A Taste of Edmonton is one of Canada’s largest food and beverage festivals. For the past twenty-eighth year thousands of visitors have enjoyed a variety of offerings. During Giuseppe’s tenure as General Manager the festival has expanded to a full ten-day event that includes A Taste of Wine and Beer. In 2010 the festival became green through the use of compostable cutlery and dinnerware.
New Years’ Eve Downtown
New Year’s Eve Downtown is Edmonton official civic New Year’s Eve celebration. In 2001 Events Edmonton took over staging First Night and renamed it. The festival consists of three indoor venues and an outdoor stage. A spectacular pyrotechnics display produced by the City of Edmonton ushers in the New Year.
Metropolis Winter Festival
Metropolis is a unique winter festival conceptualized by Giuseppe. This event was based on cold climate construction technology that was pioneered in Edmonton with the construction of the Professional Building completed in 1961. Four pavilions built from scaffolding wrapped with shrink-wrap were erected on Sir Winston Churchill Square. These heated and architectural designed structures featured a variety of activities, which included an art display, fashion show and sale, aerial trapeze performance by Firefly Theatre and food fair. The festival ran for seven weeks and took two months to erect and one month to dismantle. It is the largest and longest running festival to be staged on Sir Winston Churchill Square.
Halliwell Residence
Halliwell Residence Patio Screen
This project produced was a partnership with Carlyle & Associates a prominent landscape design firm in Edmonton. In 1999 Doug Carlyle designed a modern gazebo, which required a screen that would function year round. The climate in Calgary ranges from 30 C to – 30 C with wind, snow, rain and hail. A painted screen was not suitable so Albi developed a screen made from coloured PVC mesh. This meant all the climatic conditions while being a unique art piece. The appearance of the screen changes throughout the day and year as it is animated by the natural light and meteorological conditions.
Italian Monument
Centennial Monument to the Province of Alberta
In 2005 the Province of Alberta celebrated its 100th anniversary. For this occasion the National Congress of Italian Canadians (NCIC) Edmonton District on behalf of the Italian community of Alberta decided to donate a monument to the Province. This monument would also immortalize the accomplishments of the Italian community in this Province over the last 100 years. As a result of a national competition over 21 artists presented their proposals from all over the Country. A Selection Committee of 8 people composed of 5 members of the Board of directors: Massimo Verdicchio, Marisa Trinca, Salvatore Amelio, Jennifer DeStefanis-Dimas and Paola DiToppa along with Caterina Edwards, the Consul of Italy, Arnaldo Minuti, and Tony Luppino. The terms of reference for the points to be evaluated by the committee members where prepared by Antonella Cortese in cooperation with the writer. It was left up to the elected Board of Directors of the NCIC-Edmonton to make the final decision as to the best proposal presented. Giuseppe Albi, an Edmonton artist, was the successful artist.
In describing his project Giuseppe Albi stated “This monument will mark the centennial of the Province of Alberta, our chosen home. My hope is that it will invite people to reflect on their lives and think about something Italian that they have adopted or experienced.”
The monument is based on a variation of the obelisk, a sculptural form assimilated by the Romans centuries ago. It was used to mark an event of special significance. The sculpture consists of a black granite podium that supports a tapered red granite column with an oversize bronze sundial on the top. The overall height is over 4 meters. Objects of historical significance will be cast in bronze and arranged around the base of the cylinder. An appropriate inscription in Italian, English and French will be engraved on the column at eye level. The crown will have lights imbedded on the underside that will illuminate the column and artifacts. The community contributed by donating tools and artifacts that were cast in bronze.
The monument is positioned prominently on the north side of the Alberta Legislative Building near 109 Street. It was inaugurated in the fall of 2007.
Read the Edmonton Journal Article
Event Planning
In 1974, after living in Europe for three years, Albi returned to Edmonton. Shortly after his return he started to work for Northlands producing Klondike Days feature exhibits where he worked until 1995. He started an event planning company and produced a number of events including Cheers Food and Beverage Show, Art of CAD, The Works International Festival and the Cold Weather Construction Symposium Expo Shaw Conference Centre. In 2001 he was contracted by Edmonton Klondike Days Association (EKDA) to work on Sunday in the City. The position of General Manger became available in 2003, which he held until his retirement in the summer of 2012. During this tenure he oversaw the change to Events Edmonton. Albi managed the production A Taste of Edmonton and New Year’s Eve Downtown. He also staged Canada Day festivities and in 2011/12 produced METROPILIS Edmonton Winter Festival. This event was based on cold climate construction technology, which in large part has been developed in Edmonton.
Canada Day at Louise McKinney Park
Studio Inside: Artist Giuseppe Albi sees his studio as a place of joy
By Janice Ryan, Edmonton Journal April 5, 2013
Abstract artist Giuseppe Albi in his studio on March 13, 2013 in Edmonton Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON – For artist Giuseppe Albi, having a studio is a way of life. In fact, Albi has had a place to explore and experiment, to contemplate and reflect, for 44 of his 66 years.
Born in Grimaldi, Italy, Albi came to Edmonton as a young boy. He loved to draw and went on to study at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary (1966-68) and Quebec’s L’Ecole des Beaux Arts (1968-69).
Albi secured his first studio — it doubled as his living space — in a commercial building in Montreal in 1969. The following year he moved to London, England, where a wee bed-sit served as a studio and his oil paintings were tucked beneath the bed.
Six months later Albi relocated to Amsterdam. This time his studio, tucked inside a gable-roofed building, was separate from his living space down the hall.
The cramped reality of a four-by-five-foot studio didn’t daunt his artistic process or output. He landed his first solo exhibition that year.
A year-and-a-half later, Albi moved back to London and celebrated a second solo show in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In 1974, he returned to Edmonton and rented a studio on Rice Howard Way. There were no windows — not ideal for an artist — but it was a place to make art.
He eventually moved to a commercial building on the south side, the drawback here being low ceilings. Albi remembers breaking light bulbs as he turned his eight-foot paintings so the freshly applied paint could drip and run around the canvas.
Then, there was the west-end warehouse. The studio flooded during the devastating Black Friday tornado in 1987.
Moving a studio is disruptive, labour-intensive, time-consuming and expensive but an inevitable reality for artists as buildings are sold, repurposed or demolished.
In 2007, Albi found the perfect studio on 109th Street and 107th Avenue, a space he describes as his most “sophisticated,” referring to the glorious afternoon light that pours in through a bank of windows along a 40-foot wall.
The space is truly an artist’s dream come true: spacious enough to allow for large-scale work; oodles of natural light; quiet; and centrally located. Oh, and high ceilings.
Though economic struggles can be an artist’s reality, Albi made having a studio a priority.
“I’d budget and make it work,” says Albi. “There were times when basically, I would just barely make it, but I would make sure I covered all of my studio expenses.”
Boundless drive and passion intrigue me. What keeps that ember burning?
“Very early on I felt that making art was my life’s work, so it had to be done,” Albi says.
“And I very much believe that you are only going to be here once, certainly in this consciousness, and I really wanted to take advantage of that opportunity and to make art. I mean, if I didn’t make it, it would be a missed day, so it’s important that I worked and that I worked regularly. I believe that the only non-renewable resource in life is time, and once it is spent, it is spent.”
Alongside his studio practice, Albi had a successful career as a consultant, producer and project developer for organizations such as Events Edmonton, Taste of Edmonton and The Works Art and Design Festival. Throughout the years, his commitment to scheduled studio time was staunch — weekdays 7 to 9 a.m. and weekends. No nights?
“I find that you need to get away from your work, you can’t be around it all the time,” he says. “I don’t even have many paintings at home because you have to empty yourself of it.
“Part of the process of making abstract art is that every time you finish a painting, you almost have to forget how to paint. To me, there has to be a sense of discovery in the new work.”
Albi’s roots are in action painting or abstract expressionism, rich in colour and mark making.
Since retiring last August, he’s in the studio six mornings a week, working on up to seven paintings.
“This studio is full of joy for me. When I come in and close the door, I completely separate myself from the world,” he says. “I don’t paint to music. My studio is very much a place of quiet and meditation and prayer for me.”
The 1,100-square-foot area is divided into three rooms: a gallery at the entrance; an office and clean area for stretching canvas; and a great room filled with work tables, a long bench stacked with brushes, palette knives, trowels and a rainbow of paints and gels; and storage racks for pre-stretched canvases. A separate 300-square-foot storage room holds the finished work.
Albi describes his studio as an “extension” of himself. A carpenter’s son, he handmade everything to be ergonomic, functional and space efficient. Tables for example, are on wheels.
Paintings hang on a chain system suspended from the T-bars in the ceiling. Heights can be adjusted and the walls are hole-free. Best of all, the work space serves as a gallery for both finished and in-progress work.
The unique mechanical table was custom-made by an industrial designer. It moves up, down and sideways and tilts in all directions.
This studio is very much customized to meet his needs, right down to his one-of-a-kind paints created by Golden.
Albi’s abstracts were part of the 2002 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art in Calgary and Edmonton and most recently, the Art Gallery of Alberta’s “7 Years in the City, Art From the AGA Collection.”
His paintings, found in public and private collections worldwide, can be viewed locally at Peter Robertson Gallery.
Albi is quick to share, “I feel really blessed to be doing what I want to do. I am living a dream.”
Visit giuseppealbi.ca for more information.
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
Abstract artist Giuseppe Albi works in his studio on March 13, 2013 in Edmonton. Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal
More On Mainstream Modernist Painting and The New New
There are already a distinguished group of art professionals who agree that the New New are a distinct and exciting, new movement. The dealer, André Emmerich, the collector Lewis Cabot, and the art historian, William Agee, are three examples. Others include the American critics Donald Kuspit, David Carrier, Arelene Raven; the Canadian critics Ken Carpenter, the Belgian critic Marcel Paquet, as well the museum directors and curators here and abroad who have selected the New New group for exhibition. Three collectors have built large collections of their work.
There are good painters who have not yet been exhibited with the New New but whose work relates to theirs in sensibility, if not yet in focus and consistency: American painters, Gorden Terry and David Reed; the Canadian painters Neil Marshall, Clay Ellis, Bill Kort, and Giuseppe Albi, as well as the Irish painter Declan O’Mahoney. All have been influenced by New New.
There are pictures by Walter Darby Bannard and Dan Christensen, which would also look at home in a New New exhibition. So would Jules Olitski’s paintings done on mirrored plexi, which he did shortly after visiting Lucy Baker’s studio in 1986. Olitski’s recent style follows New New in many respects while retaining his own voice, tonalities, and color. Ann Walsh’s new painted reliefs also have a New New flair about them.
The New New are the most vital and audacious members of a much larger group which might be called the third generation or wave of Color Field painters. All came along since the 70’s. The centers for this work are New York, Syracuse, Toronto, Edmonton, Paris and London. I showed a group of these painters back in 1980, in a exhibition at the André Emmerich Gallery, called “The New Generation”. Aside from the New New, this group has not yet equalled or gone beyond their mentors – Olitski, Noland and Poons – in any fundamental way. Nonetheless, many of them produce, or have produced, some wonderful paintings: Darryl Hughto, Susan Roth, James Walsh, Peter Bradley, Robert Scott, James Hendricks, Sandi Sloan, John Hoyland, John MacLean, John Griefen, Pat Lipsky, Jill Nathenson, Larry Zox, Molly Morris, Stephen Achimore, Scott Bennet, Mark Raush, Olivier Dubre, Jean Miotte, Lauren Olitski, Ronnie Landfield, Sheila Gehrling, Harold Feist, Frank Bowling, Francine Tint, Terry Keller, Mitch Smith, Doug Haynes, Jeremy Down, Kikuo Saito, Jiri Malik, Randi Bloom, Michael Williams, Paula DeLuccia and Joseph Marioni. There are doubtless many others who I am unaware of or am leaving out. Taken together with the New New, this is a very large group. The official New York art world doesn’t yet register it at all, yet it must be called painting’s Modernist Mainsteam.
Very often, Modernism can be described as the creative use of new technologies. One only has to think of Modern Architecture, Modern Sculpture or Modern Music. As regards to painting, the heavier oils (like poppy seed oil), and tube pigments, which came into use in the 19th century, were essential for the Impressionists and Post Impressionists painters. Crucial to the second generation of Color Field painters (Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Helen Frankenthaler, Friedel Dzubas, Jack Bush and others) was acrylic, water based, plastic paint which became commercially available in the late fifties. Pollock and others already had pushed painting beyond the limits of oil paint and had turned to industrial paints, Duco enamels and aluminum paint, to get greater fluidity and more optical effects. The fragility of his pictures today, and those of many members of his generation, is testimony to a frustration with the limits of the oil medium and a search for alternatives. Most of the Color Field painters stained thinned paint into untreated canvas. They did this to neutralize texture and so present pure, optical color as the primary bearer feeling. But oil paint is difficult to thin down, and no matter how thin, it eventually attacks the canvas fibers if stained directly into them. This is why, since the beginning of oil painting in the 16th century, painters prepared the surface of their canvas with a “sizing”, usually of rabbit skin glue, before beginning to paint. Water based acrylic paint automatically solved this problem while, simultaneously, offering a fluid friendly, quick drying medium with an entirely new palette of brilliant colors. It seemed made to order for the Color Field painters. And indeed, the leading manufacturer of the new acrylics, Leonard Bocour and his chemist Sam Golden, worked closely with the painters, beginning with Morris Louis, to develop the new medium.
The New New painters have continued this creative dialogue with the paint chemist, Sam Golden (who died in 1997) and his son Mark. The development of acrylic paint and avant garde painting continue to go hand and hand. The most important invention in the eighties was a completely clarified gel, a thickening and extending agent. This made acrylics a full bodied medium, like oils, but capable of thicker imposto, brighter color and clearer transparency. Gel can also act as a kind of glue or sealer permitting painters to fold additives like plastic foam into the body of their pictures. This has made possible the sculpture punch of the New New. And rather than using acrylics as a more convenient way to achieve effects possible in oils, the New New painters features acrylics’ distinctly plastic look and feel. Also they and other painters have played an essential role in the creation of many new types of paint: metallic paint (gold, silver, copper, aluminum), glitter paint, hologram paint, pearlescent paint, cement like (but lightweight) pumice paint, iridescent, “interference” paint, multi-layered “panspectra” paint, protective varnish for fluorescent paint and more. Although, dramatically increasing painting’s range of effects, many of these are wholly unreproducible. The dazzling newness of the New New is badly compromised in photographs and reproductions.
Of course, none of the above should be taken to mean that oil, enamel, fresco, tempera, or any other painting medium is outdated. But it does mean that acrylics and Pollock-type painting seem uniquely compatible. Most members of Pollock’s own generation quickly switched to acrylics when they became available. This is the biggest change in the medium of painting since the 16th century.
All this demonstrates how very misleading the notion of “Postmodernism” is. Stimulated by new technology, artists create new mediums and revolutionize traditional ones. This process is ongoing and will not stop anytime soon. The worlds most visible architect, Frank Gehry, is a Modernist in this sense and so are our most celebrated sculptors: Richard Serra and Frank Stella. Color Field and New New are not yet celebrated, but they too are Modernist in the above sense, and have been all along.
Source: Moffett’s Artletter 2.0
Taste-maker switching canvases – Organizer of city food fest set to retire, focus on art full time
Friday, July 27, 2012
After almost a decade of chocolate-covered strawberries, spanakopita, butter chicken and spring rolls, Giuseppe Albi is leaving the world of food to focus on art.
Albi, 65, will retire at the end of August as general manager of Events Edmonton, which produces A Taste of Edmonton, as well as the new Metropolis International Winter Festival.
But he won’t stop working. He plans to devote himself full time to his long career as an abstract painter, which he has been practising early in the morning before going to his manager’s job.
“Most artists, it’s very difficult to make a living as an artist, so you have to find something else. Fortunately for me, I was drawn into the events planning business. I had a knack for it.”
Albi has been putting on Taste since 2004, but was first hired as a contractor in 1976 by the Edmonton Exhibition Association (now Northlands) to stage an arts, crafts and culinary fair.
He eventually began working for the Edmonton Klondike Days Association, renamed Events Edmonton in 2006, running shows related to the summer fair outside the exhibition grounds such as the Sunday Promenade.
Taste started in 1985 as a two-day event on a plaza overlooking the river valley where the Shaw Conference Centre’s Hall D now stands.
It moved to Churchill Square and was extended to five days in 1993.
It now lasts 10 days around Capital Ex. This year there are booths from 40 restaurants and as many as five food trucks in what Albi compares to a giant outdoor food court.
“We want to showcase the variety of food that’s found in the city.
“You can go outside, have music, and it’s a place to group and socialize.”
The idea of eating al fresco is fairly new in a city that’s cold for much of the year – he says the first restaurant patio opened in Edmonton less than 35 years ago.
Albi estimates producing Taste costs $500,000 to $1 million annually, including $90,000 for music alone.
Last Sunday was the busiest he has ever seen it, although Events Edmonton doesn’t keep attendance figures.
The non-profit group doesn’t even count the thousands of tickets handed over for meals, instead weighing what each booth operator collects, after ensuring the paper isn’t wet and there isn’t any garbage in the submission.
One of Albi’s biggest challenges was shifting Taste to a park at Jasper Avenue and 102nd Street while Churchill Square was being reconstructed in 2004.
“We had to cut the (number of) restaurants in half. We had a small green space, but we made it work.”
The winter festival started its inaugural run last New Year’s Eve in four heated pavilions, each designed by a local architect using scaffolding shrinkwrapped in white plastic and lit at night.
The buildings showed off the latest cold-weather construction technology, but there were complaints not enough was happening inside.
Albi admits there were times during the seven-week run when they didn’t have a lot of programming.
While it’s hard to shorten the festival because it takes weeks to construct and dismantle the site, he suggests using fewer structures and reducing heating costs by changing the flooring to leave less space underneath.
The Events Edmonton board is reviewing the future of the festival, and it’s uncertain if it will be staged next year, he says.
However, new festivals often have issues to resolve, he says.
“You have to develop a customer base and develop the programming, and that takes patience,” Albi says. “My whole vision was it was tied to the construction industry. There are so many opportunities, but it needs a chance to evolve.”
He plans to focus on painting in preparation for a February show at the Peter Robertson Gallery, although he might continue taking on event planning projects as a consultant.
His interest in the field was reaffirmed last weekend when he was introduced to the mayor of Harbin, Edmonton’s sister city in China, during a tour of Taste with local officials.
“He shook my hand and said, ‘You make a lot of people happy.’ That’s my legacy,” Albi says.
“Someone like the mayor of Harbin saying, ‘You make a lot of people happy,’ that’s what makes it all worthwhile.”
gkent@edmontonjournal.com
Source: Edmonton Journal 2012
Events manager plans to follow his taste for art
Giuseppe Albi Photograph by: Greg Southam , Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON – After almost a decade of chocolate-covered strawberries, spanakopita, butter chicken and spring rolls, Giuseppe Albi is leaving the world of food to focus on art.
Albi, 65, will retire at the end of August as general manager of Events Edmonton, which produces A Taste of Edmonton as well as the new Metropolis International Winter Festival.
But he won’t stop working. He plans to devote himself full-time to his long career as an abstract painter, which he has been practising early in the morning before going to his manager’s job.
“Most artists, it’s very difficult to make a living as an artist, so you have to find something else. Fortunately for me, I was drawn into the events planning business. I had a knack for it.”
Albi has been putting on Taste since 2004, but was first hired as a contractor in 1976 by the Edmonton Exhibition Association (now Northlands) to stage an arts, crafts and culinary fair.
He eventually began working for the Edmonton Klondike Days Association, renamed Events Edmonton in 2006, running shows related to the summer fair outside the exhibition grounds such as the Sunday Promenade.
Taste started in 1985 as a two-day event on a plaza overlooking the river valley where the Shaw Conference Centre’s Hall D now stands. It moved to Churchill Square and was extended to five days in 1993.
It now lasts 10 days around Capital Ex. This year there are booths from 40 restaurants and up to five food trucks in what Albi compares to a giant outdoor food court.
“We want to showcase the variety of food that’s found in the city … You can go outside, have music, and it’s a place to group and socialize.”
The idea of eating al fresco is fairly new in a city that’s cold for much of the year — he says the first restaurant patio opened in Edmonton less than 35 years ago.
Albi estimates producing Taste costs $500,000 to $1 million annually, including $90,000 for music alone.
Last Sunday was the busiest he has ever seen it, although Events Edmonton doesn’t keep attendance figures.
The non-profit group doesn’t even count the thousands of tickets handed over for meals, instead weighing what each booth operator collects after ensuring the paper isn’t wet and there isn’t any garbage in the submission.
One of Albi’s biggest challenges was shifting Taste to a park at Jasper Avenue and 102nd Street while Churchill Square was being reconstructed in 2004.
“We had to cut the (number of) restaurants in half, we had a small green space, but we made it work.”
The winter festival started its inaugural run last New Year’s Eve in four heated pavilions, each designed by a local architect using scaffolding shrink-wrapped in white plastic and lit at night.
The buildings showed off the latest cold-weather construction technology, but there were complaints not enough was happening inside.
Albi admits there were times during the seven-week run when they didn’t have a lot of programming.
While it’s hard to shorten the festival because it takes weeks to construct and dismantle the site, he suggests using fewer structures and reducing heating costs by changing the flooring to leave less space underneath.
The Events Edmonton board is reviewing the future of the festival, and it’s uncertain whether it will be staged next year, he says.
However, new festivals often have issues to resolve, he says.
“You have to develop a customer base and develop the programming, and that takes patience,” Albi says. “My whole vision was it was tied to the construction industry … There are so many opportunities, but it needs a chance to evolve.”
He plans to focus on painting in preparation for a February show at the Peter Robertson Gallery, although he might continue taking on event planning projects as a consultant.
His interest in the field was reaffirmed last weekend when he was introduced to the mayor of Harbin, Edmonton’s sister city in China, during a tour of Taste with local officials.
“He shook my hand and said ‘You make a lot of people happy.’ That’s my legacy,” Albi says.
“Someone like the mayor of Harbin saying ‘You make a lot of people happy,’ that’s what makes it all worthwhile.”
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal