Working with a 4x5” large-format film camera, artist Andreas Rutkauskas has been documenting the regeneration following wildfires in the Southern Interior of British Columbia since 2017. Initially prompted by the question of what the aftermath of a wildfire looked like firsthand, his understanding of the importance of fire on the land has been dramatically enhanced through this creative visual research.

For his installation, Rutkauskas selected components from original photographs made with his camera at four sites that burned on unceded Syilx territory between 2015 and 2020. Focusing exclusively on the trunks of charred Ponderosa and Lodgepole pine gave the viewer an opportunity to witness the process of regeneration from recently burned forest through varying degrees of succession. The source photographs were made between two months and three years following each fire’s occurrence.

While full-colour images were adhered to the back wall of the window space, silhouettes of other burned trees from around the Okanagan, also generated from his photographic archive, were presented as translucent vinyl cut-outs on the glass itself. Creating a sense of depth within the gallery space, his goal is to simulate the experience of standing in a forest. His technique takes its cues from the art of diorama construction, and other practices of illusion dating back to a time before photography.

After the Fire aimed to provide an alternative viewpoint to the sensationalist aesthetic of wildfire in popular media. The Okanagan is a fire-adapted ecosystem, and the Syilx maintained a balance between ecological processes and human influence through the practice of cultural burning. Rutkauskas hoped that the work could act as a conduit for discussions between various stakeholders on how we can live cooperatively with fire into the future.

Andreas Rutkauskas was born in Winnipeg (Treaty 1 territory, the ancestral and traditional homeland of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation) and currently resides on the unceded traditional territory of the Syilx (Okanagan Valley, British Columbia). 

His projects involve photography and video, often focusing on landscapes that have undergone changes due to a range of technologies; examples include surveillance along the Canada/U.S. border, cycles of industrialization & deindustrialization in Canada’s oil patch, and most recently, the aftermath and regeneration following wildfires in Western Canada.

Rutkauskas was the inaugural recipient of a residency with the Fondation Grantham pour l’art et l’environnement in 2020. In 2018, he was a Research Fellow with the Canadian Photography Institute, and he was a finalist for the Gabriele Basilico International Prize in Architecture and Landscape in 2016. His work has been exhibited in artist-run centres, public art galleries and museums across Canada, as well as internationally.

For more information about Rutkauskas and his work, visit his website.

Breath: the air is taken into or expelled from the lungs. 

Hansen’s artistic focus over the last few years explores the interconnectedness of all life forms on our planet. Whether it is comparing fungi to coral or creating new biomorphic forms, her encaustic sculptures will seem familiar to the viewer. 

This encaustic installation, entirely constructed from natural materials, considers the carbon cycle and the impact humanity is having upon it in the epoch of Anthropocene. Above all else humans require oxygen to live, to breathe, to take that single life-giving breath. And with an exhale we nourish that which keeps us alive. Take a deep breath and consider… 

The ocean and its plant life account for over half of the planet's oxygen production and absorb nearly one-third of the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels. Climate change and oceanic warming are resulting in the destruction of sensitive ecosystems integral to keeping the carbon cycle in balance.  

Coral reefs and kelp forests teem with colourful life, all living symbiotically and keeping the carbon cycle in equilibrium; but this coral reef lacks colour as it is symbolic of a bleached and dying ecosystem due to human activities, the husks and shells of the dead are all that remain. 

So, take a deep breath, and consider… 

Angela Hansen is a Lake Country-based artist and art instructor. She completed her BDes at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and her BEd from the University of Victoria. Angela creates primarily with encaustics, a beeswax-based painting and sculpting medium. Angela has worked with encaustic for over 20 years; its versatility of applications drives her art-making practice of both 2D and 3D works. She is inspired by forms found in the natural world, the human psyche, memory formation, and, more recently, a growing interest in ecological and environmental art practices as a factor in cultural transformations. Her recent works, a series of small wall-sculpture studies made of encaustic, natural tissue, twine and string, are inspired by Earth’s flora, and micro-fauna. She calls these biomorphic designs “Organimorphs”, as they look biologic, yet not recognizable as any particular one thing. 

For more information or to see more of her work, please visit angelahansenart.com, or follow her at @angelahansenart.

Patty Leinemann’s practice is filled with questions and uncertainty. When she creates artwork, Leinemann aims to bring a muddled mental idea into a physical form. Each step of her artistic process confronts this notion: beginning with the material used, through to the final composition. The stress and anxiety that inevitably comes with not knowing is in itself integral to the production of Leinemann’s completed art piece. Her process is exemplified by Socrates’ words: “I know that I know nothing.”

This past year the unknowing in Leinemann's life was exacerbated far beyond the imaginable. She knows she doesn't even have to ask you, the viewer, if you can relate. The litany of unknowns continues for us all.

The turbulent experience of dealing with a parent in long-term care was her nemesis. What is yours? Leinemann dedicates this installation to all who are struggling. Know that you are not alone.

Leinemann was also onsite to interact and manipulate a series of objects while focusing on the study of epistemology. Contemplating the theory of knowledge as a daily practice, she hoped to gain insights to the challenges we are sorting through. Leinemann was on location daily from noon until 1:00 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, March 26 to May 8th 2021.

Where Are You Really From? is an exploration by Moozhan Ahmadzadegan into the complex intersections of ethnicity, cultural hybridity, and nationality

Ahmadzadegan is an artist based on the traditional lands of the Syilx Okanagan People, also known as Kelowna, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UBC Okanagan. He is interested in the ritual conversation he frequently finds himself having as an Okanagan resident. He is often asked the question “where are you from?” by strangers upon first meeting. He responds, as a second-generation Canadian, that he is from Canada. The follow-up question is almost always the same, “where are you really from?”.

Language plays an important role in this work in two ways. On one level, he is interested in the way language can be used to unintentionally "other" individuals. And on another, he employs the use of Farsi and English text to navigate his cultural hybridity, exploring the ways in which both cultures overlap, blend together, and resist one another.

Ahmadzadegan uses communication and language as investigative tools into the ways we navigate our own experiences, identities and our perception of the 'other' to prompt viewers to consider their own biases and challenge what is understood to be 'Canadian'.

In the exhibition Backstitch, Nicole Young explored themes of community and the gift economy. Backstitch was a large scale art piece resembling a quilt, created from sewing together hand dyed textiles. All of the textiles in the work were a mix of materials that were donated to the artist by a community member, or that have been dyed and stained using plant matter gifted to her.

Young’s work took on a large shift in both style and form, as she is an environmental activist and advocates for the zero waste movement. Young noticed a disconnect between her work as an environmentalist and her work as an artist, because painting in acrylics is essentially painting with plastic. In order to bring these two facets together cohesively, she switched from using acrylic paints to creating inks and dyes out of plant matter. Since making this switch, Young has received an overwhelming amount of support from the community – family, friends, colleagues and strangers have been offering her inks that they make, plants from their gardens and food waste to use for dyeing, and leftover textiles that they have no use for. 

The title Backstitch refers to one of the strongest, most adaptable, and permanent hand stitches used in the tradition of sewing. A community is its strongest and most adaptable when members support one another, and this installation piece was a visual representation of the value in offering gifts freely to one another. 

Young took this project as an opportunity to engage with the community through art making, and to create a singular art piece at a much larger scale than she had ever worked before. It also posed a challenge for her as to how to approach her work, given that there was contributions from community members. While fabric has always played an integral role in her work, she had never used it in a way that relies so heavily on the generosity of others. Young was interested to see how the pieces of fabric would fit together and relate to one another. Her broader goal with this project is to continue exhibiting this installation piece at other galleries, adding more fabric to it at each gallery that she brings it to.

While living in Toulouse, France, on an exchange in 2019, Angela Gmeinweser was often overwhelmed by the amount of information in the places she visited. The “Gilets Jaunes” protests were taking place near her apartment and the streets were animated by shoppers, protesters, bangs of tear gas, and music. She struggled to make sense of these situations, perceiving only movements from pointed gestures, and only shapes in architecture. Her fixation on these individual elements lead her to question how she was making meaning from what I perceived and formed the foundation of my recent work.

Gmeinweser questions the process of making meaning from spaces by translating memories between different media including painting, maquettes, and audio. This process is similar to what Walter Benjamin’s explains in his essay The Task of the Translator. In his writing, he describes how each time a work is translated it elucidates a kernel of a language’s true meaning. Each time Gmeinweser translates a memory or idea between media she gets closer to the original emotion held in tension between individuals and spaces. An example of this way of working is Please Hold Still, the visual form of a memory that has a sound and physical shape in other iterations. The painting is situated in the process of forming meaning and is part of a larger chain of events which, similar to the moments in Toulouse, ripple out to reveal new realities. 

As a painter, Aiden de Vin uses mark-making to explore memories and emotions associated with place. The gestural brushstrokes in her paintings aim to represent memories of specific people, conversations and feelings. The architectural spaces in the paintings reference various nooks and corners from her home environment. 

de Vin explores how movement is a key feature in these paintings as our emotions and memories can live within domestic spaces. Memories also accumulate within domestic spaces, each building upon another in the same way that brushstrokes and colour build layers and atmosphere in a painting. 

For example, Mascara in my eye. Crying cause I’m pretty references mundane moments of getting ready intertwined with heartbreak and loss as each was felt within the same walls. 

 Colour allows for an entrance into the emotions of these works. Paint provides me with a way to explore how memories both build and break down the spaces in which we exist.

The Okanagan Nation has accepted the unique responsibility bestowed upon us by the Creator to serve for all time as protectors of the lands and waters in our territories, so that all living things return to us regenerated. When we take care of the land and water, the land and water takes care of us. This is our law.

-syilx Water Declaration excerpt

Working in the medium of vinyl, Front Lines explores a political approach removed from Louis’ traditional acrylic on canvas work. Using the aesthetics of street art to prompt discussion of indigenous sovereignty, and the contradictions between the words and actions of our politicians and judicial system, Louis references legal documents and political quotes illustrating how colonial approaches to land use, ownership and indigenous rights are structured to suppress the rights and independence of indigenous populations.

Louis stated “When we speak to the health and well being of our people, we speak to our responsibility to maintain the health and resiliency of the tmxʷ ulaxʷ (land) and the timxʷ (Four Food Chiefs). As our existence is intertwined and woven together with all other beings on this land, an alteration or destruction of this natural world will impact our direct relationship of living in harmony and balance. It is in this belief that we understand our inherent responsibility to protect the land and its waters.”

Sheldon Pierre Louis, a member of the Syilx Nation, is a multi disciplinary Syilx Artist. Sheldon's ancestral roots have influenced his works in painting, drawing, carving, and sculpting. Sheldon sits on the board of directors for the Arts Council of the North Okanagan in his second term as well sits at the Board for the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives. In his political capacity he also sits at the Greater Vernon Cultural Plan Committee. His work has been published in the Arts and Council Guide for the North Okanagan 2016 and 2017 as well as many news publications. Sheldon assisted Okanagan Indian Band attaining the 2016 FPCC Youth Engaged in the Arts Award and recently was awarded the FPCC 2020 Sharing Across Generations Arts Award. Sheldon is the lead visual artist of the Kama? Creative Aboriginal Arts Collective & is a member of Ullus Collective, both groups based in Syilx Art. He is also a member of the Re-Think 150: Indigenous Truth Collective a group of indigenous and non indigenous allies working to educate society of indigenous and environmental issues.

For more information about Louis and his work, please visit his website.

My Horse was Hit by Lightning explores ecology and masculinity in the context of anthropogenic climate crisis. The exhibition uses equipment to deconstruct the relationship between human and non-human. A 4x4 driver experiences bumpy terrain through suspension, padded seats, and steering columns. A gamer experiences their controller while their space-marine experiences weaponized body armour. Sportsmen, gamers, and outdoorsmen experience their equipment. Equipment is a mediator of human and nonhuman, a strained and inaccurate binary.

Lucas Glenn is an emerging, Okanagan-based artist. He's a 2015 graduate of UBC's Bachelor of Fine Arts program, and in fall 2021 will be attending University of Victoria's Graduate Studies. Glenn creates sculptures, installations, and digital works. His work mines science fiction and fantasy to address the systems of power that accelerate our climate crisis. He works with found materials like electronics, fake fur, lumber, camping gear, and snowmobile parts. With synthetic and natural materials, he aims to deconstruct the false boundary between human and what we call nature.

Glenn has exhibited at the Kelowna Art Gallery, the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Headbones Art Gallery, the Vernon Public Art Gallery, and Island Mountain Arts. For his work, Glenn received a 2017 Okanagan Arts Award, and a 2014 UBC Creative Studies Department Award. He exhibits regularly in collaboration with artist and brother, Mat Glenn. Lucas Glenn recently completed the Marie Manson Virtual Artist Residency in collaboration with Salmon Arm Arts Centre and Secwepemc Elder Louis Thomas (Neskonlith).

Mat Glenn is a graduate from the University of British Columbia Okanagan’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program with a major in visual arts and a minor in art history. Glenn is an emerging artist from Kelowna BC specializing in sculpture, installation, printmaking and digital media. His research explores materialism and ecological thought in the context of mass extinction. Glenn has curated exhibitions in the Okanagan including Chasten My Fantasies of Human Mastery at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art. This spring he was awarded the Creative Studies Department Award and exhibited at the Vernon Public Art gallery in the group show Emergence.

What is the Colour of the Wind? belongs to a new series of works “Color Natures” developed by Charles Chau since 2016 that aims to explore an experimental painterly style. Chau explains: "The process of adding layers and textures of color paints onto the canvas is itself multiple, evolving phenomena." 

Through observation, imagination, and other reflective interactions Chau builds marks in his paintings over days, weeks, or months, and in some works years of dialogue between him and the world around him.

Charles Chau is a contemporary artist originally from Hong Kong. He has hold solo exhibitions "Mountain Vastness" at the Fringe Gallery, Hong Kong (2013, Black Series); and the prestigious Opposite House, Beijing (2014, White Series) with his mega-size installations and paintings. 

Many art critics note that his work draws inspiration from modern architecture and traditional Chinese calligraphy. Chau holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Hong Kong, major in Philosophy and Fine Arts, and is now residing in Kelowna.

This installation was a part of a larger body of work collectively titled Connections, which includes both drawings and installation, all of which are process oriented.

Salé is attracted to patterns in nature, and their repetition among seemingly unrelated phenomena. She was initially drawn to the edges of trees and thickets with their branches’ varying densities and relationships to each other, including the spaces in between. From the start, She was also aware of the similarities between these images and neural networks, mycelial networks, circulatory systems and models of the universe and the World Wide Web. 

Joanne Salé earned her BFA from UBC-Okanagan in 2005, where she worked in sculpture, drawing, etching, and painting.  She has had solo exhibitions and been included in group exhibitions throughout the province.  Her professional activities have included teaching art, prop/set work for Runaway Moon Theatre, illustration work, and jurying group exhibitions. She is currently Head of Exhibits at Okanagan Science Centre.  Joanne has completed six artist residencies from 2008 to 2017. 

To learn more about Salé and her work, visit her website.