Sharon in the Media
The following are newspaper articles about Sharon Cheney's Exhibitions:
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News Release April 1991
The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday, April 6, 1991
The Senior Times, March 29,1991
The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, March 21, 1991
The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday, April 6, 1991
La Presse, Saturday, November 12, 1988
The Gazette, Saturday, November 12,1988
Preview Montreal, November 10 - 23, 1988
Les Nouvelles, Tuesday November 8,1988
The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, november 3, 1988
COMMUNIQUE ~ NEWS RELEASE APRIL 1991
Sharon Cheney's Sculptures and Paintings
Major Exhibit in Montreal April 11 to April 18, 1991
Article about Sharon Cheney and her exhibition
by Mary Green at The Senior Times, March 29,1991
A significant exhibition of works by Sharon Cheney, a multi-talented sculptor and painter, is being held at the Arts Club, 1840 Sherbrooke St. West, from Thursday April 11 to Thursday April 18, 1991. In addition, the artist is presenting a demonstration on the complete process of creating a bronze sculpture on Sunday, April 14,1991, at 2 p.m.
A vibrant personality, Cheney brings to her art, the deep rooted, mythological themes inherent in our culture. Her impressive sculptures and paintings, oils and pastels, are in private collections both here and abroad. Mila and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, have added her work to their private collection, as well as some important Quebec collectors.
Cheney began her art studies in her teen years and attended Ecole des Beaux Art in Montreal, Saidye Bronfman Centre and Visual Arts Centre. To keep au courant of the international art scene, she made it a point to attend numerous workshops led by well-known professionals in such places as Old Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Conn., National Arts Centre, New York, Alpen School of Fine Art, Vankleek Hills. She also holds academic degrees in the fields of Occupational Therapy and Psychology.
A member of the Pastel Society of Canada, Conseil de la Sculpture de Quebec and the Arts Club, she has participated in over 25 group shows in Quebec and Ontario, some of which she helped to organize. Though she paints scenes of Quebec, Cheney, like many an artist before her, has the need to travel to far away places - Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Middle East, Europe for inspiration and brings back on canvas the vibrant colours and landscapes of exotic scenes which have inspired her.
"1 find I like to paint pictures with the movement of water in them... the shape of a tree relative to its surroundings," she says. "Nature inspires me and creates a spirituality in me, which I try to show on my canvas." Her work indeed expresses man’s search for "a spiritual feeling.. the tranquility found in nature in its various guises." Her paintings in oils and pastel symbolize strong moods of mystery, with a distinctive sense of joy and sadness, and metaphysical acceptance. She leans toward deep mauves, splashes of vibrant greens and warm peach tones. The paintings are lively and dramatic, drawing the viewer in. Some people actually try to identify these places, feeling they have been there themselves at some time.
In a world that is in turmoil, Cheney’s quietly beautiful sculptures, with strong lines and expressive forms, "depict men and women in their archetypal roles," as if to say they know who they are and where they are going. Sensual, calm, and peaceful, they are finished in richly coloured patinas and bring a joy to the senses. The viewer is indeed aware of the fine artistic quality about them.
Cheney was commissioned to create a sculpted coffee table of bronze and glass, for a private collector which combines her unique sense of design, bringing to the project a functional application.
The Cheney exhibit at the Arts Club, 1840 Sherbrooke Street West, runs from April 11 to April 18. Hours: Thurs. April 11, show opens at 1 p.m. Vernissage 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Fri., Sat., Tues., Wed., and Thurs., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sun., 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Cheney brings to her art mythological themes. Her work is in private collections in Canada and abroad. The Mulrony's have added her work to their private collection.
Although she paints scenes of Quebec, Cheney has traveled to Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Middle East, and Europe for inspriation. "I find I like to paint pictures with the movement of water in them - the shape of a tree relative to its surroundings." she says. "Nature inspires me and creates a spirituality in me, which I try to show on my canvas."
Sculpture and paintings reflect life of the artist
Montreal - Sharon Cheney loves people and travel. It's not a yearbook profile but a formula for her art that has carried her through many years of sculpting and painting.
Her solo show at The Arts Club,1840 Sherbrooke St. W., April 11-18 reveals all this about Cheney, bolstering her belief that "art has helped me express my creativity and get in touch with who I am."
That she is a single parent of two grown children, Rachelle, 20, and Mitchell, 22, whom she raised alone, is strongly expressed in some of her bronzes.
In Mother and Child, a robed woman, clutching the hand of a small child who walks behind her, leans into the winds of life and forges ahead. Another mother, kneeling, shelters her young one in her cloak.
It had its roots in a passion for Jungian psychology. One of its tenets is the three "faces of women as temptress, mother and wise crone."
Cheney's favorite is of a barefoot black woman balancing a water jug of water on her head and obviously pregnant. "Being black represents that she's walked through fire but her proud expression and pregnancy show that she's not defeated and is starting a new life," Cheney explains.
One bronze is simply an Earth-shaped head study of an old woman suggesting wisdom as full as the planet. Cheney's degree in counseling psychology, Cheney has built her woman into all of these and also as beings able to drink in the simple, restorative pleasures of a breeze (Feeling the Wind that Mila Mulroney purchased for the prime minister's collection; it is from an edition of six and another is for sale at the gallery).
Cheney proves herself a foremost purveyor of Judaica with a bronze rabbi reading, children playing dreidell and a more abstract and functional holder for shabbes candles. Two column-like figures with highly polished fronts reflect the light of candles set into two stepped receptacles. Cheney's Judaica works are carried by Maskit Gallery in Toronto.
"Visually, my sculptures are very traditional and realistic but I'm currently working on a more abstract bronze and glass coffee table for a Montreal home, my first functional object other than Judaica," she says.
Cheney the psychologist is augmented by Cheney the world traveller, expressed in oils and particularly beautiful pastels which have a looser, more atmospheric rendering. A wonderful winter scene of St. Denis at night crackles with cold and frosty street lights.
Ontario's Vankleek Hill and Rouge River landscapes along with the underwater corals of Australia are among her painted memories of trips near and far. The green dwindles in her pastel of Israel's Negev Desert but the forms and composition take strong precedence over color with still pleasing results.
"When you're on the move, you don't have time to finish a masterpiece. You want to take some pictures, and do some sketches and small paintings to take home and work from in your studio. That's where the emphasis will be," she says.
The results of her trip to Ecuador will highlight a solo show this fall in Toronto. An ideal opportunity to see Cheney in action is a free demonstration slated for Sunday, April 14 at 2 p.m. at The Arts Club.
I'll be demonstrating how to make a bronze sculpture from start to finish because people always wonder why sculptures are so expensive.
"Viewers will comprehend the amount of labor involved watching Cheney make an armature on which to put the wax and explain about rubber and ceramic molds, melting, pouring, chasing, cleaning, sandblasting, applying patinas, polishing and protecting the finished piece.
She studied with Esther Wertheimer, Stanley Lewis, Sylvia Lefkovitz and Donald Liardi, to name a few. Her expertise has prompted a Toronto caster to appoint Cheney his representative both for his foundry and a line of imported Italian and American sculpture tools.
Other Press Releases about Sharon Cheney
La Presse, Montreal Saturday, November 12, 1988.
Arts This Week
Galerie d'art contemporains de Montreal, (2165 Cresent) - will hold an exhibition - Visions de Cinq Femmes - with Dale Aplen-Whiteside, Sharon Cheney, Carole Segal, Lilianne Moore, and Sylvia Weiss until December 2nd.
The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday, November 12, 1988 by Thomas Schnurmacher
Montreal-born artists Sharon Cheney and Sylvia Weiss, Outremont-born
CaroIe Segal, Quebec artist Lilianne Moore and Dale Alpen- Whlteside,
who Is a professional printmaker at John Abbott College, are five women who met through their studies several years ago.
Having become friends, they've put their work together in an exhibition entitled Visions de Cinq Femmes which will open Tuesday evening at 7 pm at the Montreal Gallery of Contempory Arts on Cresent Street.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's study contains a Cheney sculpture of a seated women entitled Feeling the Wind.
In the interests of political neutrality and equal time, it should also be pointed out that former Prime minister Pierre Trudeau's art collection contains a painting by Alpen-Whiteside.
ART GALLERIES
PREVIEW MONTREAL
November 10-23, 1988
AFTER HOURS
Vision de Cinq Femmes, an exhibition with works from Lilian Moore, Sylvia Weiss, Dale Alpen-Whiteside, Sharon Cheney, and Carol Segal, runs until December 2nd. (2165 Crescent).
Having become friends, they’ve put their work together in an exhibition entitled
Visions de Cinq Femmes, which will open Tuesday evening at 7 at the MontrealGallery of Contemporary Arts onCrescent Street.
Les Nouvelles, Tuesday November 8,1988
St. Laurent Women by Johanne Houde
She will be exhibiting in a major gallery on Cresent Street.
Sharon Cheney Sculpts and Paints
From November 15 to December 2, the Montreal Gallery of Contemporary Arts, located on Cresent street, will be the host of a special exhibition called Visions de Cinq Femmes. This exhibition will feature the works of five artists, five women who decided to work cooperatively and together instead of competing against each other. In all, about 50 paintings (in oils, pastels, watercolors) and 15 to 20 sculptures will be displayed during this exhibition.
Born in Montreal, Sharon Cheney moved to St. Laurent when she was only 11 years old and has been living in this City ever since. Married, she has two children, one daughter and one son. She started painting when she was only a teenager as a way of expressing herself.
As she felt she could not earn a living as an artist, she became an Occuptional Therapist, graduating in 1966 from McGill University. She then worked as a therapist for many years while pursuing her studies, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Applied Social Science from Concordia University in 1973. In 1977, she graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy. In 1984, she obtained a Masters in Counseling Psychology from the Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago.
From 1979 to 1986, she worked as a Senior Staff Therapist in charge of the Neurological Division of the Royal Victoria Hospital and was associated in the publication of information booklets for disabled people. She also had her private practice in Occupational therapy and counseling. She belongs to la Professional Corporation of Occupational therapist of Quebec and to the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists.
Meanwhile, Sharon Cheney's interst in arts never faded. She always kept on painting and sculpting, taking regular classes and workshops with reknown professionals.
She took part in several group shows at the Saidye Bronfman Center, the Laval Community Center, the Cote St. Luc Library, and the Beth Ora Synagogue. In May 1987, she exhibited for the first time in St. Laurent as part of a group show held at the Beth Ora Synagogue. She also took part in exhibitions in various galleries in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa.
Her works can be found in many private collections in Europe and Canada, including a bronze casting that belongs to the Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney.
Recently, Sharon Cheney quit Occupational Therapy to become a fulltime artist.
She mostly does sculpting, creating wax moldings which lead to bronze castings, oil paintings and pastels.
Her sculptures reflect her belief in Jungian Psychology and many of them demonstrate the many faces of the woman. The feminine principle is exemplified in her works the Fertility Goddess, the Black Madonnan, the Wise Sophia, and the Mother and Child. Her paintings and pastels are mostly landscapes and are inspired by her many travel experiences.
The exhibition Visions de Cinq Femmes will be the first experience of this nature for Sharon Cheney. She is very proud of the work accomplished among the group, pointing out the cooperation and team spirit that developed between the five artists. This bond created by art between the five, Dale Alpen-Whiteside, Lilianne Moore, Carole Segal, Sylvia Weiss, and Sharon Cheney is so strong that the group plans to take the exhibition on a tour throughout Canada. As for Sharon Cheney, she also hopes to go to the United States.
The works that will be featured in the Visions de Cinq Femmes are mostly figurative, as only one of the artists does more abstract pieces, and thus is available to almost everyone. There will be mixed media, still lifes, flowers, landscapes and human figures. We want to share the beauty we see in nature with the public. We want to bring a little bit of ourselves. This exhibiton represents "a woman's point of view, a feminist perspective on life" explains Sharon Cheney.
The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, November 3, 1988
Arts by HEATHER SOLOMON
Group of five makes their debut in local art show
MONTREAL — One globetrots to the Orient and Africa; another climbs mountains; a third shapes art students; a fourth spends hours on street corners with an easel and the fifth threw away illustrators’ tools to take up a brush.
Their collective efforts make up Visions de cinq femmes at Stan Borenstein’s Galerie d’arts contemporains de Montreal, 2165 Crescent St., Nov. 15 - Dec. 2. Up to 50 oil paintings, pastels, bronze sculptures and lithographs are slated to live up to the quintet’s preshow publicity as "a spectrum of this New Age world seen through women’s eyes."
According to Sharon Cheney (the globetrotter), "This group represents what’s happening in the world today. We’re an example to other women to go out there and show what you can contribute."
It all began quietly enough. Carole Segal (the art instructor) had been painting with Sylvia Weiss (the illustrator), sharing models and studio time with her for over a decade.
One day, while Segal was shopping at Gemst for art supplies, she saw Cheney selecting the wrong wax for her first attempt at lost wax bronze sculpting. A friendly word of advice turned into an association that later included Liianne Moore and Dale Alpen-Whiteside (the mountain-climber), a technician in John Abbott College’s printmaking studio, whose love for nature stems from her North American Indian ancestry in St. Boniface, Man.
All of these women have worked for a minimum of 20 years in the field of art.
They meet once a week to share insights, critique each other’s work and plan for their first cooperative show. A preview of the works collectively inspires one descriptive word: appealing.
All are figurative forms of realism, accessible to art lovers who enjoy the spark of recognition when they relate to what they're seeing. "It is notable that each of the five is comfortable in more than one medium.
There is an emphasis on still life, some depictions of live models and a select grouping of landscapes/cityscapes including Cheney’s exotic foreign renderings of Chinese fishermen casting their lines on a river in Huang Xiao and a glowing Japanese Riocan (inn) chilled by an evening snowfall.
Segal has mastered the art of still life with harmonic groupings in rich oil hues and Weiss' florals are bursting with color.
Both Segal and Cheney also show the Juaidica bronzes that have excited buyers at the Judaica Art Exhibit last December and we are bringing in groves of viewers at Galerie Maskit in Toronto. Cheney’s robed market woman and Segal's human menorah from her People of the Book collection are among their best.
This exhibition provides an ideal source of Chanukah gifts. In addition to the major works, choose miniature sculptures by Cheney and gem-like landscapes in watercolor by Alpen-Whiteside of the country surrounding her home in Vankleek Hill.
Interestingly, one of Cheney’s bronze sculptures Feeling the Wind, was purchased by Mila Mulroney for her private collection. It is one of the sensitive psychological portraits that Cheney created from her her earlier background as an Occupational Therapist at the Montreal Neurological Hospital.
'I have always been interested in what makes people tick," says Cheney. "The psychologist Jung believed that people should each work cooperatively for the benefit of society. Our group is living proof of his theory. We're sharing our talent with other people."
"The Group of Five, as they've nicknamed themselves, will continue their association with one another following the show at Galerie d'art contemporains. They also intend to spread their talent even further afield.
"We will take this group across Canada on a month long trip, painting from the Maritimes to the Rockies," says Segal. "The theme will be Paint Canada — paint your own country. Not too many women have done that."
The quintet plans to apply for a government subsidy to realize their dream, which includes documenting videotape coverage of the odessey.
"Throughout art history, men's vision has dominated. It's about time women got into the main stream," says Segal. She is not averse, however, to paying homage to men's contributions: one of her favorite finer pastels in the current show is a diptych tribute to Monet with the white-bearded artist surveying his immortal garden at Giverny.
We’re all full-time artists, not housewives who paint, emphasizes Segal. "We are doing a job that we love - that's the nice part." Gallery hours are Monday to Saturday, 10 from am. to 6 p.m.
LES NOUVELLES, Mardi 2 Avril 1991
CURRENT AFFAIRS
A significant exhibition of works by Sharon Cheney, a multi-talented sculptor and painter, is being held at the Arts Club, 1840 Sherbrooke St. West, from Thursday April 11 to Thursday April 18, 1991.
In addition, the artist is presenting a demonstration on the complete process of creating a bronze sculpture on Sunday, April 14, 1991, at 2 p.m. Admission is free.
Viewing hours: The exhibit of bronze sculptures, oil and pastel paintings opens Monday April 11 at 1p.m. with a vernissage in the evening at 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, I p.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Monday.
Sharon Cheney's visits to foreign countries have been a moving experience, motivating her to paint exotic places. She wishes to share this enjoyment with fellow artists. Presently, she is organizing with another professional artist a nonprofit painting tour to Ecuador and Peru, slated for June. A number have already joined, and there is still room for more.
The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday, April 6, 1991
The Arts Club, 1840 Sherbrooke St. W. Sculputres and paintings by Sharon Cheney, opens Thursday and continues until April 18. 933-6405.
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