Events
 
Lake Country Art Gallery presents:
Collective Enquiries: Exploring Landscape through Diverse Art Practices
 
(LIVE) Zoom Artist Panel Talk with Annie Briard, Dr. prOphecy sun, Leah Weinstein, Melany Nugent-Nobel, and Tara Nicholson hosted by Lake Country Art Gallery.

FREE 
Wednesday, October 6th, 2021 7pm PST
ZOOM LINK
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82188544096?pwd=d0NUb25uSTVIMW9KU09VTVg0UUNhZz09

Meeting ID: 821 8854 4096
​Passcode: 443400
 
Join us for a virtual talk with Annie Briard, Dr. prOphecy sun, Leah Weinstein, Melany Nugent-Nobel, and Tara Nicholson. 
 
Guest artists will examine their summer micro-residency held at Lake Country Art Gallery + Arthouse and the Rotary Centre for the Arts! Conversations will explore artistic practice within the landscape, mutual learning, creative agency, and fostering meaningful artist relationships. Co-facilitators Leah Weinstein, Annie Briard, and Melany Nugent-Nobel engaged with participating artists Dr. prOphecy sun, Andreas Rutkauska, Tara Nicholson and Scott Massey. 
 
We thank Annie, Leah, Melany, and Tara for providing an opportunity to share the projects that arose through this meeting and speaking to the intersections of non-hierarchal collaboration, climate change, and interdisciplinary practice. 

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Annie Briard 
www.anniebriard.com
 
Annie Briard (BFA, MFA) is a Canadian photography and media artist whose work challenges how we make sense of the world through visual perception. Creating lens-based and light-focused works, she explores the intersections between perception paradigms in psychology, neuroscience and existentialism.
Her moving images, media installations, expanded and print photography works have been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including “Within the Eclipse” at the Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver, 2021), "Second Sight” at AC Institute (New York, 2019), "Sight Shifting" at Joyce Yahouda Gallery (Montréal, 2014), as well as group shows, festivals and fairs internationally, including at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Mûr (Montréal), Three Shadows Photography Centre (Beijing), the Lincoln Film Centre New York, Matadero Madrid, the Switzerland Architecture Museum, among many others. Recently, she presented monumental scale photographic and moving-image public art projects for a number of commissions in Canada. Sourcing inspiration from the affectation of new and/or altered sights, she regularly undertakes art residencies, which have included working in New York, Los Angeles, Spain, Iceland, as well as long-haul hikes across the North American back country. Annie Briard’s work has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Briard is currently a faculty member at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and her artistic research has been presented at universities, conferences and art institutions across Canada including Concordia University and Queen’s University.  In conjunction with her practice, she occasionally curates exhibitions and public programs in relation to her research interests.

Dr. prOphecy sun
https://prophecysun.com
 
Dr. prOphecy sun is an interdisciplinary performance artist; queer, movement, video, and sound maker; mother; and current Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow at Simon Fraser University. Her practice celebrates both conscious and unconscious moments and the vulnerable spaces of the in-between in which art, performance, and life overlap. Her recent research has focused on ecofeminist perspectives, co-composing with voice, objects, surveillance technologies, and site-specific engagements along the Columbia Basin region and beyond. sun hosts Tapes and Beyond on Kootenay Co-op Radio and is the Arts Editor for Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities. She performs and exhibits regularly in local, national, and international settings, music festivals, conferences, and galleries and has authored several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and journal publications.
 
Leah Weinstein 
http://leahweinstein.com/
 
Leah Weinstein is a Vancouver-based artist whose practice investigates connections between material culture and the social ideals of a larger collective. Using everyday objects and ready-made materials to create sculpture, textiles and performance, Leah examines relationships between individuals and collectives, subjects and objects, action and display. Her work has been supported by the BC Arts Council (2019-20, 2015-16); Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (2015-16); the Banff Centre, Banff AB (2015); Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History, Nelson BC (2015-16); Charles H Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2014); and City of Richmond Public Art Commissions (2013). Her professional experience includes designing costumes for contemporary theatre and dance companies, and she completed a Masters in Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2014.
 
Melany Nugent-Noble 
http://melanynugent-noble.com/
 
Melany Nugent-Noble is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Kelowna, B.C. She is interested in connecting objects, spaces, and people, and her work regularly engages around themes of social inclusion both through installations that bring people together and activate community gathering spaces; and through works that explore the ways for residents to connect with others that may not typically cross paths in their day-to-day routines. Nugent-Noble’s work responds to the political and social nature of public spaces, and takes various forms including community-focused installations, and art books made from public government documents and speeches. 
 
Melany Nugent-Noble has a formal background in Digital Arts and Media, Communications, and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2015). Since 2016, she has been building her artistic practice with support from the B.C. Arts Council, including the Early Career Development Grant (2016), and Visual Arts Grant (2018); support from Canada Council for the Arts (2019); and participation in residencies including at the Banff Centre for the Arts & Creativity (2016 and 2018) and the Art & Law Program in New York (2018). In 2020, she was the City of Kelowna’s inaugural artist in residence, to develop the project When it is Necessary to Stand Still.
 
Tara Nicholson
taranicholson.com
 
Tara Nicholson incorporates photography and installation within her research. She has traveled throughout the Arctic to document climatology, sometimes with a blurred line between sci-fi and actual science. She has exhibited internationally, recently at the Art Gallery of Victoria, Modern Fuel Artist-run Centre and the Oxygen Art Centre.  Attending residencies including ‘Earthed’ at the Banff Centre, the Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany and the Empire of Dirt residency in Creston, BC, Nicholson also teaches at the University of Victoria. She holds degrees from Ryerson University, (BFA) and Concordia University (MFA) and has received ongoing funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.  In 2020, Nicholson embarked on her PhD at UBC Okanagan, to produce a body of exploratory landscape studies linking escalating changes within the Anthropocene. Documenting rewilding and extinction studies while witnessing waves of Indigenous and setter-allied land activism, she is exploring the role of art within activism and how the interpretation of climate action can affect its outcome. 

Exciting New Fundraiser - coming soon ...
​Most art galleries ask artists to donate a piece of one of their treasured artwork but not
us at the Lake Country Art Gallery; we have been collecting… Terrible, Horrible, Absolutely No Good, Awful Drawings… drawings so bad, they’re good.

This fundraiser for the Lake Country Art Gallery will take place at a time TBC

All donated Terrible, Horrible, Absolutely No Good, Awful Drawings will be offered to the
public for a donation to the gallery.

watch this space for more news soon ...

Meanwhile, if you Have questions? or are Interested in donating some artwork? Contact Wanda 

Call for Submission information HERE

UPDATE - Aug 9, 2021 - EVENT CANCELLED

In light of recent Covid-19 restrictions being implemented in our region it is with heavy hearts that we must cancel our Picnic Festival for the time being.

As a team we have decided to keep the Facebook event page live by posting spotlights of the vendors that would've been attending the event!

We look forward to someday bringing back this event when circumstances allow it.
​
Stay safe during these unprecedented times and don't forget to support your local artists!

Check here for latest COVID and Communicable Disease Plan

Uncharted Realms – Picnic Festival
Saturday, August 14th, 2021
6-10pm
Lake Country Art Gallery + Arthouse invites you to join our Uncharted Realms – Picnic Festival! This one-day public event will offer an evening with Live Music & Poetry, Outdoor Art Installation, Local Artisan Vendors, Food Trucks, Art Related Activities, Door Prizes & More!
The festival theme incorporates our current exhibition Uncharted Territory as a moment to share space, whimsy, and play through a fantasy garden party experience. Keep your eyes open as we will reveal our vendors, food trucks, musicians, and artists over the next few weeks! This is an all-ages event so feel free to bring your families!

Join Lake Country Art Gallery for the closing reception + artist talk with UBCO MFA Graduates, Brittany Reitzel and Sam Neal for their current exhibition Grounding, In Touch / Inland Watters II


Tuesday, June 29th, 2021, 6 pm – 8pm

This will be an outdoor event taking place at the Lake Country Art House. Access to Lake Country Art Gallery will be available as well.

Due to COVID public protocols, we will have a maximum number of 50 outdoor visitors and 10 indoor visitors. More information regarding our COVID protocols can be found here:  https://www.lakecountryartgallery.ca/announcement.html

Brittany Reitzel is currently an MFA candidate at UBCO whose primary interests are grounding practices, forest bathing and site-specific expanded painting practices. She graduated from Brock University in 2016 with a BFA (Honours).

Grounding, in Touch (2021) is a body of work that documents my process of grounding myself through creating site-specific artwork on the unceded traditional lands of the Syilx nation. As a settler I work directly on and with the land to open my body to ‘touch’ and be ‘touched’ by the land and provide a direct translation of the sensations I feel. I create works bare-foot and trade my paint brushes for my hands and other body parts, relating to the mindfulness theory of ‘grounding’, whereby is a process which our bodies “electrically reconnect to the earth when our skin is in direct contact with it”.

Sam Neal is currently studying for his MFA in Visual Arts at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. His most recent work utilizes cyanotype, a photographic process, to create a collaboration between the artist and the environment.

Inland Waters II features detailed prints that incorporate digital and screen printmaking, alongside the original cyanotypes. The prints depict the reaction between chemicals, water and light on the paper’s surface during the initial contact with water and after it oxidizes in the following days.

Below are events running in conjunction with the Voice & Land Community Exhibition

May 16th 10am - Youtube Premiere - FREE

In conjunction and in response to the Lake Country Art Gallery current Community Exhibition, the Lake Country Art House will be premiering their video on the practice of Forest Bathing. This is a great way to start your Sunday and be inspired to be in forests and green space near you.

Community Engagement Coordinators, Alison & Pippa will guide you through the origins of Forest Bathing in Japan, the benefits of the practice and how it can inspire your creativity. ​

 Show Your Art - Part 1: How to find the right exhibition opportunities for your work

Presented by Katie Brennan of tools4artists.com and Katie Brennan Art Consulting
Offered in partnership with the Lake Country Art Gallery- Proceeds go to support the Lake Country Art Gallery

Showing your art can be daunting. With this workshop, you’ll learn the rules of the road to find the exhibition opportunities that are absolutely right for you -- because some won’t be!

Learn about all the different kinds of art galleries out there, some common misunderstandings about how art galleries work, and the fork in the road that many artists face over the course of their careers that you too may be staring at.

Saturday, May 8th: 11am - 12:30pm
​Registration $45 via SHOWPASS

From Katie:
​This is the course I wish that every artist, client and student I’ve ever worked with could have taken. 
No one else is teaching this stuff this way.  
I mean, it’s taken me 15 years to figure it out and I have a Master’s degree in visual arts and worked in and showed my own work with most of the kinds of galleries I want to teach people about. 
Really, this is the BIGGEST misconception that artists have about galleries: that they are ALL THE SAME, when really they each work very differently. 
And that you can save yourself a whole lot of time and money and heartache if you know about that. 
Because, sadly, there are some kinds of art that will never show at certain kinds of galleries. But no one tells artists which is which… which can be very frustrating and disheartening! 
So, let me save you all the trouble and take this course, and I’ll teach you which kind of gallery your work is absolutely perfect for. 

MORE ABOUT KATIE:

Katie Brennan is an art consultant, artist, educator and creative entrepreneur who sees things a little differently. With a BFA and a MFA under her belt, Katie has years of experience of looking at the art world, art education and how to be an artist from all sides.
She offers enthusiastic and hopeful advice and tools for artists and organizations who are tired of trying to do things the right way, and are looking for a better way to work, and become the artists or the organizations they have always been meant to be.
LIVE SESSIONS 
Take this course with Katie LIVE!
Course Presented as a Zoom Class where students will be able to ask Katie questions directly.  
Exhibiting Art is EXTRA HARD right now!


These LIVE Workshop Sessions came about due to my desire to support and give back my beloved galleries and arts organizations -- the majority of the proceeds from each of these live sessions go to the host gallery or organization.
These superheroes are doing great things for artists in their area -- please check them out and consider supporting them in your own way!

For more info about additional LIVE Session dates via Comox Valley Arts and Salmon Arm Arts Centre, as well as an on-demand online version of this workshop visit: tools4artists.com

Show Your Art - Part 2 ... TBA