When you visit the current show at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt, take the time to look for details. Bring your glasses if you will, to peer right inside the collage work of Halfmoon Bay's Katherine Johnston and the mixed media assemblage of Roberts Creek artist Eric Allen Montgomery. There are stories to be told in among Johnston's collages and visual puns to be unravelled in Montgomery's trademark memory boxes and other three dimensional work.
Here are some questions to pique your interest. How many different textures can you find in Johnston's depiction of anude, entitled Tuesday Morning? Who is the patron saint of starving artists, according to Montgomery? Where have you seen Johnston's Homage to Tom #1 before? What Pink Floyd album provides a medium for Montgomery's work Thought I'd Something More To Say? There are no prizes for correct answers, but they should add to your enjoyment of these richly detailed artworks.
Johnston has worked in pastels, oils and acrylics for many years now, following a career in photojournalism.
"I was looking for a different way to paint," she says, so she bought a book about collage and experimented. She found that magazine pages gave the best quality material, and she particularly liked the textures she could find in pictures of fabric, rocks and water.
"Part of the joy is finding the right colours," she says.
For some reason, magazine ads seem to use more reds, greens and blues than other shades. The search was on for yellows and browns with her neighbours helping by gathering hundreds of magazines. She sat by the TV ripping and tearing pieces of paper until she admits she's become quite obsessive about it. The results for her exhibit, Piecing it Together, are stunning. Her homage to Van Gogh, entitled Simply Vincent, manages to convey movement through the use of bricklike strips that she has cut, rather than torn. Johnston has always painted still life, and she now reproduces them in collage. Blue Bottles was her first collage; it depicts the same scene as a previous painting. Losses, a landscape of fish swimming in a stream, uses sequins amid the paper collage to render the fish more clearly and make a statement about the environment.
Montgomery's show, Souvenirs, Relics and Detritus, gives a voyeuristic peek into the mind of the artist. This is his first solo show in five years, though he organized last summer's Art Craft Excellence show in Sechelt. "This is one of the first shows that's about me," he says.
He works with three dimensional assemblage or, as it is sometimes called, bricolage. This French word gives rise to our English word bric-a-brac, and it is this collection of objects, memorabilia, discards and gew-gaws that have been found, bought, made or altered that form the basis of his work. The classic memory boxes are featured in a group of three that gives tribute to his grandmother. Inside the boxes we see an old photograph of granny rowing, we laugh over one of her favourite witty sayings and learn a piece of arcane lore in Keep Your Fork, Duke.
Some of the alterations involve one of Montgomery's other skills - sandblasting on glass, for example, in the piece Prunin'. Not only is the glass case decorated in this way, he has also etched a design on a pair of granny spectacles within. Many of the pieces involve boxes that can be opened, gently, so the viewer can see the collection of arranged items. Some of the items have inspired the work. For example, when he found a joker with particularly big ears depicted on a playing card, the figure had to be displayed wearing headphones and listening to Pink Floyd.
One segment of the show gathers the handmade gifts that Montgomery has created for his wife, Erin, over each anniversary. Though many of the references are personal ones between the couple, the overall effect - 10 years of anniversary souvenirs - has continuity. It is a body of work in its own right.The show continues until Dec. 18. The centre is open Wednesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.
