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Andrew Van Schie, the youngest of three children, was born in 1966 in North Bay, Ontario as Andrew Cornelius Jacobus Van Schie. He was raised in North Bay.

In 1989, he moved to Kingston, Ontario, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts from Queen's University from 1985 to 1989. In 1989, he moved to Sackville, New Brunswick, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1993.

Solo exhibitions of his work include: Dead Skinned Men Wrapped in Barbed Wire (2006, North Bay), Dead Man Frozen in Ice - The Ice Column Installation (2005, North Bay), Man with Head on Fire (2001, Saint John City Gallery, Saint John, New Brunswick), Man with Head on Fire (2001, W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery, North Bay), Works on Paper (1999, Carnegie Gallery, Dundas, Ontario), New Works (1999, White Water Gallery, North Bay), and Falling Marble (1996, White Water Gallery, North Bay).

He has done artist residencies in the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture Residency (2002, Dawson City, Yukon), Kunstlerhaus Kloster Cismar (2002, Cismar, Germany), Studios Midwest Summer Residency Program (2001, Galesberg, Illinois), Kunstlerhaus Worpswede (1999 to 2000, Worpswede, Germany), W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery (1999, North Bay), Ragdale Foundation (1995), Fundacion Valparaiso (1995, Mojacar Playa, Almeria - Spain), La Rectoria Centre d'art - Jan. 23 - Feb. 28, 1994 - Sant Pere de Vilamajor - (Barcelona) Spain, Young Canadian Painting Symposium (1993, Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec).

He has received the following grants: Stipendium Grant from Kloster Cismar (2002), Quest Project Grant from the Canada Council of the Arts (1999), Travel Grant from the Canada Council of the Arts (1999, 2001, 2002), Stipendium Grant from Atelierhaus Worpswede (1999), and Exhibition Assistance Grants from the Ontario Arts Council (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006).

Andrew's works are in private, corporate and public collections, including the W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery, JS Redpath Group (North Bay), Centre d'Art (Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec), Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), Fundacion Valparaiso (Mojacar, Spain) and Fundacion Swords (Santanyi, Spain).

Andrew's web site can be viewed at http://www.ccca.ca/cv/english/thib-cv.html

(The biographical information featured here was written in consultation with the artist in 2006.)

Interview:

Andrew Van Schie embraced childhood crafts involving materials like macaroni and tissue paper with great enthusiasm, but it wasn't until his final year in university that he really felt like an artist. His work was accepted into a juried group exhibition in Maine, and the experience of having people look at, evaluate and accept his work felt worlds apart from art school. In school, he recalls feeling a sense of tokenism-that work would be positively received because students were paying for the feedback. With the juried system, though, he feels that artists can get beyond that.

While he recognizes the benefits of certain conventions in the art world, like juried shows, he feels that "the white box [the gallery] is ineffective" and he prefers instead to present his work to the community more directly. For example, his installation Dead Skinned Men Wrapped in Barbed Wire was situated between the main street and the waterfront of North Bay, attracting a broad audience. The reactions of people "crossed the gamut," he says. Many people didn't realize right away that the medium included meat, which jibes with Andrew's reluctance to bombard the viewer with too much explanatory text. "Viewers can be lazy," he says, and it's valuable to encourage them to follow their gut reaction. "People have to work a bit too because I have to work pretty hard in making the work," he says. He wants to avoid "dumb[ing] down the art" and getting "into a hand-holding routine". He elaborates, "We're in a society where everyone wants instant gratification."

Andrew's current projects include editing footage of Dead Skinned Men Wrapped in Barbed Wire and working with a variety of media including watercolours, transparencies, sculpture, and installations. His first love, he says, is painting, because of its immediacy. "There's a direct line to the creativity," he says, as compared to, for example, installation where there are many steps involved between the generation of an idea and the materialization of that idea.

No matter what medium he works in, he wants to affect people. He says, "That's what art is-provok[ing] people and get[ting] them out of their slumber." He insists, in fact, that he would rather have someone hate his work than feel neutral about it.

(By Heather Saunders, based on an interview in December, 2006).

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Andrew Van Schie
2006

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Andrew Van Schie, Falling Marble (installation view)
1996
White Water Gallery, North Bay, Ontario, Canada

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Andrew Van Schie, drawing of House on Weak Stilts by W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery curator, Dennis Geden
2001

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Andrew Van Schie, Correspondence with W. K. P. Kennedy Gallery (NB: personal information omitted)
6 March 2000