Join us on Tuesday, September 8th, 10am – 2pm for drop in creation stations with a variety of activities for kids of all ages! Plus, from 12pm – 2pm, we’ll be hosting a special checkerboard cedar mat weaving station with Red Cedar Woman. Try out some new crafts, including cedar weaving, beading, origami, collage, and more.
Entrance by donation, young children must be accompanied by an adult. No pre-registration required for this event. We hope you will join us!
She’s is an award-winning Indigenous writer, filmmaker and musician. She and her company, Full Regalia, have produced over 30 dramatic, documentary and experimental films, which have screened Internationally. A recipient of the “Trailblazer” award, “her films have has served as a springboards & inspiration for countless other projects”. She works as creative and production consultant, and produced student films. She was the first aboriginal person to sit on the jury at Sundance Film Festival & several of her films have had US premiers there.
She currently has several projects in development. Her short films have had a renaissance of screenings, to include the acclaimed “Ladies of the Inlet.”
She’s had over 15 short stories published. She is honoured to have her ‘Henry Miller’ short story “don’tcha know” published in NEXUS the International Henry Miller Anthology, about her time with him.
Doris Good, M.J. Milne, and Pat Sullivan share their self-publishing tips for creating and marketing self-published books from cover to cover.
Come listen to readings from the finalists from the Book Awards for BC Authors contest, including:
– Daniela Elza
– Marion Dodds
– Veronica Woodruff
– Joline Martin
– Calvin White
– Susan McCaslin
AI Awareness for Bloggers, Artists, Authors & Others
with panelists: Doris Good, CPA and Author, Hilary Moses, Artist, Educator, and Animator, Ruth Rodgers, Artist and Author, Stephen Murphy, Artist, Author, and Bookbinder, and Stephen Smith, Blogger, and AI programmer.
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.
Plein Air Workshop at Art & Words Festival.
Keep it Simple and Loose – Urban / travel sketching for beginners plus with Paddy Meade
Enjoy a 2 hour plein air sketching in the core of lower Gibsons. Pencil, markers, crayons, watercolour – bring what you have. Paint in sketchbook or on paper. Instructor will supply boards to use on lap, table, curb etc. Easel not required.
Focus is on the basic tips for urban sketching and opportunity to learn how to select subject, basic composition, and fun opportunity to create. Keep it simple and loose.
Saturday, Aug. 22, 10:30 – 12:30
Gibsons Public Art Gallery, $25
Register by email at sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
Whether you’re a poet or write prose only, you’ll enjoy this highly interactive workshop. We’ll ditch the lines and write beautiful/interesting/shocking/strange sentences, and like Tom Snarsky and Amy Lowell before us, compose poetic paragraphs.
2: 3:0-4:00, Saturday, Aug. 22, Gibsons Public Art Gallery
$25
Sign up by emailing sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
Combining bold, simple shapes with organic textures, Figueira pushes the abstraction of the subject while maintaining a sense of scene that is both familiar and challenging to the viewer, conveying the joy and passion found in coastal landscapes. Mountains and rock formations that move across millenia, trees shaped by decades of growth, and the split second flicker of light on fast flowing water are expressed in his works. Playing with positive and negative space, Figueira explores the energy and movement in landscapes across miniscule and massive timescales.
Join us for an Artist Demo on Thursday, August 27th, 2pm – 4pm and for the Opening Reception on Saturday, August 29th, 2pm – 4pm. All are welcome!
to Sept 27th. In The Impossibility of Beauty, Mindy Hemstalk gathers driftwood, broken ceramic fragments, and unaltered natural materials from the traditional, unceded, and ancestral territories of the shíshálh Nation, assembling them into shrine‑like forms that honour the wild intelligence of the land. These works emerge from an intense personal journey of rupture and rebirth, shaped by the realization that the dominant cultural definitions of beauty rooted in colonial and patriarchal paradoxes are impossible by design; demanding women be sovereign yet caged, expressive yet silent, sensual yet contained.
An exhibition on display in Joe’s Lounge. Join us for the Opening Reception on Saturday, August 29th, 2pm – 4pm. All are welcome!
Join us for an Artist Demo with Solène Chatain on Sunday, September 20th, 2pm – 3pm. All are welcome!
Based in Powell River (qathet), Solène Chatain is a mainly self-taught ceramic sculptor focusing on handbuilding techniques including slab building and carving. Chatain has exhibited her work in several group exhibitions in Powell River (qathet) as well as on Vancouver Island. She has also taught ceramic sculpture workshops in Powell River (qathet) and in Esquimalt. Her current series, ‘Iron Age Frescoes’, explores the fusion of silica and iron, two materials essential to creation throughout human history.
Join us for an Artist Demo with Filipe Figueira on Thursday, August 27th, 2pm – 4pm. All are welcome!
Born in Portugal, raised in the UK, and now living on Cortes Island, Filipe Figueira is an abstract landscape painter whose practice is an ongoing search for a visual language that conveys the profound, physical experience of being within a landscape. Figueira is a self taught artist who began painting in 2022. He has exhibited his work on Cortes island and on Vancouver Island, as well as in group exhibitions with the Federation of Canadian Artists. Combining bold, simple shapes with organic textures, Figueira pushes the abstraction of the subject while maintaining a sense of scene that is both familiar and challenging to the viewer, conveying the joy and passion found in coastal landscapes.
Join us with the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society for the 2026 Arts and Words Festival, a three day literary festival in which writers collaborate with visual artists!
Every year, artists and writers on the Sunshine Coast are randomly paired together. Working together they reflect on each other’s stories, artistic practices, styles, and bodies of work to create a literary work and a visual work that resonate with and echo each other; often resulting in long-term friendship and collaboration across artistic disciplines. We invite all to join us during this festival to view the huge breadth of art and words on display, as well as for workshops, keynote speakers, interviews, and more. Immerse yourself in the Sunshine Coast’s literary and visual arts scene.
Find the full schedule of events, as well as our opening hours during the festival, online!
Exploring what we make by hand, what we build through technology, and what we leave behind, Solène Chatain’s ceramic sculptures reflect on the complex relationships between human ingenuity, industry, technology, and the natural world. Handbuilt and carved ceramic forms are combined with discarded fragments of rusted machinery gathered from beaches, forests, and industrial sites, transforming remnants of human industry into objects of contemplation. Through these sculptures, Chatain explores the tension between holding on and letting go, between progress and consequence, between the handmade and the technological.
Join us for the Opening Reception on Sat. Aug. 29th, 2pm – 4pm; and for an Artist Demo on Sun. Sept. 20th, 2pm – 3pm. All are welcome!
Join author and artist, Ruth Rodgers, for the launch of her latest historical fiction novel at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery as she presents this latest story about the thousands of ‘home children’ sent out from England to Canada to fulfill agricultural and domestic service roles in the 1870s to the 1930s. Joseph and Lucy, orphans from London, experience very different fates in their new homes, typical of the stories of many of those caught up in this ill-considered scheme designed to solve Canada’s labour shortage while getting children off the streets of England’s growing cities.
Saturday, August 22, 2026, 11 AM – 12:30 PM
Gibsons Public Art Gallery
Free
Sunshine Coast poet and musician, Catherine McNeil (Cat Mac) will be reading from her award-winning poetry book, “Emily & Elspeth.” Joining her is Vancouver author, Daniela Elza, author of scar/city, poetry, and Is This an Illness or an Accident, her memoir. Both of Elza’s books are finalists for awards in this years Book Awards for BC Authors contest.
Is it nature or nurture, the promise of fame and fortune, or just a pathological compulsion to see our names in print? Could it be the hope to leave the legacy of our life’s story for our grandchildren? Maybe it’s a struggle we can’t abandon, or maybe we’re doing it for fun. Join author Elizabeth Rains and her author daughter, Jessica Raya, in exploring what draws us to the page and propels us through the writing journey. This audience-participation session aims to ramp up your writing energies no matter how or why they arise.
Marion Crook, Award-winning Author, interviews Artist and Author teams at the 5th Annual Art & Words Festival at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery, including:
Andrea Coates, Author & Ann-Marie Brown, Artist
Isabella Mori, Author & Hilary Moses, Artist
Emily Jew, Artist & Jean Stewart, Author
Rosa Reid, Author & Erika Mastig, Artist
Joyce Gwilliam, Author & Hana Rose, Artist
Felicia Mareels, Author & Manon Staiger, Artist
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