About

Angie Sotiropoulos

Angie Sotiropoulos is a western Canadian artist living and working on Treaty 6 territory. She is a first generation Canadian that grew up in a house where storytelling was a big part of everyday life.

Her training as a Scenic Painter and Props Artisan at MacEwan College led her into the live entertainment industry which has allowed her to work collaboratively telling stories for a variety of disciplines. During this time she’s discovered a love of working with sculpture, painting, urban sketching, and the book arts.

In her personal art practice she creates work under the titles Society of Curious Creatures , Dragonfly Book Press and Artwork By Angie Sotiropoulos. Each inhabits a different aspect of her interests with elements that overlap and spill into one another happily.

Themes explored in her work include the relationship between humans and nature, questions about the unknown, capturing the familiar and documenting local stories. Her work tends to be colourful, whimsical and encourages the viewer to listen to the tiny things and explore.

She is a co organizer of the Urban Sketchers chapter in Edmonton, a member of CARFAC, the Moveable Book Society, and the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artist Guild. Angie is a mentor at MacEwan University working with students in the Theatre Production program. Her artwork has been exhibited in group shows in Canada and the UK. She is an active member in the local craft and art market scenes. Her hand bound books are available at the Art

Gallery of Alberta, the Art Gallery of St. Albert and the Tesserae.

When she’s not learning a new skill or creating in the studio she loves travelling with her partner and tending to her, ever growing, menagerie of plants.

Artist Statement

"I’m a first generation Canadian that grew up surrounded by many cultural influences. It wasn’t uncommon to have dinners where everyone around the table was from a different country and had a story to tell. My holidays were spent visiting family in far away places where, once again, stories were told around the dinner table. The combination of being surrounded by storytellers and being asked to explain my cultural background, inevitably, gravitated me to becoming a storyteller myself.

My career as a theatrical artisan taught me how to be visual. I build props and paint sets, while working closely with designers, and other members of a team, to create live spectacles. In my personal art practice, I tell stories through sculpture, urban sketching, painting and the book arts. I believe stories help us relate to one another and see past differences. They help us find a common ground. Asking questions can often lead to getting a story as an answer.

I love tactile experiences when I interact with art. So naturally, this is what I like creating with my own work as well. I want to stimulate multiple senses and leave a lasting impression. The majority of the work I create is meant to be touched and engaged with physically. Picking up a sketchbook to draw, turning an object around in your hand or flipping the pages of a mini book are all meant to create physical interactions and spark curiosity.

I work with a variety of materials and mediums because it feeds my curiosity to learn about new things and use unique materials, if possible. I love found and up-cycled objects and sculpting mediums that have a low environmental footprint. I like papers with texture, translucency in paint and the layering of different pens, pencils and ephemera. Paper is my current muse. Learning about how to make it, how to manipulate it, how to make everything from sculptures to painted artworks using it.

Not staying loyal to one medium or style gives me the opportunity to grow and evolve in my practice. This variety also brings a number of entry points to discovering my work for the viewer. My goals are to always be planting seeds in my viewers. Seeds that grow into smiles, questions and curiosity.

Angie Sotiropoulos

Artist Statement

Press & Media