FAMILY TIES: JUDY WAPP
CLAY WORK: WOOD-FIRED KILNS
SEA OF FACES: DEBORAH THOMPSON
KOOTENAY CO-OP RADIO CELEBRATES
MARYA FOLINSBEE ACTS OUT
EAST & WEST: ZEN WANG
I recently read a blog post on thestudiodirector. com that laid out five reasons why art is important in people’s lives and how it helps us flourish. We already know that art can be enriching, inspiring and just plain fun. Here are some other ideas to ponder:
1. It gives us a gathering place for society. Whether a gallery, museum, theatre, classroom or outdoor festival, art events get us out of the house and immerse us into stimulating environments. When we take the time to unplug from our busy lives and venture out into the world of the arts, we share a bond with our community and massage under-used neurons. And research has shown again and again that support for the cultural sector creates positive economic spinoffs, including job creation and growth in business and infrastructure.
2. When art creates a stir, it has the potential to spark healthy conversations.
Art can be a powerful tool for change and oh boy, do we ever need opportunities for healthy debate right now, instead of listening to people stand at opposite ends of the poles yelling, “I’m right!” “No, I’m right!” ad nauseum. Art appreciation is all about individual taste and interpretation, but expressing one’s point of view on the subject rarely devolves into a shouting match.
3. It provides historical context.
I wonder sometimes if the death of classical education has narrowed the perspective that we bring to our world view, and whether we are poorer for it. With Google and ChatGPT as our go-to resources, looking for information beyond what our server serves up can tax our time and skill. I’m not espousing remedial art history courses, but knowing what has gone before gives us knowledge that adds to how we speak, how we feel and how we see the world around us. So yes, maybe I am espousing remedial art history courses.
4. It helps develop soft skills.
Soft skills can be difficult to define, but they encompass intangibles like thinking creatively, adapting to change and collaborating well with others. These kinds of personal attributes aren’t necessarily teachable, but they can be enhanced by art activities that encourage students to try something new, express themselves emotionally and problem-solve through challenges.
5. It promotes expression and creativity.
When a toddler picks up a crayon, the world is their oyster. When a child hears music, they start dancing (unselfconsciously, I might add). And babies who are preverbal will sit still to be read to and sing without knowing the words. So let’s borrow a page from childhood and keep on dancing, singing, reading to each other and drawing on the walls.
Margaret Tessman, editorCorrections: In the fall/winter issue, there was an error in the article on page 4, “ALFA Guild Gallery Renovation.” The article states that “With only a project manager and one carpenter on the payroll...”
To clarify, ALFA Guild does not have a payroll as all trades are contracted and submit invoices for payment. Also, the project manager position is volunteer, as are those ALFA members who contribute time and effort to the renovation project. ARTiculate apologizes for any misstatement of how public grant funds are used.
Métis artist Tegan Whitesel was quoted in the fall/winter issue of ARTiculate as saying that “There’s not a lot of visibility in B.C. in terms of Métis art. The Métis like to say that they never crossed the Rockies.” She would like to clarify that remark to say that “There’s not a lot of visibility in B.C. in terms of Métis art. Some people say that Métis peoples never crossed the Rockies, but we have a vibrant nation here in B.C.” Thank you, Tegan.
ISSUE #45
Editor: Margaret Tessman
Contributors: Sarah Beauchamp, Eden DuPont, Trisha Elliott, Fernanda Fernandez, Susan Andrews Grace, Ian Johnston, Moe Lyons, Bill Macpherson, Greg Nesteroff, Margaret Tessman, Bessie Wapp.
On the Cover: Judy Wapp, Growth Company, paper collage
Design: Guy Hobbs
Proofreader: Anne Champagne
Project Management: Kallee Lins
Sales: Natasha Smith
ISSN #1709-2116
ARTiculate is produced in Nelson as a project of the West Kootenay Regional Arts Council: ph: 250-352-2421 email: articulate@wkartscouncil.com
When faced with the question, “What can we do about garbage?” two groups came up with the same answer: Turn it into something beautiful.
The second annual Haute Trash! fashion show, competition and exhibition will take place on June 15 at the Capitol Theatre in Nelson. And the Rossland Council for Arts & Culture (RCAC) will stage the Art of Adornment Wearable Art Show and Gala at the Rossland Miners’ Hall on May 11.
Performing artist Marilyn Hatfield was Nelson’s Cultural Ambassador for 2020, the epic year that we are all glad is behind us. She has had an interest in trash fashion since she lived in California in her 20s. “It was called Hot Trash back in the day,” she says. “It was so inspiring and insane what people came up with.”
Trash fashion is a way for people to exercise creativity while at the same time generating awareness of our relationship to garbage. Hatfield felt that the concept was a perfect fit for Nelson. “It’s such an artsy, forward-thinking community,” she says.
The first Haute Trash! event took place in May 2023. Just over 20 designers between the ages of 9 and 70 participated, with first and second prizes going to a young woman from Winlaw who crafted an entire party outfit from Whiskas cat food bags, along with a Jingle-
inspired dress.
Hatfield strived to make the event available to everyone in the community and was able to pull 30-plus prizes from local businesses. Haute Trash! is supported by the Trust, through the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance (CKCA) and Nelson District Arts Council. The Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery displayed four of the 2023 winning designs after the event and have agreed to do so this year as well.
The Art of Adornment debuted on International Women’s Day in March 2020, the brainchild of RCAC board members Elaine Wigle and Theshini Naicker. “Our goal was to use wearable art to inspire art and artists,” says RCAC executive director Meghan Hall. “We want to make wearable art a recognizable art form.”
Participants were presented with the challenge of using 80 percent recycled materials in their creations. The results ranged from full ensembles like a plastic bag ball gown, to accessories such as jewellery, shawls and a stick-and-leaf head piece.
The jury was able to view items ahead of the catwalk show to examine the designs and construction more closely. Accessories were placed on display on the second level of the Miners’ Hall, along with sketches and early design concepts of the ensemble outfits, which gave a feel for the time and layers that went into the creations.
Hall says that modelling the ensembles rather than having them on display really brought another level to the experience for the audience. “It’s like looking at clothes on a body rather than just on a rack,” she says. “The movement really tells the story of the piece.” RCAC will again partner with the VISAC Gallery in Trail to display a selection of the creations after the event. Artists are paid for their entries and the expanded 2024 prize categories include Best in Show, Eco, Youth and Technolog‘me.’ The Art of Adornment is supported by CKCA, the BC Arts Council and the Province through a Community Gaming grant.
For more information: hautetrash.ca, hautetrashnelson@gmail.com, rosslandartscouncil.com
by Greg Nesteroff
This year marks the centennial of one of the deadliest yet most mysterious disasters in local history.
On October 29, 1924, an explosion tore through a passenger rail car between Castlegar and Grand Forks, killing nine people, including Doukhobor leader Peter Vasilevich (Lordly) Verigin. Was it accidental or deliberate? There has never been a satisfactory answer, but theories abound.
By any measure, Verigin was an extraordinary figure, recognized in 2012 as a person of national historic significance. Despite being in Siberian exile, he helped organize the mass migration of Doukhobors to Canada from Russia at the end of the 19th century to escape persecution for their pacifist beliefs. Under his leadership, Doukhobors burned their arms and later flourished in communal life on the Prairies and in B.C.
To commemorate the anniversary of Verigin’s death, the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC) is hosting a monthly speaker series on topics ranging from his business acumen to his spiritual teachings.
Organizer Wendy Voykin says they initially discussed a weekend conference before deciding to stretch it out over the year, feeling it would be less daunting logistically and give more people the chance to take part.
“People can catch what they catch, and if you don’t catch every single piece, you’ve still benefited,” she says.
The free sessions are being held on the third Sunday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at the Brilliant Cultural Centre and broadcast live via Zoom. The lectures are also being recorded and will ultimately be made available online.
The first session in January drew about 75 people in person and another 100 online. In fact, Voykin said it was so popular that they ran out of online space, so not everyone was able to view it. That’s been remedied for the remaining sessions.
The session in October, closest to the actual anniversary of Verigin’s death, will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a memorial service, potluck luncheon and choral presentations by the Kootenay Psalmists and Family of Friends Grand Forks community choir. Verigin’s great-great grandson J.J. Verigin, now executive director of the USCC, will speak on his ancestor’s legacy.
Voykin says the schedule may be amended as the year progresses and she expects each session “will have its own energy, so this is definitely intended to appeal to as many different interests as possible.”
If you have something to share as part of the series, you can contact her at wvoykin@icloud.com.
Slocan Valley sculptor Lou Lynn is the recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. She recently attended the awards ceremony in Ottawa, along with other artists from the past three years who were presented with their medals. She sent the following report:
The 2023 Governor General’s Award in Visual & Media Arts medal ceremony was the biggest group they’d ever assembled, with 32 laureates from 2020–23. It was lovely to connect with friends from across the country, who I haven’t seen for several years due to COVID.
The three-day schedule was jam packed with activities and included: a visit to the Art Bank, where 17,000 pieces of art are housed and loaned to government and corporate offices; an opening at the National Gallery attended by some 700 people; and the medal ceremony at Rideau Hall, home of Governor General Mary Simon.
Congratulations, Lou!
by Margaret Tessman
Zen Wang is an artist trained in classical Chinese brush painting and a first-generation immigrant to Canada. His curiosity has led him to explore various forms of artistic expression including oil painting, graphic arts, sculpture and even chainsaw carving. “I want to tell stories through my art,” he says. Wang works mostly from his home studio in Bonnington, a small community snugged into the mountains between Nelson and Castlegar. How he came to nest there is a story of perseverance, creative growth and a promise kept.
Wang and his family left China as refugees in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.Their home city of Wuhan had become an important international port in the early 20th century, when European colonialism opened China to foreign markets. Prior to the creation of People’s Republic of China in 1949, Wang’s grandfather worked as a sculptor. Some of the Italian marble carvings he made for the tombstones of westerners who died while in China are still standing.
As a good Chinese son, Wang felt pressure to pursue a traditional career. He finished a degree in mechanical engineering and worked for years as a nuclear engineer in Ontario. But art was his first love and passion. In fact, it was part of his DNA. “I didn’t want to let my skills and talents go to waste,” he says. “And I wanted to honour my grandfather.”
The compromise that Wang came up with was inspired: He made a promise to his grandfather’s spirit that he would produce one piece of art a week. “It didn’t have to be a masterpiece; it could just be a sketch.” After straddling the two fields for a time, Wang worked up the courage to quit engineering and move to B.C. to attend the Vancouver Film School. “My boss thought I was out of my mind. He said, ‘Think about it and we’ll take the next step.’ I thought about it and moved across the country.”
Wang graduated as his class valedictorian in 2012 after a neardisaster. His backpack was stolen while shooting in East Vancouver, along with the only copy of his graduate short film, which was stored on a flash drive. “I thought, ‘Should I reshoot or call it quits?’” With the support of his classmates and $5,000 raised online, Wang reshot everything in two weeks. “I learned that you don’t let anything stand in your way,” he says. “Engineering has given me the ability to focus on tasks. That part of my brain is important in my art.”
Wang also learned that “Hollywood North is actually in Toronto.” He moved back to Ontario in 2015 and worked himself up to the position of art director for film and television until COVID shut down the industry. “I needed to pivot,” he says. “We had a three-year-old child at the time, and we decided we wanted to raise her in B.C.” He had heard about Nelson from a friend and after looking up the whereabouts of the city on a map, Wang and his partner sold their house, went on a road trip and bought a house in Nelson within a month. “We were meant to be here. The universal intelligence was at work.”
Working remotely meant that digital art became a new direction for Wang out of necessity. “When you are working for film, you need to create images quickly. Using a digital stylus means a fast turnaround and the ability to customize work for clients,” he says. Although digitization opened up a whole new world of commissions for television and film for him, Wang feels that AI has done a lot of damage to the industry. “Less manpower is needed. Once, it took seven people to produce a television episode; now it’s down to three. Those three could even be kids who know how to communicate with AI but the result is not necessarily high quality. It’s disheartening for me. I want to evolve to a place where I feel more fulfilled.”
That desire for evolution is taking many forms. Wang is currently collaborating on a graphic novel project with a local writer. The book has the working title Deep and will be illustrated with largely digital images with pen-and-ink details. The story follows a young boy on a hero’s journey of self-discovery as he grows up and explores different aspects of love. For the past three years, Wang has participated in Castlegar Sculpturewalk and he opened his studio for the Columbia Basin Culture Tour in 2021. He began teaching Zoom classes in calligraphy and Chinese art and cooking to a Learning in Retirement seniors’ group through Selkirk College in Nelson, and now teaches the popular courses in person. He is a lion dancer, one of a team of five that has performed at local schools “with a bathtub-size drum. I see my role as a bridge between cultures,” he says. Oh, and he is a certified volunteer firefighter. Wang says that his mission statement is “To reclaim peace and creativity through art.” It seems that his engineer’s brain, artistic talent and innate curiosity are meshing to take him down paths that would make his grandfather proud. zenartstudio.ca
Ever heard of a Rorschach test? That psychological tool that has you look at an inkblot and say what you see in it? My mom’s collages are a bit like that. They’re not as abstract as a Rorschach, but they’re often quite surreal and everyone sees something different.
In recent weeks I’ve had the opportunity to view almost all of my 84-year-old mother’s body of artwork in preparation for her retrospective exhibit at Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery (NMAG). We excavated over 100 framed works from storage, and many more unframed ones. Prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, photographs and, of course, the collages she’s best known for. What an experience! I’d not seen many pieces in decades. It was like being reunited with a huge gang of weird, old friends I hadn’t necessarily understood but over the years, through proximity, had grown to love.
The Hippo sculpture pictured is a very early undated work made of terrazzo, a friendly fixture in my childhood home. It may have been created during Judy’s art studies at Madison, Wisconsin, or when she returned to her hometown Minneapolis to complete a B.A., or perhaps later in New York City where she studied at the
Art Students League and met my birth father, another very gifted visual artist.
The untitled tissue paper collage pictured is dated 1962 and may have been created while she was in Europe on a MacDowell Fellowship. This travel opportunity had a profound effect on her professional practice, and she spoke of it with great appreciation. Most impactful was her time with a community of artists on the then sleepy island of Ibiza.
Because the fellowship played such a pivotal role in Judy’s artistic development, the family has decided to create a bursary to support local artists to expand their horizons. To finance the bursary, a number of her artworks will be made available for purchase in future. To receive information on the sale of artworks or to donate to the bursary please contact wappaward24@gmail.com.
My mother has called the Kootenays home since 1971. When she arrived in B.C. with me, my brother and my stepfather, she took up black and white photography and produced many beautiful images of the back-to-the-land life of my childhood, but it was when she started combining her photos with found imagery that she fell in love with a practice that would hold her imagination for many years to come.
With a small pair of very sharp scissors in hand she’d spend hours carefully freeing images from their original contexts, often sophisticated, seductive advertising. Old issues of Life magazine were especially prized for their large format and diverse subject matter.
As she cut out images, she kept a mental inventory of those already gathered in stacks of cardboard beer trays, and waited for the exciting spark of resonance that triggered a search through the image bank for a specific image perhaps not seen in weeks or months. Once found, the playful composition process began: juxtaposing, rearranging, trying others, standing back, squinting, getting a cup of tea. Weighing the balance of colour, shape, line and content.
Of her work Judy says, “I use images from the mass media to give a second look at what surrounds us every day.” She never shied away from critiquing social, cultural, political and economic norms, balancing weighty subjects with a healthy dose of humour.
Pictured is an early black and white collage titled Dr. Know (1985), a good example of her appetite for the surreal and eye for texture. Handed Down (1988) shows the move to using colour in her collage work, and the almost magical power of juxtaposition.
Some of her works incorporate family photos, recalling important life events, stories and themes. Growth Company (on the cover, date unknown) shows little Judy with a favourite uncle and images from The Wizard of Oz. That beloved film was released in 1939, the year Judy was born. Thanks to its charming star Judy Garland, my mother and many other babies born that year were named Judy.
Other pieces reflect a deep love and wide-ranging taste in music. With Lucy Methuen, Judy co-hosted Kootenay Co-op Radio’s
“Straight No Chaser” jazz radio program for many years, and the colourful Fame Flower (1995) pictured reflects her musical passion. It also speaks to an intimate teenage encounter with the King of Rock and Roll. (To hear her tell this hilarious and epic story look for the video monitor in the NMAG exhibit.)
You may be able to see that the background of Fame Flower is a gameboard. This piece is an example of her series in which found gameboards’ colourful geometric patterns serve as the compositional starting point.
While maintaining a steady output of visual artwork, Judy was also part of a writing group for years. Her soap opera, Another Valley, produced in Nelson with an impressive cast and crew of local talent, can be found on YouTube and her poem “Ibiza” appears in Bread and Bones, an anthology of prose and verse (Chthonic Press).
If you’re a long-time resident of the Kootenays you might recall a curious outdoor art project involving neck ties on telephone poles south of Toad Rock. Many myths circulated as to the origin story of this enigmatic work, but you can get the real story at the exhibition from a CBC program called On the Road that will screen on a monitor.
To best experience the exhibition, everyone is invited to wear a favourite ugly tie. Who knows what you’ll see in my mother’s strange and beloved work!
Judy Wapp: “visuALchemy,” March 23 to June 22, Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery, 502 Vernon St., nelsonmuseum.ca.
Winlaw-based Marya Folinsbee has been writing, performing and teaching theatre in the Kootenays for the past decade. A creative dynamic duo was formed when she met Martina Avis working with an amateur community production company, the Valley Gems. The pair now run Material Theatre (materialtheatre.ca), an emergent rural theatre company where they create and self-produce both original and existing work. I caught up with Marya for a phone chat to get up to speed on her inspiration and her latest theatrical endeavours.
Q: What was your earliest experience with acting, writing or theatre?
There are so many early theatre memories for me. My earliest most memorable theatre experience was my wonderful grade five teachers having my class study and perform Macbeth. I played Lady Macbeth and I remember being amazed at how easily the language moved through me, even though it was so strange.
Q: Do you feel more comfortable writing, performing or teaching?
I find performing the easiest—the “flowiest.” Often, I don’t even remember what happens onstage, but am also so open, present with myself, with the audience, it’s just so fun. I’m very comfortable there—I’ve never really experienced stage fright. I love what happens in writing, but it’s incredibly agonizing and requires so much more discipline and self-confidence than acting does for me. Teaching and facilitating theatre for community is fun and joyful but also not as natural a state for me as performance.
Q: What do you feel is your greatest achievement in your field?
I’m not sure I think about it that way.... Theatre is so ephemeral, and every project is juicy and rich and is right for its time. This summer will be the fourth season I take a self-written show to a Canadian Fringe Festival, which is a delight—challenging, rigorous, super fun, inspiring wild ride of indie, self-produced works. My first solo show, Domesticated Disputes, also known as Immaculate, is a
beloved of mine, that was really rooted in the time of life I was in as a new mom.
The show I co-created with my friend and artistic partner Martina Avis, Be/Longing, was an incredible learning experience: the highs and lows of art making; trusting the process; overcoming self-doubt; finding delight and creative ways to develop ideas. The achievement was actually more in the process, at least for me, though the reception by audiences around the region was super-gratifying and helped me believe I could commit to an artist’s life.
Q: How far are you into the writing of your two current plays, and how would you describe them both?
I am about to go to a weeklong residency to finish The Mosquitos, which is the full-length, kind of absurdist play I’m working on right now. I’m hoping to have it ready to workshop with actors by April. It’s exploring questions like how to get along with others when we don’t even seem to exist in the same version of reality anymore; how to reckon with the desire to escape the world as it is; and what it means to be an artist when you don’t have anything to say. It’s been a doozy of a process to write, especially in the shifting and bizarre news cycle of the twenty-twenties, but I’m really grateful for the long germination process I’ve had with this piece, and excited to see it on its feet soon.
PLAY is a short, playful clown show about performing—what is (and is not) expected of actors when they get onstage. I’m also working on a new show with my partner Aaron Pickett, called Buttons & Pockets It’s a TYA show, which stands for Theatre for Young Audiences, and it’s about the fabric of the universe, how we came to be, and the magical mysteries of space/time.
Q: What was your favourite performance role and why?
I couldn’t choose, they’ve all meant such different and special things to me. Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream helped me rediscover my love of clowning. Constance in Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) was an absolute delight—such wonderful language [the play is by Ann-Marie MacDonald], such fun physical comedy, and such a smart, flawed, hilarious heroine. Evelyn, who is my character in Immaculate, is close to my heart because she is such a projection of my own insecurities, melodramas and divine impulses, especially in early motherhood—she’s just such a deep and true part
of me, even though that’s kind of embarrassing to say. She’s both so incredibly uptight and embarrassingly wild. Emma Goldman is an anarchist idol of mine, and so getting to speak her powerful words was rad.
Q: Are there reoccurring themes in plays you have written? If so, which ones and why?
Wildness and civilization. Existential dread. The divinity of ordinary life. Women, motherhood, domestic labour. Instinct and social conditioning.
Q: Who do you look to for inspiration for your work?
I look everywhere. I love the old absurdists of the mid-nineteenth century. I love the contemporary clown community in Canada and around the world, and many of the theorists and teachers who are contributing to that medium. I loved Naomi Klein’s most recent book, Doppleganger, and am finding its themes appearing in my work lately. Patricia Lockwood, Lauren Groff, Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett are favourite authors. Inspiration is everywhere!
Marya will host a Country Road Theatre Performance and Creation Lab at the Vallican Whole Community Centre in Winlaw from September 19-22. The lab will be a four-day, artist-focused series of performances, workshops, masterclasses, discussions and community-networking events. Created for performers, playwrights, directors, presenters, producers and practitioners, this festival will aim to ignite contemporary artistic development, while also fostering local connection and collaboration. More details will be firming up on the Vallican Whole website throughout the spring, vallicanwhole.com.
Marya’s theatrical work has been supported by the Trust, through the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance; Canada Council for the Arts; the Osprey Foundation; BC Arts Council; and ArtStarts.
Heritage
Speaker Series: History of Creston Valley & Kootenay Lake
Commemorating 100 years since Creston was incorporated
Creston Library, 531–16 Ave. S., Creston
Creston Community Recreation Centre, 312–19 Ave. N., Creston 778-908-4018
luannea@telus.net
crestonlibrary.com
Art
Judy Wapp: visuALchemy
March 23–June 22, 2024
PULP
Apr. 6–July 27, 2024
Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery, 502 Vernon St., Nelson 250-352-9813
info@nelsonmuseum.ca
nelsonmuseum.ca/exhibitions/judy-wappvisualchemy
Art
Art Gallery Kimberley Exhibitions
(Rob Toller, Jenny Rae Bateman, Sabrina Curtis, Neal Panton, Alison Bjorkman, Michele Doucette, Darlene Purnell, Tracey Halladay)
Apr. 4–Sept. 29, 2024
Art Gallery Kimberley, 167 Deer Park Ave., Kimberley 250-432-9225
info@artgallerykimberley.com
artgallerykimberley.com
Music/Art
Spotlight: Live Music Series
Apr. 4, 2024 launch (monthly on the first Thursday)
Exhibitions
(Peggy Black, Tammy Marcer, Alexandra Kozak, Steve Cho, Abby Wilson)
Apr. 25–Sept. 26, 2024
Fernie Arts Station, 601–1 Ave., Fernie 250-423-4842
info@theartsstation.com
theartsstation.com/events/#!calendar/r
Market
Creston Valley Farmers’ Market
Every Saturday, Apr. 27–Oct. 28, 2024
New: Market Park, behind the visitor centre, Creston
farmersmarket@cvfac.ca cvfac.ca
Market
Spring Kootenay Artisan Fair
May 4, 2024
Prestige Lakeside Resort, 701 Lakeside Dr., Nelson
Harvest Market Kootenay Artisan Fair
Sept. 1, 2024
Lakeside Park, Nelson 250-505-5444 aviva@kootenayartisanfair.com kootenayartisanfair.com
Art
Pottery, Sculpture Workshops & Summer Schools
May 4 & 5, July 8–12, Aug. 5–9, Aug. 30–
Sept. 1, 2024
Eversfield Ceramics, 1522 Airport Rd., Creston 403-968-1657 daviddbarnes9@aol.com eversfieldceramics.com
Art
Studio Connexion Art Exhibition Series (Stéphanie Gauvin, Maureen Howard, Linda Cyrenne, Charlene Duncan, Dale Byhre, Karen Millard)
May 10–Sept. 7, 2024
Studio Connexion, 203–5 Ave. NW, Nakusp 250-265-8888 studioconnexion@telus.net studioconnexiongallery.com
Art
Castlegar Arts Council: Call for Fall Workshop Proposals
Submission deadline: May 31, 2024 castlegararts@gmail.com castlegararts.com
Art
Castlegar Art Walk
June 7–Sept. 27, 2024
Various locations, Castlegar 250-608-1642
castlegararts@gmail.com castlegararts.square.site
Art
Selkirk Weavers & Spinners Studio & Gift Shop
Opening June 8, 2024
Saturdays in June; Wed.–Sat. from July–Sept. 2024
Doukhobor Discovery Centre, 112 Heritage Way, Castlegar 250-231-4643
selkirkweavers@gmail.com
Fcbk & Insta: Selkirk Weavers & Spinners Guild
Art
ArtWalk Nelson
Openings June 29 & July 7; closes Sept. 7, 2024
Various locations, downtown Nelson ndac.ca/nelson-artwalk
Art
Open Residency Call: Summer 2024
July 1–Oct. 1, 2024
The Narrows Art Retreat, 721 Sproat Dr., Nelson
250-505-9035 thenarrowsartistretreat@gmail.com thenarrowsbc.com/residencies-retreats
Music
Wednesday Socials
Every Wednesday evening all summer Station Square, downtown Fernie 250-423-4842
info@theartsstation.com theartsstation.com/events/#!calendar/r
Art
Sketchers in the Wild Youth Art Camps
July 8–12 & Aug 12–16, 2024
Katherine Russell Glass Studio, 118 Cariboo Dr., Elkford
250-665-8005
k.russell.glass@outlook.com
katherinerussell.ca/11810960-workshops
Performance/Event
Capitol Theatre Nelson
Disney’s The Little Mermaid
July 25–28, 2024
Launch Gala
Sept. 17, 2024
2024 Season
(including Ballet Kelowna, Bear Grease) Year-round
Capitol Theatre, 421 Victoria St., Nelson 250-352-6363
boxoffice@capitoltheatre.ca capitoltheatre.ca
Art
Barbara Brown: Sylvan Reflections Forest Paintings
Aug. 1–Sept. 7, 2024
Kootenay Gallery, 120 Heritage Way, Castlegar
250-365-3337
ravencreations@uniserve.com
kootenaygallery.com/barbarabrownart.com
April
Art
Yoga & Intentional Art for SelfExpression
Apr. 12, 2024
For-rest Retreat, 8960 Nelson Nelway Hwy., Salmo
info@for-rest.ca for-rest.ca/soul-sessions
Art
Weave a Portrait with Carl Stewart
Apr. 15 & 16, 2024
Fernie Arts Station, 601–1st Ave., Fernie 250-423-6473
vallance@telus.net
Writing
Writing Workshops & Reading Series: Corinna Chong & Matt Rader
May 2 & 3, 2024
Oxygen Art Centre, 3-320 Vernon St. (alleyway entrance), Nelson 250-551-6329
info@oxygenartcentre.org
oxygenartcentre.org
Fashion
Art of Adornment Wearable Art
Fashion Show & Exhibition
May 11, 2024
Rossland Miners’ Union Hall, 1765 Columbia Ave., Rossland 250-512-9742
performance.rcac@gmail.com rosslandartscouncil.com
Theatre
Black Productions Presents: Legally Blonde
May 23–26, 2024
Capitol Theatre, 421 Victoria St., Nelson facebook.com/blackproductionsnelson
Writing
Tom Wayman Book Launch
(The Road to Appledore, or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place; How Can You Live Here?)
May 29, 2024
Nelson Public Library, 602 Stanley St., Nelson 250-352-6333
appledor@netidea.com tomwayman.com/news
Event
Langham 50th Anniversary Gala
June 6–8, 2024
The Langham, 447 A Ave., Kaslo langham@netidea.com thelangham.ca
Music
Twin Rivers Community Choir: Spring Concerts
June 7 & 8, 2024
Brilliant Cultural Centre, 1876 Brilliant Rd., Castlegar
250-364-8346 trcchoir@gmail.com twinriverschoir.com/events
Event
9th Annual BC Yukon Peony Show
June 14 & 15, 2024
Sandman Hotel, 1944 Columbia Ave., Castlegar
250-365-1653
darlene@kalawsky.com facebook.com
Fashion/Art
2nd Annual Haute Trash! Trash Fashion Competition & Art Exhibition
June 15, 2024
Capitol Theatre, 421 Victoria St., Nelson hautetrashnelson@gmail.com hautetrash.ca
Event
18th Annual Castlegar Garden & Quilt Tour
June 16, 2024
Castlegar & area 250-365-1653
darlene@kalawsky.com
Fcbk: Castlegar Garden Club
Festival
A Country Road Rural Theatre
Performance & Creation Lab
July 18–21, 2024
Vallican Whole Community Centre, 3762 Little Slocan South Rd., Winlaw 250-226-7311 info@vallicanwhole.com vallicanwhole.com
Festival
Nelson International Mural Festival
Aug. 9–11, 2024
Nelson & District Chamber of Commerce Parking Lot, 91 Baker St., Nelson nelsonmuralfest.ca
Festival
Flats Fest Music Festival
Aug. 16 & 17, 2024
8911 Dunn St., Canal Flats flatsfestcontact@gmail.com flatsfest.ca
Festival
Nelson PRIDE 2024
Aug. 25–Sept. 2, 2024
Various locations, Nelson info@nelsonpride.ca nelsonpride.ca
Festival
Elephant Mountain Lit Fest
Sept. 12–15, 2024
Various locations, Nelson elephantmountainliteraryfest@gmail.com emlfestival.com
CULTURAL SOCIETY
Galleries & Museum Hours
Mondays 1 pm – 4 pm Galleries & Museum
Tuesdays 9 am – 3 pm Museum Only
Wednesdays 9 am – 3 pm Museum Only
Thursdays 9 am – 3 pm Museum Only
Fridays 1 pm – 4 pm Galleries & Museum
Saturdays 1 pm – 4 pm Galleries & Museum
Sundays 1 pm – 4 pm Galleries & Museum
The Langham is a thriving Arts & Culture Centre with two public art galleries, a museum, and an active theatre presenting events throughout the year.
Check out our website for upcoming shows:
TheLangham.ca
2024 marks the 50th Anniversary of The Langham Cultural Society
This breakthrough exhibition by Deborah Thompson, Nelson’s Cultural Ambassador for 2024, will occupy both the Reid Room and the West Gallery at Grand Forks Gallery 2 from May 11 to
August 3. The boat that is not a boat refers to bodies transporting souls through life in constellations of elaborately drawn and cut paper panels. The exhibition serves as an ark through floods of consciousness, instinct, myth, poetry and history. It takes you through a sea of faces to shores where hair metamorphoses into upright or limp horns, and hands may be claws. Metaphysical
playfulness abounds in these works devoid of speciesism. “Boat Without a Boat” contains speculative narratives about characters who feature in two stop-motion animation videos, a new venture for Thompson. This change in direction began when Naomi Potter, director/curator of the Esker Foundation in Calgary, paid her a studio visit about six years ago. Upon seeing one of the constellations, Potter suggested that Thompson try stop-motion animation, a filmmaking technique that physically manipulates objects in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they appear to exhibit motion or change when played back.
Thompson immediately recognized stop motion as her next step. She studied the work of contemporary South African artist, William Kentridge, whose only tools are charcoal and a camera. Kentridge’s drawing, erasure and photography make cinematic lyric meditations on issues such as apartheid, free-market capitalism and class inequity. The more Thompson looked at Kentridge the more she knew she wanted to draw cinematic meditations about transformation, her perennial subject.
With the assistance of a Canada Council Research and Creation grant in 2021, Thompson hired Nelson filmmaker Brian Lye to mentor her in the basics of camera work, animation software and video editing. He guided her purchase of camera, monitor, Bluetooth remote, laptop with animation software, editing programs and lights. She reorganized her studio to accommodate new equipment, mounting a camera on the ceiling over an animation table. She experimented until she had the right kind of low light to film. She learned the painstaking labour of moving drawn figures, some with hinged arms and legs, through narrative on film. As well, the large, fragile constellations of intricate cut-paper drawings necessitated new methods of storage. Thompson’s drawing process, however, remained the same as ever.
may be single, double (diptych) or triple (triptych), with some as wide as three metres, her largest works to date.
Thompson is known for her painting of human and other animals floating in the picture plane. Stop-motion animation introduced the necessity of a time horizon and narrative: she needed to know why these characters were moving, what they were moving toward and what they wanted, all critical elements in storytelling. The works have a figure-landscape relationship, she says, in which the land is a body/boat interacting with the figure’s body/boat. Graphite, oil bar, chalk and ink drawings on heavy, coloured papers lend a sombre and monochromatic palette, as opposed to the high-key colour in her paintings. She says: “It was like reducing the volume of the horns and allowing the violins to be heard.”
The grant allowed Thompson to hire Nelson’s world-renowned Graham Tracey for the musical score and other recording. She herself did the diegetic sound (any sound that comes from the world of the video, such as breathing). The video Midden features a poem by Nelson poet Eimear Laffan, read by her.
Ritual (10 minutes, 28 seconds) plays in the West Gallery, a room meant just for video. It features a blue angel and three psychopomps or otherworld guides to cosmic existence. Midden (3 minutes) shows in the large Reid Room. It shows transformation without end: protagonist’s body cycles from animal to plant to reptile aided by a flood and lichen. Death makes room for life.
Thompson begins drawing by finding faces that intrigue her in magazines, newspapers and screenshots on the news. She draws a face over and over until it begins to look back at her and no longer remains the face she began with. She then starts the process of cutting and piecing to add a figure and landscape to tell a story, sometimes by camera. Some faces question, glare or squint; the face in the panel Spectral Companions looks blissful. In the video Ritual, a blue angel appears to be asleep while flapping wings/arms. More faces and drawn components spread across the wall as she cuts into the picture plane, adding many interlocking layers of narrative and a landscape for the figure. Human gesture, particularly of the hand, reverberates in the videos. Constellations
In my studio visit/interview with Thompson she mentioned that her drawing is inspired by the underdrawing of unfinished paintings by Michelangelo of androgynous figures. For example, The Entombment depicts John the Evangelist and a woman as they carry Jesus up a staircase to the sepulchre. Simon of Arimathea, who lent them the tomb, stands in the background. On the right side of the picture is space for a woman not yet painted, maybe one of the Marys. Thompson admires the underdrawing of bodies, but I could see how the absent figure would also fire her imagination. The Entombment is a religious painting and in many ways Thompson’s constellations and videos also honour the numinous or holy and mysterious. Perhaps Michelangelo’s missing figure has been travelling through the ether and the centuries to appear as a maternal face looking out at the viewer, asking What have you done? or Where am I supposed to be? or What happened? “Boat Without a Boat” would make room in its ark for Michelangelo’s unfinished woman.
Imagine this: figures from unfinished paintings pose in Thompson’s studio, enjoying her gracious hospitality, sipping tea, looking out at her. Meanwhile, an invisible queue of souls in the alley behind her studio wait for auditions.
debthompson.ca, gallery2grandforks.ca
Think about it. A quarter century is a long time. Now, consider starting a local radio station from scratch, growing it continuously while embracing the town (now small city) and its residents fully, expanding to service a region and in the process moving not once, not twice, but five times. Absolutely, that’s cause for some well-deserved pats on the back.
Which is exactly what Kootenay Co-op Radio (KCR) intends to do this year if all goes as planned. And rest assured, the milestone will be celebrated. Marked with more than a desultory cake with a plastic 25 in the middle, certainement. This celebration will be ongoing throughout the year—fun and inclusive.
After all, it’s quite the accomplishment.
“The seed of the idea started even earlier than twenty-five years ago,” says co-founder, former station manager and current programmer Zoë Creighton. “A bunch of us thought a local radio station would act as a catalyst for the community, so we took the bull by the horns and said, ‘Let’s make it happen!’ We definitely didn’t know the magnitude of our undertaking, which was probably a good thing.”
Early pioneers beside Creighton included Terry Brennan, Tara Cunningham and Anne DeGrace. Getting a licence from the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was a struggle unto itself. The volunteers found creative ways to maintain momentum, “trialling” their broadcasts prior to the licence being formally granted.
“We started out in 1999 in the station manor, that lovely Victorian home on the northwest corner of Vernon and Baker,” said Creighton. “Next move—and you can imagine what moving a radio station with its studios, equipment and the like entails—was to the building that
now houses the Yellow Deli. Then to the Jam Factory, then to the corner brick building at Front and Hall.
“The running joke was that we kept creeping eastward but always near the tracks. Finally, we purchased our present location through the generosity of members who set up Friends of Kootenay Coop Radio to creatively finance the deal. We renovated the upstairs completely and,” she laughs, “here is where we intend to stay!”
It is indeed a cosy and welcoming space. Improvements continue to be undertaken though. Currently, the downstairs is being renovated to create a live performance venue for events that are brought in by KCR members—indigenous drumming, storytelling, spoken word, poetry/story slams—in short, anything that brings people together and fosters inclusivity.
Being part of the community and welcoming residents to participate has been a long-standing raison d’être for KCR. It has always been member-owned and member-operated, relying heavily on volunteers and support from the greater community to broadcast 24/7, 365 days of the year.
Indeed, there are only three paid staff members: operations & programming manager Ed Zych; advertising & sponsorship coordinator Amélie Saquet-Davidson; and administrator Paula Shandro. Nearly 100 volunteers keep the station eclectic, vibrant and humming.
Some of the program hosts have been with KCR since the beginning; being connected with and attuned to the needs of community organizations and their clientele is extremely important to all involved.
“Our on-air folks come from all walks of life,” says Saquet-Davidson with evident pride. “We have students from the high school, seniors,
people with disabilities, artists. Our intent is to work collaboratively with organizations and be reflective of the uniqueness of the West Kootenay communities we call home.”
Another palpable cause for celebration this year is the recent partnership with internet service provider Columbia Wireless, allowing KCR to broadcast from a tower high up on Elephant Mountain. Zych was instrumental in making this project a reality and enthuses over the resulting technical improvement.
“Now listeners in the southwest as well as in the Slocan Valley can tune in, thanks to the new transmitter. We’ve even heard from listeners in the Christina Lake area. It has really expanded our audience, something we’re always trying to do. Eventually, the hope is that every West Kootenay resident can tune in to us.”
Digital outreach numbers are impressive. Although thousands of
online followers are currently blocked due to Meta’s response to Bill C-18, KCR connects with 2,000 newsletter subscribers and averages 4,000 website visits monthly. With a legion of devotedly loyal listeners, KCR is the pulse of the West Kootenay.
It’s something they take pride in being, and the intent is to mark the anniversary and collective accomplishments with listener/ community-focused events. The scope of the events is dependent on funding approval but here are some that are in the works:
• A book project celebrating the station’s highlights over the years and featuring a raft of Fred Rosenberg photos;
• Collectors’ item design work—riffing on the 25th anniversary— that will grace merchandise available for purchase;
• An invitation for residents to submit their thoughts on why a community radio station is personally important. The testimonials will be posted on KCR’s website;
• A series of monthly interactions for patrons and programmers in local pubs/cafés;
• A series of live concerts in the downstairs space and, fingers crossed, a one-time concert at a larger venue.
So, renew your membership, support this most worthy operation in every way and celebrate a quarter century of music, information, culture and inclusivity from a revered local icon.
Kootenay Co-op Radio, 308A Hall St., Nelson, kootenaycoopradio.com
93.5 FM Nelson, 101.5 FM Lower Slocan Valley/Castlegar, 107.5 FM New Denver/Silverton, 96.5 FM Crawford Bay/North Kootenay Lake
Come and experience the Kootenay’s highest quality selection of Pottery, Jewelry, Paintings Clothing & Textiles, Metal work, Sculptures, Furniture, Lighting, Glassware, Bath & Body products, Children’s items, Leather goods, and so much more!
378 Baker st, Nelson, B.C
250-352-3006
While living a life dedicated to dreaming in the forest and capturing its essence, Barbara Brown is about to have another dream come true: showing her work at the Kootenay Gallery in Castlegar from August 1 to September 7. Part of this exhibition will include a book and film launch on Thursday evening, August 8.
“I didn’t even let myself really hope for it,” she says. “And then when I got it, I didn’t realize how much this meant to me!”
The show will consist of 32 paintings from volumes I and II of her book, Sylvan Reflections: Wanderings, Paintings & Ponderings from the Forest. During the exhibition she will launch volume II and premiere her new film, On Beauty as We Come to It in the Forest, co-produced with videographer Isaac Ramana Carter, who also collaborated on her first film.
Watching the films, you begin to grasp how the forest and Brown’s art are interwoven, and why she is compelled to speak about this connection. The films are essentially meditations, and feature exquisite musical soundtracks especially created for her by New Denver’s Noel Fudge.
When asked why she felt the need to create another volume of her book and a second film, she laughs. “I wasn’t finished yet. I had more paintings I had to create and share. I still had a lot to say. I guess I’ve been feeling like this new film is kind of my own personal TED talk.”
From her home deep in the forest of the Slocan Valley, Brown celebrates the Kootenays, sharing its beauty and peace with the rest of the world. She has spent 25 years walking daily in the forest where she lives, immersed in the essential green life she finds there, endlessly inspired by her surroundings. Out of this daily practice emerge transcendent paintings and writings. She takes in the essence of what is there and breathes it out onto her canvases, evoking both the natural beauty and the mystical qualities that give her life and her work meaning. With her unique vision she transforms the world around her into something very like prayer—with some whimsy thrown in.
“In every one of my forest paintings I incorporate an otherworldly aspect,” she says. “I conjure up a symbolism with bits of mysticism or simple evocative geometry.” Her choice to put all this together between the covers of her books makes this experience available over and over to nature lovers and seekers of inner peace.
As a multimedia artist, Brown uses oil paintings, film and writing to express her creative vision. She first captures her images with her camera, and then takes them into her studio to make them hers.
She has toured throughout the Kootenays and beyond, showing her paintings, speaking about nature connection and selling her book and cards. Somewhat to her surprise, this process has proved to be deeply satisfying.
Many of us first encountered Brown when she was producing popular tourist maps of the West Kootenay. This endeavour supported her for 20 years. Then, about 12 years ago, she realized she was finding it just not creative enough. She knew she had to take a leap of faith and decided “to reinvent myself as the artist I needed to find out if I could be. I felt like I was jumping off a cliff ... and I was going to need to learn how to fly.”
She signed up for Nelson’s ArtWalk, knowing a deadline would compel her to create something, not really knowing what that would be. “I tried everything,” she says. “Watercolours, pastels, oils, colour combinations, even a little abstract. What I really wanted was a ‘project,’ something I could sink my teeth into. I asked myself, ‘What is it I love the most?’ The answer was, I love walking in the forest, spending time in the forest.” This was the beginning of the journey that has brought her to where she is today.
From her home cabin and studio in the woods, she has developed a multimedia world focused on her love of the forest. Her web page features detailed descriptions of her work and examples of her writing, as well as videos both informative and inspirational. The site has links to her Etsy shop where her work can be accessed. It also contains her original film (and soon the new one). Every couple of months she distributes and publishes a newsletter, News from the Forest.
Brown’s work has also received international recognition, being featured on Manhattan Arts International (manhattanarts.com) and The Healing Power of Art & Artists (healing-power-of-art.org).
Renée Phillips, the curator of these online galleries, describes her work: “Barbara Brown satisfies our longing to feel connected with nature. She brings to life the magic of the forest and all the splendor it beholds.… She captures the essence of the woodland as her love for it shines through.”
barbarabrownart.com, Facebook: barbarabrownartist/
by Eden DuPont
The soft crackling of kindling, paired with flickering wisps of flame and smoke, barely spirited enough to generate any warmth, gently marks the start of a process that is centuries old. A towering mortarless chimney is awakened and slowly begins to lure and draw as it is aptly designed to do. Between lies a cold chamber of unfired clay forms, neatly stacked and positioned floor to ceiling, patiently awaiting transformation.
The saying goes, “As long as there have been people, there have been potters.” Ever since humans first began to understand how fire
could be used to harden clay forms into useful objects, and for at least a few thousand years, wood was used as the principal fuel for firing pottery. At some point in history, it was discovered that wood ash will melt and affect the clay to produce subtle and beautiful surfaces on the work during the firing process.
Ancient Japanese, Korean and Chinese cultures are most notably venerated for the origins of the kiln technology that could fire and surface ceramics to 1,300 degrees Celsius with wood. It is also where traditions became honoured and the aesthetic propagated through rituals, such as the tea ceremony. These cultures continued to celebrate the aesthetic of wood-fired ceramics long after many
other cultures moved towards more efficient technologies such as electricity and natural gas.
Wood firing, simply put, is just not an efficient or cost-effective process. Each firing requires many, many hours of labour, months in advance of a firing, to collect, chop and stack multiple cords of wood as the wood must first be dry and cured. The weeks leading up to a firing are spent preparing the kiln: grinding and washing shelves; organizing kiln furniture; mixing wadding refractory; and vacuuming the kiln out to remove any residual ash or dust from previous firings. The loading can take several hours, sometimes days, of concentrated effort to carefully stilt and place each piece into the kiln. Even the door must be fully bricked up before the fire can be lit. The description of this dutiful preparation doesn’t even account for the significant hours required to make the pots that will be fired!
Once the first match is finally struck, a small fire will grow and build over continuous days of careful stoking and kiln tending. As the temperatures rise and the kiln become saturated with flame, the wood itself will become the glaze. At these extremely high temperatures, molten ash will run, drip and layer the pots with this ash glaze. It takes multiple people to fire a wood kiln, as the stoking and observance is constant from start to finish.
There are fewer than 60 wood kilns across Canada. With a smattering in almost every province, some can still be found at educational institutions and artist-run centres, but more are privately owned and communally fired by a small group of ceramic artists. The wherewithal and expertise required to build a wood kiln
There’s more than one Kootenay connection to The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down, which began airing on CBC Television in February. Ten contestants from across the country were chosen to compete in the reality series, with the winner scooping the title of Canada’s best potter.
Alice Gibson, originally from Penticton, graduated from the ceramics program at Kootenay Studio Arts (KSA) at Selkirk College in 2023. She applied to be a contestant and after a Zoom call with the series producers and a formal audition in Toronto, she made the cut.
“Not only was I wrapping up a wonderful year at Selkirk College with so many amazing people, but I was now going to embark on this insane journey,” she said in an interview with Selkirk College.
Robin DuPont is a Winlaw ceramist, KSA instructor and one of Gibson’s mentors. He was hired as the ceramics consultant for the series, to ensure authenticity. DuPont also served as the City of Nelson’s 2023 Cultural Ambassador.
Gibson and her fellow contestants spent two months in late summer filming in a studio on Vancouver’s Granville Island. Each week, the potters step up to the wheel and take on creative challenges to test their skill and technique.
“The cast is really high level. I’m so proud of Alice and all the competitors,” says DuPont.
is also extremely limited, so to call wood firing a niche segment of the contemporary ceramics scene is even an overstatement.
It seems a curiosity then, that there exists an inordinately large cluster of wood kilns right here in the Slocan Valley. In fact, there are currently six active wood kilns within a short, 50-kilometre stretch of this picturesque and remote segment of the province. The web of connections and influences that explain this anomaly present intriguing stories.
A two-chamber catenary arch kiln named Bhava Ultrea has a splendid home on the property of full-time studio potter and retired ceramics instructor Pamela Nagley Stevenson in Appledale. Built in 2008, this kiln is the result of a decades-long shared dream of Stevenson and fellow ceramic artist Susanne Ashmore, who initially met in Banff in the 1980s where the process of wood firing was first impressed upon them. Before Bhava, Kibriya stood—a much smaller single-chamber 16-cubic-foot kiln that underwent 24 firings before being dismantled to contribute recycled refractory into the larger kiln.
A short distance south of Winlaw, Robin DuPont maintains a compound of atmospheric kilns. Lily (2005), Autumn (2009), Lucinda (2014) and Yorel (2016) were all designed and built collaboratively, each producing unique surface qualities. DuPont completed his MFA from Utah State University, a North American mecca of atmospheric kiln research, and has been recognized internationally for his contributions to the genre of atmospheric firing in the last 25 years, for his surface development and kiln building expertise.
Just down the highway in Passmore, potter and mason Cam Stewart has built a double bourry box, single-chamber wood/soda kiln. Stewart contributed significantly to the building of Stevenson’s kiln before designing and constructing his own kiln, which he named Jean (2021). At the south end of the valley in Krestova, Kim Chernoff has completed the 13th firing of her catenary arch, cross-draft, fast-fire kiln, which she named Dona Adeleida (2019). These potters have carefully chosen a name for each of their kilns, just as they thoughtfully invite people to join the effort to conscientiously tend to the kilns that assert their own voice and personality into every firing. Each of these valley wood kilns has its own unique cycle and rhythm; to even begin to understand how the rich, organic wood ash surfaces on the pots are created can only happen through practise and continuous use. What the kilns all have in common is a shared focus that connects the potters and participants in a collaborative action.
What the potters all have in common is a dedication to an artform and process that asks more questions than gives concrete answers, and an eagerness to build community and gather likeminded curiosity. Serendipitous connections and the fostering of community around the firebox are some of the reasons this exceptional sub-genre continues to endure. In a place where ceramists comprise the largest contingent of artisans in the region, the Kootenays is fast acquiring a reputation as Canada’s wood-firing hub.
Harbour Publishing, 2024
Frontenac House Poetry, 2024 TOM WAYMAN
Tom Wayman is a storyteller and poet who lives on his acreage in the Slocan Valley. He has two new books that will be released in May, one a memoir, one a collection of poetry, interrelated by theme and inspired by the land he loves.
In The Road to Appledore Wayman chronicles his transition from city to rural life, detailing the unique joys, trials and neighbourhood politics that small communities can bring. Any of us who have lived in the country can relate to the stories of funky water lines, questionable property boundaries, quirky neighbours and ambitious garden plans, all told with Wayman’s characteristic incisive wit.
Being a poet, Wayman also lets his readers see, hear and feel the natural world through his senses. Observing the changing seasons, hiking in the Valhalla range or just watching the sun rise while sipping coffee on the porch become moments of reflection and gratitude.
The chapter headings Wayman has used to structure the book anticipate the breadth of Appledore’s cyclical world: Autumn, Low Water, Winter, High Water, Spring, Fire, Summer, Earth, Air. He writes: “Ever-changing combinations of clear misty air, of light or gloom, of all the other atmospheric effects keep the prospects fresh whatever the season. These views of mountain, forest, water—up close or in the distance—unfailingly grant me much-needed perspective on my days, console and inspire me, and fill me with happiness.”
The poems in How Can You Live Here? also examine daily life on the land, reflecting more intimately on the changing seasons and the music of nature. The book is divided into four sections with prose introductions that guide the reader into the themes that the poems explore.
“I wanted to create tension between awe and wonder and the generalities of everyday life,” says Wayman. “How Can You Live Here deals with not only my responses to a life amid the Kootenays’ incredible natural environment, but also a section of poems about going through the pandemic in the rural setting (as opposed to a zillion stories dealing with the urban experience of the pandemic).”
The Nelson Library will host a double book launch for The Road to Appledore and How Can You Live Here? on Wednesday, May 29 at 7 p.m., followed by a reading at the Nakusp Library on May 30. Tom Wayman was awarded the 2022 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of work. Find out more at tomwayman.com.
Self-published
December 2023
“It’s a joke-laden story about potterymaking in rural B.C., and it’s also about how we choose to behave in times of great upheaval. It’s just that it’s told through the eyes of a chicken.”
Heath Carra and his wife Victoria Henriksen run a home pottery business called ShprixieLand Studios. For the last 20 years, they’ve made one-of-a-kind pottery in their home studio on the east shore of Kootenay Lake.
They also have a flock of backyard chickens.
Carra’s novel, The Four Chickens of the Asquawkalypse, brings both elements together in a philosophical comedy/adventure.
Pyrite Chicken (known to her friends as Fools Goldie) is living her best backyard chicken life when her best friend, Luckless Chicken, gets eaten by a hawk. Luckless had been the bottom chicken of the flock’s pecking order, but with this tragedy, Fools Goldie gets bumped to the bottom, where she finds herself having an existential crisis.
“This story grew from social media posts we’d made for our chicken- and unicorn-themed pottery during the COVID lockdown,” says Carra. “As our business attempted to navigate the apocalypse of the pandemic, I spent long hours at the kitchen window watching our chickens and writing about our lives through this alternative reality.”
The titular chickens are members of a poultry punk rock band. But instead of being harbingers of doom, they’re harbingers of hope. The book is divided into four parts, one for each of them, and each part (as well as the cover) features glazed and fired ceramic platters and tiles depicting the action.
Four Chickens is available as a book, e-book and soon-to-be audiobook. For more info:
shprixieland-studios.myshopify.com, facebook.com/shprixieland, instagram.com/shprixieland
DAVE MOSKOWITZ, PHOTOGRAPHS
EILEEN DELEHANTY PEARKES, NARRATIVE
Braided River, an imprint of Mountaineers Books, 2024
The Columbia River flows more than 1,600 kilometres across B.C. and seven U.S. states, traversing myriad landscapes, supporting diverse ecosystems and providing the economic and ecological backbone for farmers, fishers, hydroelectric industries and more. Part coffee table book, part scientific study, part historical treatise, Big River examines the Columbia through a number of different lenses: wildlife biologist Dave Moskowitz’s striking photography takes readers on a visual travelogue; Eileen Delehanty Pearkes’ text spans time, from the prehistoric origins of the Columbia Basin to the present-day challenges the region faces; and interviews with individuals who live and work in the Basin add a personal touch to the narrative.
Pearkes’ exhaustive research takes the reader into the history of the Columbia River Treaty, signed in 1964 and due to expire this year. The treaty was a cross-border effort to control water levels on the Columbia by damming the flow of the river. The catastrophic impact on the salmon fishery by the building of the Grand Coulee dam illustrates the conflicting interests of “built capital” versus “natural capital.” As well as generating power and providing irrigation water, the dam cut off salmon from returning to their spawning grounds, wiping out a fishery with no chance of reversal.
Although the Columbia River doesn’t discriminate between national jurisdictions, the American perspective tends to predominate in the book. Hopefully, Pearkes writes, “The entire Columbia River … has the potential to dissolve the boundary. Indigenous people do not recognize the line separating the two countries but instead see one river, one ecology.”
Based in Nelson, Pearkes has been researching and writing about the Columbia River for over two decades. Her previous books include Heart of a River (2004; revised 2024) and A River Captured (2016).
mountaineers.org, edpearkes.com
ERIN KNUTSON, KEITH POWELL AND DERRYLL WHITE
Wild Horse Creek Press, 2023
Forgotten Kimberley is the second in a series of Forgotten books that began with Forgotten Cranbrook in 2022 and will continue with Forgotten Fort Steele in late 2024. The current volume showcases the best early images from the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History (CBIRH) archives, in partnership with the Kimberley Heritage Museum.
“This is a keepsake book showcasing the development of a community from its earliest years, with a special focus on the people and their activities,” says publisher and co-author Keith Powell.
Co-author Derryll White is a lifelong historian who worked as chief curator at Fort Steele for three decades. “Examining the records of community growth, listening to the stories and viewing the photographs of Kimberley-area old-timers has been our pleasure,” he says.
The CBIRH began digitizing its artifacts 20 years ago, says executive director Erin Knutson. She hopes that the importance of preserving these images will be strengthened by the publication of Forgotten Kimberley
Copies of the book are available from retailers in Kimberley and Cranbrook, and through the CBIRH’s online store at basininstitute.org.
CURVESAND
Food of Love Records, 2024
curvesand are Jeremy Down (electric guitar) and Paul “Garbanzo” Gibbons (bansuri, keys/beats, percussion). They describe their first CD as “a musical conversation between two Slocan Valley artists.” The duo’s music ranges from meditative free improvisation and avant-garde cinematic soundscapes to funk/dub grooves. “From years living, working and playing in the mountains and near the lake, we bring a wild Slocan consciousness to the music, always in the moment as it unfolds,” says Garbanzo.
The CD was mixed and mastered by Garbanzo at Food of Love Records. Check out Garbanzo’s painting, photography and words at garbanzomusic.ca and Jeremy’s work at jeremydown.com.
You can listen to clips from the CD here: https://curvesand. hearnow.com/ and stream them on Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes, among others.
The West Kootenay Regional Arts Council (WKRAC) commissioned Hill Strategies, a leading figure in Canadian arts research and statistics, to examine the state of arts, culture and heritage in the Columbia Basin. The report of the findings was released in 2023 and can be found here: wkartscouncil.com/artstats/ WKRAC thanks the BC Arts Council for its support of the research.
ARTiculate asked three individuals involved in the arts in our region for their reactions to the report. Here is what they had to say.
Sarah Beauchamp:
We have all heard of the starving artist—the artist who sacrifices it all to focus on their artistic pursuits. Well, this study confirms that professional artists in the Columbia Basin make significant financial sacrifices to practice their craft.
It is not surprising to learn that nearly 900 professional artists live and work in the Columbia Basin. Creatives are drawn to this region for its rich culture and vibrant arts scene. But unless you work in the arts, it can be difficult to fully grasp the sacrifices Basin artists make to pursue their craft and gift their communities with the fruits of their (underpaid) labour.
According to the Hill Strategies report, eight out of ten artists in the Basin area are self-employed. As an aspiring artist, the idea of being self-employed in my creative field is daunting. This is especially true when you realize that the median personal income of artists (of which two-thirds are women, transgender and non-binary people) in the Basin is $25,600. That is 47 percent less than the median income of all other workers in the area. Statistics like this make it challenging for part-time artists like me to consider taking their artistic careers to the next level.
I often wonder what we might be missing out on, not just as artists but as communities. What creative treasures or insights are hiding within those who don’t have the tools or resources to practice their craft? How do we create more equity in the arts sector? Recognizing the disparity might just be the first step.
Sarah Beauchamp is a writer and photographer of Métis, Anishinaabe and mixed-European descent. She currently lives in the beautiful mountains of unceded Sinixt təmxʷúlaʔxʷ in Nelson, B.C.
Fernanda Fernandez:
The report supported my experience managing the arts centre in Kimberley. I want to reflect upon four aspects: the majority of artists in the Columbia Basin are self-employed; two-thirds are women; the median income for artists in the East Kootenays is much lower; and artists in this region are more likely to be Indigenous.
It would be interesting to map arts organizations in the Columbia Basin by their administrative capacity to understand how many provide employment security. The two institutions that employed me in the last two years offered full-time jobs only for fixed-term contracts, were severely understaffed, and the salaries were not proportional to the living costs in the Kimberley-Cranbrook area. The lack of opportunities and the impossibility of commuting to
more culturally active places, such as Nelson, make it hard to find stability working in the sector in a remote location.
A qualitative analysis to see how these results are interrelated might shed some light on why Indigenous and racialized artists are more affected by the sector’s precarity. We need to know how arts organizations implement and oversee diversity policies. Living in a white-majority location makes booking Indigenous and BIPOC shows challenging, especially when travelling costs are hard to cover. However, beyond economic constraints, I wonder how much effort executives and boards of directors put into showcasing more diverse talent.
Many questions remain to fully assess the state of the arts and culture sector in the Columbia Basin, but the report offers a good starting point.
Originally from Mexico City, Fernanda Fernandez is an art historian with a master’s degree in Arts & Languages from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. A former acting administrator at Kimberley Arts Council—Centre 64, for the past 13 years she has curated content for museums and exhibitions about the environment, children’s development, sex work, gender, photography and cinema.
Ian Johnston:
It’s always interesting to see one’s actual experience couched in numbers. According to the survey, the median personal income of all artists in the Columbia Basin is $25,600, which is 47 percent less than the median of all local workers ($48,000). Being a visual person, I immediately conjure up images of concrete road medians separating the comings and goings and rhythms of life, rather than the state of my income. In short, while perhaps helpful in giving the arts leaders in our community and beyond the leverage they need to make a case for increased funding all around, my response is a cool “meh.” The article doesn’t provide any insight for me, and I’ll continue to make work, like many artists, despite these depressing statistics.
From my own perspective and my contact with many artists, the view from the ground is this: most artists have an unwavering drive and obsession to continually create, some immutable force seemingly impervious to numeric realities. I don’t want to endorse the trope that artists have to lead an economically impoverished life, something both artists themselves and the public at large can too often fall prey to. If the article can help remind everyone of the situation, then terrific. But whatever the case, like a lot of artists, I’ll continue to make work and my resolve, like real concrete, will never stop curing or getting stronger.
Ian Johnston studied architecture at Algonquin College and Carleton University in Ottawa and spent five years working at the Bauhaus Academy in post-Berlin-Wall Dessau, Germany. Johnston’s primary interest lies in the cycle of goods that he investigates, through site-specific sculptural and video installations, how things we consume populate our daily lives, define relationships we have with each other and ultimately define social structures.
