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Summer shows heat up area art galleries

Colours of summer are captured at area art galleries
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Alcheringa Gallery welcomes Sacred Geometry

The colours of summer are captured in local art galleries this August.

In addition to Saturday’s art events on the Avenue and the coming Bowker Creek Brush Up (see related stories page A3 and A5) galleries are introducing a variety of new exhibits and new artists.

Stop by Oak Bay’s Avenue Gallery to enjoy work by painter Lorna Dockstader and jewellers Sandra Noble Goss and Andrea Roberts.

Dockstader has been painting for more than 20 years and was elected a senior signature member of the Federation of Canadian Artists in 2002. She has gained recognition for her strong designs which optimize the use of contrasts, varied shapes and rhythms.

Noble Goss has been a full-time professional jewellery artist since 1973, studying at Hornsey College of Art in London and George Brown College in Toronto. Her special passion for etching techniques enables her to use both drawn and original photographic images in her work.

Raised in Germany, Roberts graduated as a certified goldsmith from the College for Goldsmiths in Pforzheim before establishing her studio in Vancouver. In 2004 one of Roberts’ pieces was commissioned by former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson as a present of state for Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway representing Canadian Arts and Craft.

Gage Gallery celebrates its second birthday Friday, Aug. 12 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Gage Gallery Arts Collective, where the current group show Staccato concludes Saturday, Aug. 13.

Eclectic Gallery welcomes plein air painter Marie Nagel through Sept. 3.

Nagel’s abstract landscape paintings capture an elemental quality of the West Coast environment, portraying the dynamic energy without trying to be representational.

The University of Victoria’s Legacy Maltwood in McPherson Library has opened a new exhibition that brings together the art and writing of UVic alumnus Glenn E. Howarth, a pillar in Victoria’s arts scene from the late 1970s until his death in 2009.

The Averted Eye Sees draws on UVic’s significant collection of Howarth paintings, as well as Howarth’s writing, sketches, ephemera and digital archive, part of the regional artists archive initiative of UVic’s Special Collections and University Archives.

An innovative creator and inspired teacher, Howarth sought to communicate the artistic process and the perceptual functions of the eye and brain that contribute to visual perception, the gallery notes. He was also responsible for innovations in computer graphic art in the early 1980s, as an artist-in-residence in UVic’s engineering department with Dr. Ernest Chang.

Curated by Jenelle M. Pasiechnik, the exhibit continues to Oct. 23.

Downtown, Madrona Gallery captures the spirit of the season with its seventh annual Colours of Summer: Group Exhibition, showing through Aug. 17. This group show features works from the gallery’s nationally recognized stable of artists and select works from its collection of historic Canadian art. Featured artists include Shuvinai Ashoona, Clayton Anderson, Nicholas Bott, Rick Bond, Karel Doruyter, Hashim Hannoon, Meghan Hildebrand, John Lennard, Tim Pitsiulak, Ningeokuluk Teevee, Corrinne Wolcoski, Sean Yelland and more.

At Alcheringa Gallery, Sacred Geometry bursts open the boundaries of traditional Coast Salish content as artist Dylan Thomas rediscovers his voice and new working direction.

Using mathematical tessellations and algorithms, Thomas toys with the natural beauty imagined into existence.

“From the pattern-hungry perspective of the human mind, nature seems to be written in the language of mathematic ... from the concentric growth rings inside a tree, to the radial symmetry of flower pedal arrangements, to the logarithmic spirals of mollusk shells, geometry pervades the Cosmos,” he writes.

Sacred Geometry continues to Aug. 31. Join the gallery for an opening reception Saturday, Aug. 6, from 2 to 5 p.m. and an artist talk Saturday. Aug. 13 at 2 p.m.

While downtown, visit the Bateman Centre to take in the special exhibit The Resilience of the People, A visual History of the traditional territory of the Lekwungen/Songhees People, showing through Sept. 30.

Produced in partnership with the Songhees People, this visual history of Greater Victoria includes maps, drawings, artifacts and unique photographs exploring the complexities of the lands around them and the First Nations’ resilient relationship to ancestral resources up to the present day. Traditional knowledge of species, habitats and customs are highlighted from the Gorge Waterway through to Oak Bay and Discovery and Chatham Islands.

 

editor@oakbaynews.com