The Sunshine Coast Arts Council concurrently presents two exhibitions honouring the late Kasia Jabloska, an artist who lived in Garden Bay.
A Free Spirit is a selection of Jabloska's art in a variety of media. Life without Kasia is Thomas Ziorjen's series of digital montages created in response to the loss of Jabloska, his friend and art collaborator. The exhibition runs from April 6 to 24 at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt.
Ziorjen is originally from the Toronto area and has lived on the Sunshine Coast with his wife and two sons for the past eight years.
In 1997 he met Jabloska and they started working together. By 2001 they were collaborating on paintings and assemblages; some of these assemblages will be in the exhibition. The work he has done for this homage to Jabloska is a series of photo based digital montages, expressing the richness of life then and the hard hollow spaces now. "She was so closely tied to my creativity that after she died I began this series," he said. "At times it was like we were working together again."
Jabloska was born in 1961 in Warsaw, Poland, to parents who were both professionals. She grew up in an environment rich in cultural experiences. The household often hosted friends and family who were artists and musicians.
She escaped from communist Poland to Germany at age 20 and a year later came to Canada and continued her studies in early childhood education. She met her partner Mirek Kot in Ottawa, and after a year of world travel, the couple moved to the Sunshine Coast. Beginning in 1991, they spent four years building their unique home in Garden Bay. Before her untimely death in January 2004, Jabloska spent 10 years creating art. This passion led her to a broad variety of mediums, drawing, painting, clay and stone sculpting and making assemblages. Even without formal art training she produced work that was strong and direct and distinctly her own. In her artist's statement in 2002, she said, "I see sculptural form everywhere, art everywhere. Life is art to me."
There will be a reception for the exhibitions on Saturday, April 9 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the arts centre located at Trail and Medusa in Sechelt.
