This is a happy story. Three artists - good friends - met over a glass of wine one day to explore a possible theme for their collaborative show at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery.
Glass artist Susan Furze, painter and model-maker Coralie Swaney and painter Jan Poynter met and became friends when they were members of another Gibsons gallery. They had all worked together before - Furze and Poynter produced a intriguing show last summer that combined their talents in Greek myth-themed work. Swaney became well known through her classes at the Fibre Arts Festival where she taught students to make her distinctive and comical character models from polymer clay.
The trio turned to friends and family with the question - what is your happy hour? And they weren't talking about cheap drinks. Rather, this was about asking you to describe thosetimes when you enjoy an hour of your own bliss, whether in story, memory or dreams. Once they gathered their research, a list of happy hours, they worked alone to represent the experiences in art, and they didn't see each other's work until the show was ready for viewing. Yet, remarkably, many of their pieces depict the same experiences.
What was the number one of happy hours? Quiet time alone, reading a book. Both Poynter and Swaney painted a young man, in both cases, lost in the pages. Poynter also shows another superb acrylic entitled Thursday Papers. In the painting, tourists sit in the sunny square of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, catching up with the news from home in their foreign language newspapers. Each is wrapped in his or her own cocoon of reading pleasure, alone in a crowd.
Interestingly, many of the happy hour experiences are pursued solo - or perhaps with only the family dog for company: feet up in the bow of a yacht or feet up in a bathtub full of bubbles. Fishing in a stream. Riding a horse. Breakfast at a favourite café. Poynter's painting of Montreal street musicians breathes happiness, and her sketch book with its original drawing is on show also.
Some stories hark back to childhood: a happy hour for a boy might have been carrying lunch in his Davy Crockett lunch box, eating a white bread sandwich while reading a Superman comic book, as in Swaney's painting Hero Sandwich. And yes, drinks were sometimes involved: a glass of cider at the Fish and Eel pub in England painted by Swaney, or Gin and Panic, laminated and fused glass by Furze. The glass artist often uses attractive liquor bottles as raw material in her work.
The show's signature piece, Cocktail Hour, is based on a happy hour for Swaney. The painting is a collage of a rooster with extensive plumage (the cock tail) over a giant juicy drink with a little umbrella on it.
"When I was 19 and lying on a white sandy beach in Fiji," she recalled. "A waiter brought along one of those big drinks full of fruit. It was a happy hour."
Swaney is also showing some of her multi-media characters from the Happy Hours Retirement Village, and they are great fun. Gibsons residents might recognize one of the models, the guy in a funny hat called Harry Baynes, based on Coast photographer Barry Haynes. The real Haynes is reportedly delighted with his image. "Half the fun in the show is to read the stories," Furze said, and each image is detailed in a paragraph mounted with the painting.
On another wall, visitors to the GPAG can write about their own happy hours. At their opening reception Aug. 20, more than 100 visitors turned out and began to add their comments. "In bed with a good book - or someone who wrote one," commented one viewer.
The show has been sponsored by a dental practice, Dr. Donald Bland and Mary Findlay. The artists thank them but are sorry to report that no one mentioned going to the dentist as one of their happier memories.
A Happy Hour is at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery, #201 - 287 Gower Point Rd., and runs until Sept. 26. See www.gibsonspublicgallery.ca for more.
