In an invitational show you never know what might turn up. More than 60 local artists working in a variety of media were personally invited to submit one piece for the current Arts Centre exhibition. Forty-seven responded. No theme was suggested, yet it appeared as if many of the pieces were trying to tell a story -one that fires up the imagination or one that remains tantalizingly obscure, such as, for example, Miyuki Shinkai's blown glass and mixed media display in which a red glass heart and a sleeping -or dead? - man appears.Then there's the wedding cake rendered in a towering metal assemblage structure that dominates one half of the gallery, created by Tam Harrington and D. Davis. In place of where the bride and groom usually stand, the three-tiered cake is topped by two triumphant athletes. Entitled Hard To Swallow, it offers a fearful image of matrimonial bliss.
J. Bradley Hunt invokes the stories and legends of native peoples in his major piece, Thunderbird and Whale Myth. The carved red cedar, copper and acrylic sculpture stands nearly eight feet tall and is a complex depiction of creatures entwining intimately.Alan Sirulnikoff's photo, Morning Alms, is exquisite and touching. A row of saffron-robed Buddhist monks line up before what appears to be a grocery store in a street scene from Laos. To one side, a woman kneels, perhaps in prayer. The photographer takes a bird's eye view of what must be an everyday ritual in that country.
Paddy Wales' digital print tells a small story; it is a close up photo of a calla lily that has seen better days, while Joanne Marks' giclee print, Rainforest Morning, is also drawn from a photo. The appliquéd fabric piece, Nine Ways of Looking at a Bracket Fungus, by Judy Ross offers an artist's varying perspective of a natural phenomenon.
Nena Braathen has submitted an interesting etching mysteriously entitled Q. Garryana 1963 in which trees turn into dancing figures. Janice McFegan's elaborately framed acrylic, Travels of Moboski, that depicts a horse's head with human features also makes the viewer ponder. Is it a mythological figure or a gamer's character? Heather Waddell's acrylic, Crane Calligraphy, deserves a lengthy look. Cranes fly over a mountainous landscape fading to mere ciphers or turning into tree branches as they disappear.
One story that is wonderfully lucid is the tale of an Alberta day by Mudito Drope. A hiking figure in the grasslands, accompanied by her dog, watches birds wheeling overhead under the hot prairie sun. Similarly, Jan Poynter's Tug and Boom, Texada Island (gouache on paper) is a tiny micro view of a typical commercial scene.
The legendary storyteller Scheherazade is shown in R.B. Wainwright's linocut/chinescolle rendition. In the book Arabian Nights, she is the wife of the sultan of India who relates such interesting tales nightly that he spares her life.
You might have the impression that you have just missed the story behind the delightful Maurice Spira self-portrait. A bespectacled, moustachioed gentleman is raising his glass to the viewer. But who is he toasting? Perhaps all of us--for visiting the Arts Centre.
The show runs until Aug. 27 and summer hours are in effect: Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. The centre is at the corner of Trail and Medusa in Sechelt.
