Brush with Art - Visual Arts Grant

Block Two refers to the original tract of land 6 miles east and west of the Grand River, within what is now the Region of Waterloo. This project will be an evolving process over a duration of the 9 day art forum. It will explore land subdivisions and developments using graphic, sculptural, printmaking and painting techniques. The project will map the formative historical divisions of the “Block Two” between 1800 and 1860.

David Hunsberger was born and raised in the Kitchener area. In 1976 he completed an honours degree in Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. Since then he has maintained a studio in Waterloo, working primarily as a serigraph printmaker.

As we celebrate the 100 anniversary of the conception of public hydroelectric power in Kitchener, P2P highlights the ubiquity of the most basic icons of the electric age: the household switch and bulb. Significantly situated at the entrance of City Hall, P2P puts the marquee, a now-ubiquitous and iconic tool of corporate communication, into the hands of the general public. By engaging in the everyday unconscious activity of flipping a light switch, citizens are able to communicate directly, without the oversight of a centralized authority, within a government-owned public space. Literally and figuratively, P2P brings Power to the People.

The team behind P2P (Matt Gorbet, Rob Gorbet and Susan Gorbet) is an experience design collective dedicated to enriching the lives of citizens through the creative application of technology as social grease in public spaces. Collectively, they hold several patents and have research affiliations with the University of Waterloo, MIT, Stanford, Interval Research, Xerox PARC, and Silicon Graphics. Their work has been shown in the USA, Sweden, Austria and Japan.