara Francis and Shane Perly-Dutcher as well as work from students in the Wolokehkitimok Good Place of Learning Program at Leo Hayes High School.

The exhibition includes a box for members of the public to donate non-perishable food items to the Native Friendship Centre food bank.

The Fredericton Native Friendship Centre is a non-profit community organization dedicated to improving the lives of urban aboriginals through programs focusing on healing, life-skills building, and traditional teachings.

The Factory is a multidisciplinary room located within Gallery Connexion, Fredericton’s artist-run centre, 440 York Street in the Chestnut Complex.

Gallery Connexion’s mandate is to expose Fredericton and its surrounding area to contemporary and experimental art practices, including performance, literary arts, musical arts, and interdisciplinary work.

Teachings: Contemporary Takes on Aboriginal Traditional Works runs until December 13, 2011.

On Saturday, November 5, Silver Wave Film Festival presents the documentary film screening of Generations (2010) at 2pm in the Connexion Showroom. Generations is a 30-minute, 16mm film about mentoring and passing on the tradition of personal experimental filmmaking. Barbara Hammer, 70 years old, hands the camera to Gina Carducci, a young queer filmmaker. Shooting during the last days of Astroland at Coney Island, New York, the filmmakers find that the inevitable fact of ageing echoes in the architecture of the amusement park and in the emulsion of the film medium itself. Editing completely separately both picture and sound, the filmmakers join their films in the middle when they’ve finished making a true generational and experimental experiment. Generations is the 2011 Teddy Award winner at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Admission to both screenings is by donation.