Canvas to the Imagination

My good friend Nicole Dextras has been the artist in residence at VanDusen Gardens over the summer. Starting this weekend she will be presenting the installations created on site. Instead of having a traditional exhibition opening Nicole has opted to lead people on tours of her installations throughout the garden at select dates (Listed below).

Nicole creates her work from natural material such as leaves, twigs, thorns, grasses, flowers, etc., often with a focus on text. For the work in the garden she has created a pair of thrones to represent the King and Queen of Versailles, installed a rangoli made of leaves on the lake, grown a large scale version of the word culture from grass seed, and more. The tours begin this Sunday.

Green Words, growing the language
Sunday August 24 at 2 pm
Tuesday August 26 at 2 pm
Thursday August 28 at 7 pm

5251 Oak Street
at the corner of 37th Ave, between Oak & Granville Streets
Hours: August 10am - 9pm
September 10am - 7pm

(Nicole has a set of work in progress photos on flickr.)

Out for a Paddle
Taken from the train window, somewhere near Tacoma, Washington.

I really wish I was better about keeping up with what’s going on at local galleries, because too often I see shows just before they close or miss them completely. In some cases the shows I do catch at the last minute are ones I would definitely recommend to others, but then it’s too late.

Such is the case with the show I went to see on Saturday afternoon at Jacana Gallery. The show featured the work of artist/illustrator Soizick Meister. The series of paintings focuses on easily recognizable landscapes around Vancouver, with plenty of iconic imagery of crows, herons, tanker ships against the north shore, logs on Kits/Jericho beaches, and other things easily recognizable as “Vancouver”. In every painting there is the mysterious figure of Mr. M dressed in hat and trench coat, turned towards the scene to contemplate the landscape. The scenes are peaceful, sometimes with playful details of paper boats or piles of books. This is magic realism at it’s best, and I found the show to be a wealth of inspiration.

Jacana Gallery has the full show online.

This is my favorite shot taken on my Portland trip. I love watching birds take flight.

I keep meaning to write about the good summer I have been having but so far I haven’t been able to find the time. Here are a few good things:
1. Slowly transforming my apartment into a more inspiring space just by changing the art around on the walls and adding more.
2. Fun dinners with various friends on various days.
3. A cycling trip to Agassiz a few weekends ago with the lovely Mann family.
4. Moving to a new work space, and liking it much better than the old one.
5. Feeling inspired again and beginning to plan and prepare to submit work for shows in the fall.
6. Having too many good things to actually mention in the short amount of time I’ve taken to write this.