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

The Existential Café is an artist talk discussion of sorts that takes place with curated exhibitions. Although the initial conversation takes the direction of the artists in the current exhibition, attendees are encouraged to add their voice to the discussion. The Café is an opportunity to join in the conversation and philosophical musings over coffee with the artists, curator, and other community members at this online event.
Equipment-Space
Join Curator Wanda Lock, Artists Mat Glenn & Lucas Glenn and Alison Beaumont Community Engagement Coordinator for an interactive and engaging virtual cafe. Settle in from the comfort of your own home, bring your favourite beverage listen, discuss and connect with artists and community for a talk around the current exhibition.
Lucas Glenn and Mat Glenn are BFA graduates from UBC Okanagan and Kelowna-based interdisciplinary artists. Their sculptural, digital, and site-specific works use regional identity, science-fiction, and fantasy to address global crises.
We look forward to seeing you online, this event is FREE but registration is required. A zoom link will be emailed out 2 days prior to the event.
Questions? Email arthouse@lakecountryartgallery.ca

https://www.showpass.com/existential-cafe-equipment-space/

Equipment Space 
Spring Break Morning Studio (SMS) is ONLINE this spring , join us for two sessions. Register Here
March 15th - Gallery Tour 
Virtual tour of Equipment-Space – Mat Glenn & Lucas Glenn, join Pippa, Alison & their young artist helpers Ankaret and Eddie for an interactive tour of the latest exhibition at the Lake Country Art Gallery. 
This 45 minute session will explore and question the conceptual art on display, in an approachable way for families (ages 7 and up). What message is the work expressing? What is your message?  
Collecting objects from our own spaces and places, we will encourage participants to explore the potential themes and ideas for creation of their own responses to the exhibition. A follow-up session the next week will delve further into conceptual art and how families can create their own work for the next exhibition at the gallery. 
March 22nd - Call for art 
Each year the Lake Country Art Gallery hosts a community exhibition and invites you to submit your individual or collaborative work. The theme for 2021 in Voice & Land (Click here for more info). 
In this 45 minute session young artists and their bubbles, can take time to further delve in to the themes discovered in our virtual tour of Equipment-Space (previous week). Looking at artists Joseph Beuys, Brian Jungen, Yoko Ono and Marcel Duchamp. Pippa & Alison will invite participants to contemplate the theme of Voice & Land and how they might create and submit work to the next exhibition.  
Instructors 
The SMS sessions will be facilitated by Pippa Dean-Veerman and Alison Beaumont, they are the Community Engagement Coordinators at Lake Country Art Gallery. We aspire to enable student artists to grow voice through art, individually and collaboratively.  Taking time for reflection (in-breath) and adopting a design thinking approach. We believe that studio thinking and artistic process are present in everyone.  
COVID Protocols 
The Lake Country Art House is currently closed to the public, all programming will be offered virtually. 

Register here for SMS