A drawing from alumna Dana Velan’s Fire project, featured at the FUOCO exhibition in Sulbiate, Italy, until April 30. | All photos courtesy of the artist
“The reality is artists work in isolation, but then we rely on someone else to show our work,” she says. “It was always important for me to show and share my art because of all the time I spend working alone in the studio.”
Velan is getting that opportunity: the drawings from her Fire project are being featured at the FUOCO exhibition in Sulbiate, Italy. The fire-themed exhibition — organized by HEART: Pulsazioni Culturali in conjunction with Expo Milano 2015 — runs from April 11 to April 30.
Velan is no stranger to exhibitions. Her art has been displayed at La Maison de la Culture Frontenac in Frontenac, Que., the Victoria Hall Community art gallery in Westmount, Que., and Dawson College in Montreal. The FUOCO exhibition in Italy is the latest step in an artistic journey driven by Velan’s personal struggles and challenges.
“My work is inspired from my experience of moving to Montreal from Czechoslovakia in 1968,” she says. “I had a suicide in the family and that has also had a huge influence on my drawings.”
A large-scale drawing on Mylar in Velan’s 2014 series Nebula