“It takes a certain type of hardiness for a creative person to share their works with the public,” wrote author E.A. Bucchianeri. That observation is borne out at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG) this month at the show entitled Coast Creatives: On The Wall – Off the Wall, A Celebration of Self-Expression in Words and Art. It’s a mouthful, but show curator Janice Williams means every word, and she and her hardy contributing artists have done it with relish.
The show’s theme, Williams said in an interview at the Nov. 10 opening reception, is “the expression of that drive that makes you create something, whether or not you think it’s going to sell, whether or not you think it has any meaning, whether or not anybody else likes it,” she said. “I asked everybody to bring in one of those kinds of pieces.”
More than 60 visual artists responded to Williams’s call, bringing just plain odd or confessional or nightmarish or deeply sarcastic or simply beautiful works, in painting, photos, fabric and various mixes of media. Arguably, you can’t go to any extreme in art so outrageous that it has no artistic value. Sometimes the more “off the wall,” the better.
Sunshine Coast painter Maurice Spira has never shied from controversy. His contribution is a large, earthy brown, vertical illustration called Triumph of Theology. It is not a celebration of theistic religion, but the opposite, in a manner you could call excremental. “It’s disrespectful,” Spira admitted.
Williams’s theme also clearly resonated with diverse artist Robert Studer, who contributed a visceral piece called Forbidden Fruit. It’s a spindly section of tree limb, resembling a very large desiccated, alien insect, which has been roped like a prisoner – or lover – to a wooden chair.
“Sometimes an artist will do work and think, ‘How am I going to show this? There’s no audience for it,’” Studer said. “Janice has created an exhibition to create an audience for those kind of works that allow artists to step out of the box a bit.”
Noir writer and sculptor Jim Christy offered up a fun three-dimensional work that mashed a harried-looking woman’s face and a campy robot. It’s called My Mom.
“That’s an exact portrait of my mother,” Christy said. When asked doubtfully if there could possibly be any resemblance to his mom, he replied, “You haven’t met her yet.”
The highly varied visual show is only one aspect of this weeks-long celebration. There will be five, two-hour, live-mic events, featuring musicians, poets, story-tellers and enthusiasts of many kinds. The schedule is on the GPAG website, and Williams wanted to reassure that the described themes of the live-mic events will be subject to spontaneous alteration. “It will be eclectic,” Williams said.
The exhibition runs to Dec. 2, with the final live event on Wednesday, Nov. 28. The show is sponsored by Wilson Creek UBrew and Dr. Lorne Berman of the Sechelt Dental Centre.
