Artist Statement
Through my artistic practice, I delve into the natural world and our connection to it. The unbridled desire of humans to succeed and advance has disrupted the essential tenet of coexistence between the realms of humanity and the natural world, causing an imbalance that has led to ecological catastrophes and environmental calamities. Using Indo-Persian miniature painting methods that originated in the 16th century as a starting point, my artistic practice involves re-envisioning these techniques with modern imagery and cross-cultural concerns to subvert conventional expectations. My work repurposes accounts of calamities and past events into significant and relatable visuals, blending the cultures of both the East and the West. I explore ideas expressed by Jalaluddin Rumi and Jeanette Armstrong in their poetry that advocate the importance of balance and equality of all living forms as a way to move forward towards a more harmonious and sustainable future. By combining Eastern traditional painting techniques of using handmade materials such as wasli (paper), qalam (brush), and
paints made from North American indigenous knowledge of natural pigments (Beam paints), with contemporary environmental concerns, the artwork conveys a multifaceted and intricate significance. 

​March 11th Open House celebration of our Gallery Members concluded with an Annual General Meeting at 3pm.

Gallery Members along with Guest Artist Angelina Rosa responding to the themes and questions that were presented in the last exhibition State(s) of Being, and continue the conversation by diving into the subject of motherhood and the creative process.

Whether an artists and a mother, a child of an artist, or an observer, this exhibition asks members to reflect on the challenges, joys and clichés associated with motherhood and the role of an artist.

Forty Nine artists responded to the theme - thank you to the following Gallery Members for taking part in this exhibition:
Alice Pallett; Alison Beaumont; Amber Powell; Amy Bradshaw; Angela Hansen; Angelina Rosa; Anke Sabo;
Carley Rangen; Carney Oudendag; Caron Smed; Ceren McKay; Courts Champion; Denise  Patrick; 
Destanne Norris; Devon L Muhlert; Erin Scott; Eveline Wallace; Faye Eden; Heather Burton; Jacqueline Rieger; 
Jill Meredith; JG Touchstone; Judith Hamilton; Joyful ArtHouse Kids; Karen Stewart; Kate Brown; 
Kelsie Balehowsky; Kerry McLeod; Lisa Figueroa; Lynette Stebner; Margaret Kyle; Marlene McPherson; 
Maureen Kaczkowski; Michelle Droettboom; Olya Krasavina; Pamela Cinnamon; Paulette Deyholes; 
Pippa Dean-Veerman; Rena Warren + Larkin Dunn Warren; Rhonda Giesbrecht; Roberta Sutherland; 
Roxana Meaney; Sara Wiens; Stefanie Denz; Suzanne Chavarie; Tess Letailleur; Tim Vant; Yolanda Robinson

See the responses from local school students on a recent gallery tour
- click - RESPONDING - or navigate to the ARTWORDS page, where you will also find the
Bree Apperley essay on State(s) of Being, writing about the challenges of pursuing an art career as a woman and as a mother.

2022 UNDER 200 

December 3rd - 21st

with Front of the Line early access December 2nd

Exhibition and fundraising sale of original art by gallery members

LC Art Gallery member artists were invited to participate in the Lake Country Art Gallery’s largest show of the year!  
  
Watch for your favourite artists or discover some new works to gift add to your collection.

Access new and original artworks by:
​Alice Pallett, Alison Beaumont, Allana Weston, Angela Hansen, Angelika M Offenwanger, Anke Sabo, Ann Willsie, Anne Gidluck, Asahna Hughes, Audrey Peat, Blair Dunlop, Carney Oudendag, Carol Zuckerman, Cheryl Turner, Danielle Erickson, Denise Patrick, Dianne Postman, Dianne Schnieders, Don Makela, Elaine Hatch, Eveline Wallace, Fried Martin, Graciela Blancarte, Heather Burton, Isabella Ford, Judy Hamilton, Kali Koshey, Kara Barkved, Kathryn Ross, Kathy Hale, Kayleigh Mace, Kerry MacLeod, Leanne Spanza, Linley McKennna, Lisa Hewitt, Liz Earl, Lynette Stebner, Margaret Kyle, Marlene McPherson, Maud Besson, Maureen Lejbak, Melissa Dinwoodie, Michelle Droettboom, Minnie Klashinsky, Moozhan Ahmadzadegan, Nancy Archer, Olya Krasavina, Paul Lewendon, Paulette Deyholos, Ramona Hoeft, Robert Guenette, Sarah Parsons, Shannon Wylie, Sharlene McNeill, Sheila Tansey, Shelley Johnson, Susan Yost, Tia Maria Soroskie, Tina Siddiqui, Valerie Thompson, Valerie Fortey

open to the public from Saturday December 3rd continuing six days per week Tuesdays through Sundays from 9am to 4pm 

December 2nd from 6pm - Front of the Line:
Early access and VIP treatment through ticket entry - tickets available now!

December 10th - find us in the foyer of George Elliot Secondary School where we'll provide everything you need to print your own gift wrap paper

December 17th 4pm-8pm - Night Market: Winter Artisan Market 

For more information about special features that will take place as part of the Under 200 Exhibition 2022, stay tuned and check for our newsletters in your email inbox.

Annual Fundraising Goal: Event ticket  sales plus 30% of art sales help to support exhibitions & programs at the Lake Country Art Gallery and Art House while 70% of art sales support your favourite local artists.

We Meet Again

an exhibition of works by Jim Kalnin, alongside works by these twenty one artists and former students of Jim's:

Roseanne Bennett; Lee Claremont; Glenn Clark; Carin Covin; Rob Fee; Caitlin Ffrench; Bev Gordon; Natasha Harvey; Lois Huey-Heck; Judith Jurica; Kerry MacLeod; Christian Nicolay; Shauna Oddleifson; Amber Powell; Crystal Przybille; Sarah Ronald; Joanne Sale; Charles Scholl; Tia-Maria Soroskie; Rena Warren; Ingrid Mann-Willis

Roots & Gardens
Black Liquorice Studio Pop-Up Exhibition

September 10th to 24th

Featuring the work of eight Okanagan-based artists:

Cassandra Adjetey, Moozhan Ahmadzadegan, Hana Hamaguchi, Maura Tamez, Xiaoxuan Huang, Lady Dia, Trophy Ewila and Meg Yamamoto.

While diverse in subject and medium, their work investigates the way an exploration of our roots and intersections of identity informs and creates our sense of home—home as a material reality: soil, stone, tree, flowers budding into fruit and life—a garden of relations that is placed in the imagination.

Roots&Gardens invites viewers to consider the ways we make home for ourselves—while occupying Syilx Land and the ways we invite or exclude others from doing the same.

ABOUT BLACK LIQUORICE STUDIO
Black Liquorice Studio is the growing BIPOC artist collective. With this inaugural exhibit, as with future activities, Black Liquorice Studio aims to provide a platform for underrepresented artists in the Okanagan; create opportunities for those artists to build professional relationships with other artists and arts organizations; to foster the development of new ideas and approaches in art and artists' working lives.

PRINCIPLES OF ENCLOSURE

July 24rd to September 3rd

Gambletron, Johnny Forever Nawracaj, Zev Tiefenbach

Principles of Enclosure is an exhibition that brings together three artists whose works converge around the precarity of the contemporary built environment.

Functional obsolescence increasingly defines much of the current architectural landscape in so-called Canada, with new builds arising at mushrooming speeds and lightweight materials enabling easy teardown. The real estate boom has seen whole hillsides spring suburban developments while postwar stone bungalows in denser urban areas are torn down and replaced with large, boxy drywall structures decoratively clad in stone veneer barely belying the newbuild's susceptibility to fast decay.

Through this exhibition, Tiefenbach, Nawracaj and Gambletron are leaning into the vacillating sense of alienation and familiarly brought on by the residential build environment. Teifenbach's photographs of local dwelling spaces, construction sites, and material decay dialogue with Forever Nawracaj's digital collage pairing ubiquitous construction materials with equally cheaply-made objects, such as wigs, made to  construct and signify gendered identity. Meanwhile, Gambletron's sound installation acts as a sonic and material counterpart to the hung work.
Each artist's work invites audiences to consider the social and environmental implications of constructed space. With the current massive inflation of the housing market and the rash of new developments springing up throughout the Okanagan valley, this collaborative exhibition is pertinent to the local social context.
 
Johnny Forever Nawracaj is a nonbinary Polish-born artist exploring themes of loss, labour, and identity through video, performance, installation, and digital collage. Experimental narrative given through text, image, and the manipulation of objects drives the artist's work toward interrogations of social norms, the creation of myth, and the ubiquity of technologies taken for granted in late-capitalist urban environments. Foregrounding the liminal, Johnny Forever settles in flux between concepts, between technologies, and between identities.
Forever's work is characterized by bold physicality and a demeanor that vacillates between playfulness and frustration. A former drag-queen who now supports their artistic practice doing home renovation work, the artist often makes use of queer femme tropes in surrealist combination with contemporary construction materials. Their work draws attention to the construction of identity as well as the precarity of the built environment. Forever's strange combinations of wigs and stilettos with steel wall studs and drywall or classical collanges become metaphors for vulnerability of structures both physical and theoretical.
 
Gambletron is a nonbinary sound artist and performer who has been working with radio for the past decade. They don't simply make sound works for radio, but rather use the radio medium itself to build installations for performance as well as stand-alone sculptural pieces. Using short-range FM radio transmitters, the artist transmits their original soundscapes through various installations built from radios and situated in environments selected for their acoustic qualities. Gambletron views the radio medium as a vast expanse of potential for building modular sound systems that can be stacked, hung, swung or moved in and out of interesting acoustic space to augment live performance. As well as providing aesthetic interest, antique and vintage radios produce uniquely coloured sound- a haunting sound, pierced through with that characteristic crackling evocative of radio's powerful history. Gambletron is fascinated with the history of the radio platform as a tool for community building and political resistance. It is a technology that resonates in the collective memory of many communities, shaping time and transforming shared space.
 
zev tiefenbach is a social realist photographer whose practice explores the relationship between the physicality of place and the narratives that construct and are formed by the spaces we inhabit. tiefenbach is particularly interested in exploring the landscape as a site of a trauma, looking for clues that speak to the impacts of colonialism, genocide, capitalism, gender trauma and environmental crisis in our topography. tiefenbach’s photos are also inextricably linked to his own personal narrative and trajectory through the world. their bodies of work, become a documentation of their performance of being a photographer interested in exploring the beauty and sadness imbued in our public spaces. tiefenbach’s grandparents are all holocaust survivors. this family history roots the artist's work in a post-holocaust ethos. For tiefenbach landscape is understood as ephemeral, ever-shifting, and imbued with social values. tiefenbach’s archive of photographic performance seeks to create a subjective social record of a collective life that is ever vanishing.