Up and down the pacific northwest coast there are stories shared of the great flood. They speak about the rising waters, the urgency to escape to higher ground and coming down to start over again after the water recedes. In my home community, Wuikinuxv, it is said the People who survived the flood climbed the mountain known as Kvauma (seat of the eagle) to escape the push of the ocean water. In making a lot of the work for this show I was thinking about the art we make and the work we do after loss…after a series of losses. What happens when catastrophe and heartbreak are normalized in our bones? Where do we place focus? Do we look at what has been taken, or to what remains and can be reclaimed?
Tag: artist talk
GPAG: Artist Talk | Sandy Kay & Kathy McKnight
Join us for a free Artist Talk on Saturday, October 3rd, 2pm – 3pm with Sandy Kay and Kathy McKnight. All are welcome!
Sharing a profound connection to the coastal forests, Sandy Kay and Kathy McKnight are abstract impressionist painters working primarily in oil and cold wax. Their complementary approaches unite in a celebration of the coastal woodland, blending their unique personal visions with a shared artistic language. Sandy Kay and Kathy McKnight are both Sunshine Coast artists working primarily in oil and cold wax. Together they weave a rich tapestry of perception, where the boundary between visual art, musical expression, and natural landscape dissolves into a singular, evocative experience.
GPAG: Opening Reception | Kay & McKnight, Nadina Tandy
Join us for the opening receptions of our newest exhibitions, Woodland Rhythms by Sandy Kay & Kathy McKnight and Monopoly by Nadina Tandy, from 2pm – 4pm on Saturday September 26th. All are welcome!
In the Main and Eve Smart Galleries, Woodland Rhythms features oil and cold wax paintings that create a sensory echo of the woodlands where perception blurs and transforms. Kay and McKnight’s complementary approaches unite in a celebration of the coastal woodland, blending their unique personal visions with a shared artistic language.
In Joe’s Lounge, Nadina Tandy’s Monopoly invites us to travel into new worlds. Worlds made of mythologies and maps, and specimens and memories, gathered joyfully together on paper and sculpture. Collage becomes storytelling – disorienting stories, humorous ones, strange collections – wunderkammer – a glimpse into wonder.
Art Exhibition: GPAG – SANDY KAY & KATHY MCKNIGHT | Woodland Rhythms
September 24th to Oct 18th. Inviting the viewer to slow down and breathe deeply, feel the movement of light, and hear the lyricism and rhythmic flow of the paintings on display, Woodland Rhythms creates a sensory echo of the woodlands where perception blurs and transforms. Sharing a profound connection to the coastal forests, Sandy Kay and Kathy McKnight are abstract impressionist painters working primarily in oil and cold wax. Their complementary approaches unite in a celebration of the coastal woodland, blending their unique personal visions with a shared artistic language. Extending beyond the canvas this exhibition offers a variety of immersive events, from an opening reception featuring live music that will echo the paintings’ inherent musicality to workshops, artist talks, a concert series, and a sound bath. Find more information about these events online at www.gpag.ca.
GPAG: RECONSTRUCTIONS | Artist Talk with Tiko Kerr
A special visit from Vancouver-based visual artist Tiko Kerr, who will speak about his attempts to describe the psychological landscape of our extraordinary contemporary moment through his creative practice. This will also be an opportunity for a group discussion on the value and importance that creative voices have for our community. Seats are limited, with entrance by donation to support GPAG’s Building Repair Project. Register online at www.gpag.ca/reconstructions!
Embodying a delicate dance between innovation, intuition, and the transformative power of creation, Tiko Kerr’s work invites the viewer to engage within their own subjective experiences. Tiko is a Vancouver-based artist who has been developing his artistic process since the early 1980s.
GPAG: Interviews with Artist and Author Teams with Jan DeGrass
Jan DeGrass, Author, interviews Artist and Author teams from the Art & Words Festival, including:
Tracy Hall & Janice Rafael
Karen Taylor & Lianne Kirilenko
Rizz Fischer & Bruce Edwards
Leslie MacFarlane & Karis Gauthier
Richard Feehan & Roger Handling
Pammila Ruth & Lorena Ruth
Kathaleen Quinn & Matt Thomson
Rachel Amina & Denise Olson
Doris Good & Ellen Heale
Atma Frans & Michael Healey
GPAG: Book Launch and Conversation
Join former Gibsons resident and Edmonton author Theresa Shea to celebrate the launch of her new novel, Dog Days of Planet Earth. Shea is the bestselling author of The Unfinished Child, and the Alberta Book Award and Guernica Prize winning novel The Shade Tree. Her new book weaves together major environmental and political issues of the mid- to late-20th century that remain urgent today, and asks what we’re willing to risk for our personal convictions in a world where powerful and unjust forces often oppose them. Animal lovers, earth lovers, justice lovers, and story lovers alike won’t want to miss this event. Open to the public.
Books will be available to purchase.
GPAG: Artist Talk with Janine Dunn
Join us with exhibiting artist Janine Dunn on Saturday, August 8th, 2pm – 3pm. Free and all are welcome to attend!
Illustrating symbolic dimensions of celebration, abundance, and scarcity, Janine Dunn’s exhibition we mark the seasons in love features landscapes and human figures appearing in nebulous pastoral space, with a felt sense of emotion and relationship between the characters. Janine Dunn is an artist and farmer living in Gibsons, BC, who shares stories of daily life on her farm and brings forward topics resonating within the current moment through her artistic practice. She draws on personal impressions of motherhood, animal husbandry, degradation and repair, shared labour and hospitality, and isolation and solitude. Working with industrial, agricultural, and domestic materials, she collaborates with the weather and elements to develop her canvases. Dunn has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions on the Sunshine Coast and throughout Vancouver, and was commissioned to create The Landing Eye, a permanent public art installation in Gibsons Landing.
GPAG: Artist Talk with Lisa Blackwell
Join us for an Artist Talk with Lisa Blackwell on Saturday, August 15th, 2pm – 3pm. Free to attend and all are welcome!
Informed and inspired by the practice of observing the living world and the forces of nature, Lisa Blackwell’s exhibition Earthly Emergence features handbuilt sculptures created from clay. Lisa Blackwell grew up in Sechelt, on the unceded territory of the shíshálh Nation, and is now living on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen people in Saanich BC. Considering an Indigenous perspective is integral to her work, as an act of decolonization and reciprocity. She was taught handbuilding by Sto:lo ceramics artist and cultural caretaker, Laura Wee Láy Láq, and has been working in clay for the past thirty years. Blackwell attended Alberta University of the Arts and in 2023 earned a BFA, Majoring in Ceramics with Distinction, and also won the Board of Governors Award for top ceramics student. She has taught, sold, and exhibited her pottery in California, Alberta, and British Columbia. At the heart of everything she makes is her growing understanding of ecology in all of its complexity.
Opening Reception: Art Exhibition: SCAC – Dawn Myers : Splendour: Celebrating The Collaborations In Our Natural World
to Aug 15th. In the world of weaving sculptural forms with willow, two powerful – and at times disparate – influences come together.
Basketry is an ancient craft that has been practiced in virtually all human societies. Weavers then and now learn exacting techniques and styles to make their works useful and durable.
The pieces in this exhibit were inspired by Dawn’s daily walks in the forest and along the ocean shore, and the great diversity in Nature. Today the word “diversity” is used often in our ever-changing society. But before the word ever left a human’s lips, Nature had the concept perfected. Species, all species, are fully interdependent on their neighbours. Thus, Nature does not merely tolerate diversity, it thrives in it. It celebrates it. It stakes everything on it. Let us do the same.
Art Exhibition: SCAC – Dawn Myers : Splendour: Celebrating The Collaborations In Our Natural World
to Aug 15th. In the world of weaving sculptural forms with willow, two powerful – and at times disparate – influences come together.
Basketry is an ancient craft that has been practiced in virtually all human societies. Weavers then and now learn exacting techniques and styles to make their works useful and durable.
The pieces in this exhibit were inspired by Dawn’s daily walks in the forest and along the ocean shore, and the great diversity in Nature. Today the word “diversity” is used often in our ever-changing society. But before the word ever left a human’s lips, Nature had the concept perfected. Species, all species, are fully interdependent on their neighbours. Thus, Nature does not merely tolerate diversity, it thrives in it. It celebrates it. It stakes everything on it. Let us do the same.
Art Exhibition: SCAC – wa shew̓áy̓ ta x̱wítl’em “Growing Strings / Fibres”
to Aug 16th. wa shew̓áy̓ ta x̱wítl’em is the name of a new growing space in Gibsons that brings together Indigenous plants traditionally used for weaving, cordage, dye, and textile practices while supporting the restoration of the pond ecosystem and surrounding habitat. This garden is a living space of cultural revitalization, ecological care, and intergenerational knowledge sharing rooted in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh teachings.
Alongside the launch of this space, this exhibition shares the work of artists whose work expresses this interconnectedness. Some are artists who have led the creation of wa shew̓áy̓ ta x̱wítl’em, including Cease Wyss, Jaz Whitford and Megan Dewar. Their work shares the central ethos of the garden – to be in community as a verb – to commune, meaning-make and story-bear as a collective act of decolonial joy.
GPAG: Monsters: As Relation + In Relation | Online Talk with Ronnie Dean Harris
A look at the realm of Coastal and Interior Salish Transformer stories as a relational matrix of storied ecology rather than a collapsed box of morality lessons and mythology. Free, with registration required; a link to the event via Zoom will be sent to you after registration. Please note that this event takes place online only, on Thursday June 18th, 6pm – 8pm. Find more information and register online.
Ronnie Dean Harris is a Stō:lo/St’át’imc/Nlaka’pamux artist, researcher, and community leader based in New Westminster whose work bridges music, film, sound design, and Indigenous land-based storytelling. Ronnie’s research explores Indigenous history, cosmology, genealogy, and policy, informing his community-based projects and facilitation work.
GPAG: Artist Talk with Jeannette Sirois
Join us for an Artist Talk with Jeannette Sirois on Saturday, June 20th, 2pm – 3pm. Free to attend, no registration required. All are welcome!
Jeannette Sirois is a queer visual artist based on Salt Spring Island whose work focuses on representation, identity, and visibility. Sirois has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions across Vancouver Island and on the Lower Mainland. She holds a diploma in Design, a Bachelors of Fine Arts, and a Masters of Education in Visual Arts. Beyond her own individual artistic practice, Sirois also mentors visual arts students and collaborates with emerging artists and curators on exhibitions intended to foster dialogue and connection. At the Table | The Architecture of Control is a portrait-based exhibition highlighting the lived experiences, identities, and truths of 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, and examining the structures and systems that have regulated and defined trans and queer lives.
GPAG: The Language and the Land Are Connected — Keeping Our shashishalhem Language Alive
Join us for a special evening of shíshálh culture and connection at GPAG with Candace Campo. Free and open to all.
Candace, ancestral name xets’emits’a (to always be there), is a Shíshálh (Sechelt) member from the Sunshine Coast, BC and the co-founder of Talaysay Tours. Trained as an anthropologist and teacher, she shares the stories and history of her people, focusing on Indigenous language and cultural revitalization alongside Shishálh Elders and Educators while providing Indigenous cultural and outdoor experiences to students and visitors throughout the world. Candace’s mission is to work with her youth and community members to support reconnection to the land that their ancestors have stewarded and lived on sustainably for thousands of years. Candace’s art expresses her ancestral shishálh connections & deep love for family – the ones here & the ones passed – through paint, mark making, screen printing & sculpture.
Land-based education, Shíshálh language, arts and cultural revitalization are Candace’s life work.
SCAC: Art Reception: Artist Talk: Jackie Dives
Of Course This Hurts is a photography project that intimately documents the toxic drug supply crisis through the lives of people who are being impacted by this public health emergency. The images explore love, grief, bodily autonomy, trauma, and healing, as experienced by drug policy activists, frontline workers, people who use drugs, and their family members in British Columbia, where overdose is the leading cause of death for people aged 10-59.
SCAC: Art Reception: Artist Talk: Claudia Medina
Naguala is an immersive video and sound installation that explores the rich Mexican tradition of nagualismo—a spiritual and cultural worldview rooted in communication, transformation, and interconnection. The installation reimagines the boundaries between the human and non-human, inviting viewers into the realm of the Naguala, where animals, plants, earth, cosmos, and ancestral spirits intertwine.
Art Exhibition Reception + Artist Talk: SC Arts Centre: Carolina Franzen & Helena Wadsley + Reading Room: Rising Waters
Helena Wadsley and Carolina Franzen, both Sunshine Coast residents, have adopted a diverse tradition of Walking Art into their practices. Engaged with the challenges posed by land use, and in order to find alternative relations to the land, their inspiration for drawings, sculptures, and video comes through periods of intense physical contact to the environment; be it that objects found in the landscape may be contextually sculpted so that their meaning and history remains connected with the land, be it that a slow pace allows them to witness and to create through acts of acknowledgment and connectivity. Both artists’ drawings tread the lines of the land between natural and human-made, and yet, their sculptures, found objects, and video works have a second threshold in common: to record the walking experience while enabling the visitor to traverse with them.