Our Team
Gallery Manager: Petrina McNeill is a printmaker originally from England who relocated to Canada in 2010. Completing her Masters degree in Printmaking at Northampton University in 2001, McNeill combines her arts education with over fifteen years of business administration. Her career has included experience as diverse as being a picture researcher at a photograph library to overseeing manufacturing operations, administration and logistics. Since moving to the Okanagan McNeill’s own artwork has investigated notions of place and home and how to map one’s self into that new home. McNeill works with a combination of print techniques including monoprint, collagraph and etching.
Gallery Curator: Wanda Lock was born in Oliver, British Columbia in 1969. In 1989 she enrolled into the Fine Arts Diploma program at Okanagan College before transferring to Emily Carr College of Art & Design where she graduated in 1992 with a studio major in painting. Lock returned to the Okanagan in 1992, and since then she has had numerous exhibitions throughout the Okanagan.Wanda was the manager of Opus Framing and Art Supplies in Kelowna from 1995 to 2006 and has taught art classes and workshops at the Kelowna Art Gallery. According to her significant other, Wanda watches too many coming of age movies. She is also known to Pearl Jam and even a bit of Soundgarden while working in her studio. She is not sure what her fondness of grunge music or teenage angst movies have in common with her current body of work but she is convinced that all will become clear in good time.
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Co-Community Engagement Coordinator: Pippa Dean-Veerman is a Lake Country artist and educator, thrilled to work with Alison Beaumont to support the Lake Country Art Gallery in the ArtHouse and community. Pippa has been an art advocate in many places of learning in the Okanagan and West Kootenay since 1989. Having completed her Masters in Art Education (U. Vic) in 2008, she believes that studio thinking and artistic process are inherent in all of us and foundational to 21st century learning. Being an adventurer, she aspires to inspire and enable individual and collaborative voice (‘me’ and ‘we’) through art.
Pippa’s art practice began young, playing along the shores of Lake Ontario with her artist mother and siblings. Pippa’s art practice of conceptually based fibre/eco art/assemblage and photography invite a contemplation of place, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. In both her art and educational practices, local awareness, reciprocity and situation in place within the human and non-human world, are paramount. Having shared her ideas with provincial, national and international associations of art educators Pippa is happy to cycle around closer to home, generating ideas at the ArtHouse and our Public Art Commission (since 2007). |
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Community Engagement Coordinator Alison Beaumont
Growing up in Bingley, a small town in the county of West Yorkshire in England, Alison started with an interest in photography in high school, I continued on to college to study Art & Design, then to Staffordshire University to complete a BA(hons) in Photography. After meeting her husband (also from the UK) they moved to Lake Country, BC in 2008. Alison's work has developed over time, currently focusing on using photography, video & sound to explore space and inward reflection. With a keen interest in the therapeutic nature of photography Alison studied the subject at Robert Gordon University in Scotland. Extending from this Alison's work continues to grow as she explores themes of identity, loss, mindfulness and expression of feelings. Alison has been teaching digital photography courses at Okanagan College since 2017 having taught over 250 students, as well as phone photography and social media workshops in community. Also in 2020 as part of the "Winter Gathering" exhibition at Lake Country Art Gallery, Alison worked with Pippa Dean-Veerman and the grade 3 class from Oyama Traditional School to create installation art. |
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2021 Gallery Assistant: Michaela Bridgemohan is currently an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan and received her BFA (with Distinction) from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2017. As a Canadian interdisciplinary artist of Jamaican and Australian descent, her artistic practice examines land, intuitive making, magpie gathering, superstitions, drawing, sculpture, and installation all to enhance the landscape of Black mixed-race subjectivity. Bridgemohan has collaborated with artists and facilitated community-engaged performances, workshops, artist talks, and panels. She has been exhibited across Canada and in Australia. These exhibitions mainly reflect various intersections of contemporary Blackness and Feminism. Exhibitions include the Feminist Art Collective (Toronto ON), Diasporic Futurisms (Toronto ON), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton AB), Stride Gallery (Calgary AB), Marion Nicoll Gallery (Calgary AB), Whitebox Gallery (Brisbane QLD) and Jugglers Art Space (Brisbane QLD). She was also graciously awarded the Graduate Deans Entrance Scholarship from UBCO in 2020 and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts – Visual Arts and New Media Grant in 2018.
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Summer 2021 Community Engagement Assistant: Faith Wandler was born in 1998 in Penticton, British Columbia. Raised most of her life in the Okanagan, she is a recent graduate from UBC Okanagan’s BFA Program. Faith’s main use of materials consists of handmade papers, acrylic ink, typewriting and embroidering. She works with conceptual craft consisting of handbound books, scrolls and journal type pieces. Her context revolves around her struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and how repetitive internal experiences such as intrusive thoughts can be released through the act of creation. Her works have been shown in multiple shows at UBC Okanagan’s Fina Gallery, 2021’s Art on the Line fundraising event and her grad work is currently being shown at Vernon Public Art Gallery May 27 until July 21 2021.
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Directors that lead the way ...
President of The Lake Country Art Gallery Society: Dr. Sharon McCoubrey is an art educator and the Coordinator of Community Engagement for the Faculty of Education at UBC Okanagan. She obtained her Bachelor of Education and Master of Education Degrees from the University of Victoria and her Doctorate Degree from UBC, all in art education. Dr. McCoubrey has been the recipient of several Excellence in Art Education Awards, and has also been presented with the Order of Lake Country for her work in Public Art, a BC Achievement Award, and the UBC Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in professional and community work, and most recently the Queens Diamond Jubilee Medal. Dr. McCoubrey’s areas of research include many aspects of art education and public art, teacher education, intergenerational learning, early learning, and aboriginal education. Dr. McCoubrey is Past-President of the Canadian Society for Education through Art and has been on the British Columbia Art Teachers’ Association Executive for over 20 years. She is currently Past President of the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan, is a director of the Central Okanagan Foundation, Chair of the Lake Country Public Art Commission, is President of the Lake Country Art Gallery Society, and is in her 15th year as Chairperson of Lake Country Artwalk.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2021Sharon McCoubrey - President
Rick Davidson - Vice President Denise Patrick - Treasurer Anne Wise - recording Secretary Moozhan Ahmadzadegan Hana Hamaguchi Shelley Johnson Ann MacLeod Adrianne Singleton Mauda Tamez Albert VanEe |
... and many thanks go out to our amazing team of volunteers many of whom are here to greet you each day in the gallery. Others work behind the scenes or help with garden and facility maintenance. Without their dedication, knowledge and enthusiasm we could not offer the wonderful welcome that has become the signature of the Lake Country Art Gallery experience.
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer or joining a supporting committee, please drop in or call the gallery for more information or click below. |