Learn more about CUPE's art collection at the Stan Little Building in Ottawa, and how art was chosen that showed an empathy for the international union movement and solidarity with workers.

1. CUPE’s Art Collection
 The CUPE collection consists of primarily emerging
professional artists (exceptions are Farouk
Kaspaules and Daniel Sharp).

2. The CUPE Collection
 For CUPE Don Monet set out to choose artists that
have shown an empathy for the international union
movement and solidarity with workers. They have
all worked either in Mayworks or have shown a
support for unions. It is also important that they
create work that is aesthetically pleasing. Art that
workers can enjoy over a long period of time. They
are after all significant elements of the “feel” of any
workplace.

3. The Artists
 The art in this collection was chosen by union curator
Don Monet of Cube Gallery. (CARFAC)

4. Ground Floor Entrance
(large south wall)
Farouk Kaspaules
Farouk Kaspaules (CARFAC) is an Iraqi-born Canadian
artist who has been exhibiting since mid-1980s, and
has been actively engaged with artist-run centres,
organizing and curating exhibits on political and cultural
themes. His interest in the events shaping the political
and social situation in the Middle East influenced his
work that found an expression in the 1995 exhibit Non
Sequitur, at SAW gallery in Ottawa which dealt with the
issue of the Gulf War. In 2001, he participated in the
exhibition The Land Within Me – Memory of a Place, at
the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Farouk
participated in group exhibitions in Latin America, most
notably in Brazil (2001) and Chile (2002). In 2003,
Farouk exhibited State of Things, which dealt with the
condition of the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq. He has
had exhibits in Cairo, Egypt, and Amman, Jordan. In
2004, Farouk held a solo exhibit in the USA dealing
metaphorically with issues of global violence. More
recently, Farouk participated in exhibits in London and
Ottawa, Ontario, and Bordeaux, France. He worked
with the ODLC for a piece in the Union~Art show part of
Mayworks 2004.

5. Employees’ Lounge
Ground Floor
Hawa Kaba
Born in Burkina Faso, Hawa spent her childhood in
many West African countries including the Ivory
Coast and Guinea. She moved to the United States
when she was 18 and subsequently to Canada
where she has remained for almost 20 years.
Ottawa is where she developed her passion for
painting.
“My art expresses my sense of being an African
woman, using mixed media and the visual language
of western art. I incorporate design elements that I
learned when dyeing textiles with my older sister, as
well as the suggestions of forms that I observed in
locally produced sculptures and masks from my
village. I interweave those elements with layers of
texture, a rich variety of collage materials, acrylic
paint, modelling gels, and sometimes mementos
and images that hold special meaning. Many of my
paintings are pictorial metaphors – visual poetry. My
work comes from an inner spring that delights in the A series of four small pieces such
patchwork interplay of colours, shapes, textures, as the one above - for the
and symbols.” lunchroom 14” X 10”

6. Judy Darcy Boardroom
Ground Floor
D. H. Monet
D. H. Monet (CARFAC) is a community-based
artist/activist – his practice includes cartoons,
posters, fine art, exhibition curation and education.
Don's photo collage paintings have appeared at
union art shows The Labouring Body Artcite
(Windsor) and the CUPE BC convention. His work is
held in collections across the country including CUPE
ON, the Gitxsan Chiefs Office, and by artists Susan
Point and Bruce Cockburn. His acerbic political
cartoons have received critical acclaim at home and
abroad. His political cartoons, posters and workshops
have been used by CUPE, PSAC, ODLC (winner
2002 CALM award), Calgary hospital workers, Innu
and Gitxsan Nations, CBC, NOW Magazine, Ottawa
Citizen and the National Gallery, to name a few. His
groundbreaking book Colonialism on Trial, is an
illustrated documentary about the Delgamuukw land
title trial. Don has organized a number of labour-
friendly cultural events, including exhibitions for
Mayworks 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 1999 and
Sisters in Solidarity
2003 he organized Art Against War and in 2001
Crime Seen; group exhibitions at Gallery 101 to acrylic, holograph and photo
protest war and globalization. He is the editor of the transfer on birch
Mayworks artists' directory.
48” X 48”

7. Second Floor
Communications, Legal, Equality,
Union Development
Jennifer Gibbs
Jennifer Gibbs (CARFAC) was born in
1970. She was raised in the country in
eastern Ontario until 1990 when she
moved to Ottawa where she received
a degree in Classics and English.
Jennifer is inspired by physics,
mathematics, poetry, mythology,
biology, and other artists – ancient to
contemporary. Her art often deals with
ontology and the perplexing nature of
existence. Other times Jennifer seeks
to create portraits of powerful women.
Some of her images reflect the
importance of a love of simple things
and a sense of childlike wonder. She
has shown at numerous galleries and
has been included in the Mayworks as
well as Art Against War exhibitions.
Works proposed for the second floor
Blue Sisters
are from a series exploring what was
considered traditional women's work. acrylic on canvas
30” X 40”

8. Second Floor
Communications, Legal, Equality,
Union Development
Jennifer Gibbs
Disquieting Muses
acrylic on canvas
30” X 40”

9. Second Floor
(boardroom)
Marc Dubois Dan Rivaud
Emotional Landscape #4 The Striker
oil on canvas acrylic/fibreglass on board
36” X 36” 24” X 30”

10. Third Floor
Research, Health and Safety,
Job Evaluation
Kim Hayden
Flower petals are dripped onto canvas, squirt bottles
replace paintbrushes, and painterly gestures are
beaded. Red beaded dots stitched onto canvas
reference drops of blood, a needle pricking one’s
finger in the process of beading, and the struggles
of the Métis to defend their rights and to be
recognized as an Aboriginal people.
In this series, I deconstruct traditional Métis floral
beadwork and integrate it into layers of dripped and
poured paint—a loose, gestural style attributed to
American artist, Jackson Pollock. Built on a grid of
copper leaf, the visual perception of layers is blurred
by reflected light, three-dimensional media, and
competing layers of colour and texture. This work
considers the influence of place, culture and
perception on personal and national identity—a
landscape created following a year spent living, Flower Beadwork Series: I dreamt that Jackson Pollock
working and musing in Japan. was Métis and lived in Japan. Sakura (Cherry
Blossoms). Kumamoto Castle. 8/9. 2007.
Kim Hayden is a member of the Manitoba Metis glass beads, waxed nylon thread, copper leaf, acrylic
Federation, Redboine Local. She holds a BFA with on canvas
distinction from Concordia University, Montreal 90 x 90 cm
(1996) and an MEd from the University of Ottawa ass beads, waxed nylon thread, copper leaf, acrylic on canvas
(2008). 90 x 90 cm

11. Third Floor
Research, Health and Safety,
Job Evaluation
Kim Hayden
Flower Beadwork Series: I dreamt that Jackson Pollock was Métis
and lived in Japan. Sakura (Cherry Blossoms). Kumamoto Castle.
9/9. 2005.
glass beads, waxed nylon thread, copper leaf, acrylic on
canvas
102 x 102 cm

12. Fourth Floor
Finance and Administration,
Technology, Convention, Accounting
Daniel Sharp
Daniel Sharp (CARFAC) has a long practice of
abstract painting. His work oscillates between
measured structure and gestural form, researching
colour, balance, order and improvisation. The
exploration of desire is the subject of these personal,
social, sensual paintings. Paintings that aspire to
poetry. Transformer
Panel Blue
He has been a part of several Mayworks art shows,
as well as having done a major commission for oil on panel
CAPES in Ottawa. Installed at the union
headquarters in downtown Ottawa, he created five 78” X 24”
banners with five colours/patterns that reflect values
of the union.
The artist lives in Ottawa, is the father of two
children, and works for Foreign Affairs in the
management of a collection of fine art.

13. Fourth Floor
Finance and Administration,
Technology, Convention, Accounting
Daniel Sharp
Transformer
Panel Yellow
oil on panel
78” X 24”

14. Fifth Floor
National President’s Office
(corridor)
Jean Jewer
Jean Jewer (CARFAC) is a painter whose imagery
is based on the landscape.
Growing up in a small outport of northern
Newfoundland has given her a great love and
respect for the environment and the ever-changing
drama of the land and the sea.
Her artwork is a response to this natural world with
all its beauties, diversities, and hostilities. The
paintings emerge like a performance of nature itself,
“I pick, I scrape, I slash, and I leave my mark on my
surfaces.”
Each painting is an “act of remembering.”
Oppidian I
oil on paper
40” X 32”

15. Fifth Floor
National Secretary-
Treasurer’s Office
(corridor)
Jean Jewer
Oppidian II
oil on paper
40” X 32”

16. Fifth Floor
(boardroom)
Echoes
Rebecca Mason 63” X 18”
A native of Chelsea, Quebec, Rebecca Mason studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto where she first
developed her unique painting style. Working on large sheets of Japanese paper, Mason takes inspiration from her
natural surroundings with trees, canoes and mountains as the central themes, and she records them in a very free,
expressive manner. Rebecca has exhibited her work in Ontario and Quebec since 1988. She has participated in a
wide array of exhibitions at galleries, juried exhibitions and special art events. Her work can be found in private
collections in Canada, the United States and Europe.
“Watercolour on Japanese paper is the medium I work with. Responding to my environment as an expressive
colourist, I use nature as my inspiration. Wetting and lightly creasing the handmade paper, I then let the painting
unfold from my mind's eye using the creases as my pathway. The results are somewhat like writing a poem on the
page, but I use watercolour and brushes as the vehicle to capture my sense of place.” Becky Mason 2005

17. Fifth Floor
(boardroom)
Emotional Landscape 11
Marc Dubois 30” X 60”
Marc Dubois is a self-taught artist from Gatineau, Quebec inspired by Velasquez, Nerdrum, Chardin and Morandi.
His medium is oil on canvas and his subject matter includes portraits, still lifes and urban landscapes. The
overriding theme that dominates much of his work is the interrelationship between extremes, such as passion and
reason, or abstraction and representation.