By JONATHAN KRENZ Staff Writer

Tucked away in a small corner of west St. Catharines, Rodman Hall Art Centre started its new year with a Jan. 21 opening reception for three new exhibits from local and international artists alike. 

Adad Hannah’s exhibit is projected on a wall at Rodman Hall. The image is made of several videos of live models emulating a still photograph. Photo by Jonathan Krenz

“She’s always been interested in how the animal world has a very strong parallel to our own,” says Shirley Madill, the centre’s director. “There are some political undercurrents in her work, particularly with her past work, that have to do with her living in Colombia and environments such as that.”

Also on display is Simon Frank’s View, a landscape exhibit of trees created with a log-marking hammer. The hammers are used by “companies in the logging industry to mark logs out in the woods so that, when it ends up at the saw mill, they know who it belongs to,” explains Frank, 41, a Hamilton-based earth artist.

“I’m trying to understand where we’re connected to the natural world and why we feel disconnected why we’ve allowed ourselves to become disconnected.” Frank says the themes in his works often explore the relationship between human physical and spiritual needs and the natural world.

The third exhibit at the centre is Adad Hannah’s Cuba Still (Remake). This piece of art uses several video projectors to recreate an old Cuban publicity photograph. The elements of the recreation are video clips of actors, posing as if in the original still photograph.

The exhibit is “well-thought out,” said Megan Lendvoy, of Milton, Ont., after spending time viewing the artwork. Eric Olesen, of Thorold, thought the exhibit was “intriguing”. This was Olesen’s second visit to the art centre to view the new exhibits, which had been open to the public a week before the official reception.

“We choose [exhibits] according to what messages we think are very important at this time,” says Madill. “We like to keep a balance with our local, national and international community. We work a lot with ideas and themes.” Visit www.brocku.ca/rodmanhall for more information.