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.
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
Michael Gurney interviews Author and Artist teams from the 5th Annual Art & Words Festival, at Gibsons Public Art Gallery, including:
Karen Webb, Artist & Paula Shadel
Marion Crook, Author & Michelle Nielsen, Artist
Margot Hallman, Artist & Peter Toews, Author
Serena J. Trinder, Artist & Rose Clarke, Artist & Author
M.J. Milne, Author & Doris Biddle, Artist
Catherine McNeil, Author and Musician & Stephen Murphy, Artist
Karen Webb, Author, Artist, Actor, and Educator interviews Artist and Author teams of the 5th Annual Art & Words Festival at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery, including:
Elaine Seepish & Michael Healey
Robin Lamarche & Paddy Meade
David Kipling & Landyn Funk
Lynda Manson & Kathleen Vance
Joan Fletcher & Lorraine Gallant
Del Lobo & Sheri Peters
Jo Forrest & Michael Gurney
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.
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.
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.
to Aug 18. Informed and inspired by the practice of observing the living world and the forces of nature, Lisa Blackwell’s exhibition Earthly Emergence features hand built sculptures created from clay. Blackwell views the biological imperative of growth and the mutual symbiotic relationships between flora, fauna, and fungi as sources of hopefulness and optimism; these primordial connections, represented by Blackwell’s biomorphic sculptures, have much to teach us about cooperation, altruism, and collaboration. An exhibition on display in the Main and Eve Smart Galleries July 23rd – August 18th.
Join us for the opening reception of this exhibition on Saturday, July 25th, 2pm – 4pm. All are welcome!
to Aug 18. An offering of confrontation, emotion, and dialogue on the seemingly inherent conflicting aspects, both internal and external, of the human persona. gsindlinger’s exhibition Untitled features mixed media pieces reflecting a fundamental process of resolution; a centralized need to complete or validate a significant emotional, psychological, or perceptive experience by creating a physical facsimile. These works represent an honest and vulnerable expression of difficult subjects, some reflecting less desirable elements of humanity and the human experience. An exhibition in Joe’s Lounge on display July 23rd – August 18th, 2026.
Join us for the Opening Reception on Saturday July 25th, 2pm – 4pm. All are welcome!
Join us for the Opening Reception of our newest exhibitions on Saturday, July 25th, 2pm – 4pm. All are welcome!
In the Main and Eve Smart Galleries, Janine Dunn’s exhibition let us mark the seasons in love features paintings illustrating the symbolic dimensions of celebration, abundance, and scarcity. Lisa Blackwell’s exhibition Earthly Emergence features ceramic sculptures informed and inspired by the practice of observing the living world and the forces of nature. In Joe’s Lounge, gsindlinger’s mixed media pieces are an offering of confrontation, emotion, and dialogue on the seemingly inherent conflicting aspects, both internal and external, of the human persona.
Join us for the Opening Reception of our Members’ Exhibition Present Tense! All are welcome to join us on Saturday June 27th, 2pm – 4pm, to celebrate the contributing artists.
Present Tense began with GPAG’s inception in 2003 and it’s still growing. Twenty-three years later we continue to invite all member artists, makers, and creatives to exhibit their work as a fundraiser for local artists and for GPAG. You will find works in all different mediums and styles, including paintings, drawings, prints, pottery, photography, textiles, sculpture, wood working, and much more. There is truly something for everyone!
Learn to bind your own books for journals, chapbooks, or art books with Stephen Murphy at the Art & Words Festival, Sunday, August 23, 10:30 to Noon.
Learn the essentials of bookbinding including: papergrain and folding, sewing, and forming signatures to create a basic pamphlet book suitable for journaling or art projects.
