An upstart artists’ collective — including a member from Savary Island — has resolved to illustrate collaboration over division by modelling community-building through creativity.
The CONNECT Collective, whose four members gathered in Sechelt last week, on March 21 opened a month-long showcase presented by the Sunshine Coast Arts Council. Alchemy features the work of Savary resident Teresa Selbee-Baker in concert with three mainland collaborators: Kara Brauen, Amanda MacLeod and Ember Muninn.
“This collective has allowed us to find connection and community within a male-dominated art world,” said Muninn. “Through it we have been able to help each other grow into something greater than we would have alone. We share knowledge with each other and support one another’s unique artistic journeys. This show is a synergistic effort between all of us.”
Muninn’s The Space is Always Expanding — a bright pink acrylic substrate scattered with speckled, metamorphic ovoids — reflects the group’s investment in transformation (the motif is picked up, using another palette, in Maximus Luminosity). The cosmic whorls on the interlinked, folded papers (punctuated with window-like perforations) of Muninn’s untitled offer a reminder that mutual inspiration is an intrinsically multidimensional act.
In addition to contributing their own works, the foursome participated in a long-distance artistic conversation. With no prior discussion, each one started three small works and mailed it to the next artist. The recipient made their mark and sent it on. The composite works — like Collaboration #3, whose geometric unity (suggesting a compass rose) amalgamates fibre art, collage, and ink on paper — each bear their distinctive styles.
“My series explores a personal transformation through the lens of alchemy,” said Selbee-Baker. “The art allows me to ask questions I’m still finding words for, capturing the uncertainty and the rawness that I can’t voice. Each piece here is a reflection of a moment in this journey, moving through unsettled toward clarity.”
Selbee-Baker’s oil paintings combine pensive portraits with richly-rendered florals. In Drowning in Words So Sweet, subtle shadows and a hand placed across a mouth evoke a formidable manifestation of beauty reflected in the subject’s reaction. Distance Unreached takes a more whimsical approach: pursed lips caress a coffee cup in which clouds are brewing; blue skies are reflected in glasses perched atop a head. The perspicacious viewer receives the uncanny impression that the actual focus of the image might like on his side of the frame.
Kara Brauen, who has worked in embroidery since 2021, fashions circular works using embroidery thread on cotton duck canvas. In the miniature Air / The Crows at Dusk, a whorl of thread seems to whirlpool, with a twilight skyscape reflected in its muted colours. “I found myself really reflecting on how interconnected we are with the rest of our universe,” Brauen said. “We are all parts of something greater than ourselves. We changed the world and the world changes us.” Brauen finds inspiration in natural patterns like the murmurations of starlings and branching coral, in which component parts shape the whole.
Ecological serendipity is also reflected in the works of Amanda MacLeod, a multimedia artist who scours Delta’s Centennial Beach for inspiration. In Retreat, wire wends to create a nest-like structure that outreaches the boundaries of its variegated encaustic background.
“I landed on the description of alchemy as a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious way,” said MacLeod. “It’s a place where my inner landscape and the other landscape can be in conversation.” In MacLeod’s Recognition, hieroglyphic-like symbols hover atop a view of skyward-reaching flora: depth of focus matters in a world with a surfeit of layers.
The show is the foursome’s first after meeting in 2023 in an international women’s artists group called the Thrive Together Network. Its original cohort of seven members mounted exhibitions featuring works by women and non-binary contributors. Remade as the four-member CONNECT Collective, the group is resolved to organize additional assemblies of their work. “This rich and layered sensory experience could never emerge from our individual work alone,” added Muninn.
Alchemy continues at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre until mid-April.
