Mural Wall

The Mural Project
at the Lake Country Art Gallery

There is art everywhere. Inside and out.
This is the rotating Mural space at the Lake Country Art Gallery.
This is a space where artists expand their creativity over an 8' x 8' canvas on Gallery frontage.

Current Mural

Byron Johnston, an acclaimed artist with national and international exhibitions, has also been a long-time educator, teaching sculpture at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

The title Anthropocene refers to the proposed geological epoch that marks humanity’s significant influence on Earth, from its oceans and ecosystems to its geology and climate. This exhibition invites viewers to contemplate our role in shaping the planet’s future.

BYRON JOHNSTON

Anthropocene, a thought-provoking exhibition by Okanagan-based artist Bryon Johnston. included this piece which remains on the front wall of the gallery into 2025. This full body body of work, blended sculpture and installation, reflecting the impact of climate change and the ever-evolving landscape.

The Okanagan is renowned for its vineyards alongside orchards of tree fruits. The vines that Johnston used to create his pieces for the Lake Country Art Gallery exhibition are from the fallout of climate change and this domination of civilization. An unusual bitter cold snap this winter of 2024 brought down many Okanagan vines. Sadly, man's carefully trained plants died - a fateful morning after. When offered the bulky load of dead vines, Johnston saw it as an invitation to recycle a sculptor's material within the tangled shapes. Then, coming from his practice of creating from a variety of found and invented materials and referencing and then recycling older works, a new and artistic Anthropocene came into being, one that didn't chide as much as wryly acknowledge the downsides of civilization - always more memorable than a scolding.

A proposed pathway through Anthropocene begins outside the gallery where a pile of dead wood (grapevines) surrounds a ballot box, and a wrinkled mirroring surface framed in the same wood detritus reflects the person standing before it.

Past Murals

paulette deyholos

Charcoal Drawing
Medium: Burnt Wood

Artist: Paulette Deyholos

Like many of us I both love and fear fire. We cook with it, heat with it, even draw with charcoal produced by it. Yet as a teenager my house burned down and nothing was saved, yet my experience will be different from someone whose house was lost in our fires this year. Sculpting with wood lets the wood tell its own story: the history of the trees comes out in the knots, joints and cracks. It shows in areas that burn faster or not as well. I like the mysterious patterns that are created by fire. Burning wood is a centuries-old Japanese technique (Shou sugi ban) of wood preservation. Humans have been shaped as much by fire as they have shaped things with fire. Burning this sculpture simplifies the colour, so the shapes become more important, the texture becomes more interesting and the piece has a richer, more dramatic impact. I try to communicate the beauties of the world especially when they don’t have the typical aesthetic we think of when we say something is burned. If we burn dinner we throw it out. If a forest burns we can’t wait for it to grow back. Thus, this piece is about finding the beauty in the aftermath of a fire.