The 20th anniversary of the Friends of the Gallery show (FOG) opened at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt this week with the work of 80 participants, one from each artist, that tend toward the colourful and exceptional, with just a smattering of the mediocre and uneventful.
The majority of the exhibits are paintings, with a few three dimensional pieces. One of the more eye catching is Tam Harrington's giant Skull, a head made of metal assemblage with faintly recognizable shiny parts and tiny skull teeth. Junco Jan's installation using children's toys, Over-growth/Undergrowth, seems comical at first until the viewer looks closely at the proliferation of fire trucks and police cars on the impossibly gridlocked bridge. Bill Thomson's assemblage, Recycled Coho, made of plywood, licence plates and bottle tops, among other detritus, is a sure winner. Although there are also a few exhibits of fabric art, it is the painters, photographers and printmakers who run the show.
Lee Croy's Life Pulse Type II is an example of her printmaking skills featuring her trademark hands in motion. Two outstanding giclee prints are well worth the trip: Tella Sametz has depicted a seagull in flight surrounded by its roosting comrades in her Morning Meeting at Davis Bay Pier. Genevieve Lamarchand's giclee print of a dapper, elderly man, Joseph-Yves, captures his personality in his wry expression.
Boats and the ocean are popular themes in local art. June Malaka has proved herself expert with the depiction of fishing boats, and Marilyn MacDonald truly captures the thrill of the breezes with her painting of sailboats in action. Sheila Page's Kwantna shows how far she has come with her art; it features two vintage boats moored together peaceably, like an elderly couple on vacation.
Fiery reds and arresting yellows are popular: Enid Harrison depicts poppies so lively and vivid they dance on the canvas. Pauline Hurley gives the viewer an in-your- face look at a papaya. When seen this way, it does seem a strange fruit, open to artistic possibilities. Beth Jankola features a fiery red sun in her untitled abstract. Donna Balma presents one of her series of paintings that shows the backs of people's heads in the colourful Randeesh.
One other colourful painting and a personal favourite is Jillian King's Monday in Nova Scotia. Bright splashes of laundry wave over the ocean from a clothesline. It's obvious that this is not a B.C. coast but the treeless shoreline of a Maritime province on a breezy, spring day.
Heather Conn shows her bicycle photograph, No Free Ride in the Big Apple, as a teaser for the next show coming to the Arts Centre. Conn will be opening on Feb. 21 with Maya on the Playa, an exhibit of her photography mostly taken at the Burning Man Festival. The FOG show continues until Feb. 18. Arts Centre hours are Wednesdays to Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m.
