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USK EDMONTON
from DA April 2020
Captures Civic Heritage USK EDMONTON
BY RUSSELL PETCOFF
On 17 February this year, Urban Sketchers Edmonton, in Canada, received word that they were now an official Urban Sketchers chapter.
The group began in 2011 when Yvonne Rezek, Karen Wall, and Marlena Wyman decided to form a sketching group. Yvonne had learned about Urban Sketchers via social media in 2010, and Karen had attended the USk Sym
posium that year in Portland. Yvonne soon met Marlena, and the three scheduled their first sketch crawl in July 2011 at the Taste of Edmonton. Nine sketchers attended.
USk Edmonton now meets the first Saturday of every month, and between eight and 15 sketchers attend. With seven months of winter, they often sketch indoors. Marlena later blogs about the event on the USk Edmonton website.
Urban sketching’s immediacy attracts Yvonne and Marlena. Yvonne likes “the notational, unfinished, imperfect quality of sketching.” Marlena adds that sketching creates a “more emotionally engaging work than formal painting. It’s an effective way to capture a moment, as well as create an acute awareness of one’s surroundings.” For Karen, it’s a “way to stay in tune with everyday life and place and understand new experiences through a sustained gaze.”
The group’s sketching also preserves Edmonton history. Marlena recently organized an exhibition called ‘Sketching History: Rediscovering Edmonton’s Architectural Heritage through Urban Sketching,’ featuring 100 sketches by 12 USk Edmonton sketchers.
“Edmonton’s vital heritage architecture is disappearing,” Marlena said, “and along with it our city’s character and identity.” As the city’s Historian Laureate, she developed the exhibition to capture the memory of Edmonton. The exhibition opened in November 2019 and runs until December 2020 at the Prince of Wales Armouries Heritage Centre and online at the City of Edmonton Archives. “Art provides us with new ways of seeing what we thought we knew,” Marlena says. “Our built heritage can become so familiar and feel so permanent that we tend to take it for granted — until it is gone. Only then do we feel the loss, and often profoundly. Art can engage, inform and help to activate change.”
“My hope,” Marlena said, “is that this project will engage and connect us with the value of our city’s built heritage and green spaces.”
CONNECT WITH USK EDMONTON
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MARLENA WYMAN’S SKETCHING HISTORY EXHIBIT BLOG POSTS
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LEFT: SKETCH BY MERTS BELMES BELOW: AL RASHID MOSQUE BY BRENDA RAYNARD
HOTEL SHELLY MIAMI BEACH BY NOGA ROSE
SKETCH BY MARLENA WYMAN
CHECK OUT THE SKETCHING HISTORY ONLINE EXHIBIT
