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.

Moozhan Ahmadzadegan‘s Where Are You Really From? is an exploration 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. 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'.

To view more of Moozhan’s art, check out his Instagram @moozhans_art

In Nicole Young’s exhibition Backstitch, the artist explored themes of community and the gift economy. The large-scale work, resembling a quilt, was created by sewing together hand-dyed textiles made from materials donated or gifted to the artist by community members.

Young’s work is informed by her role as an environmental activist and advocate for the zero waste movement. Noticing a disconnect between her work as an environmentalist and her work as an artist, Young pivoted her practice 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.

Nicole Young is an artist based on the traditional, unceded and occupied territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, BC.) Working in the confluence of visual arts, environmentalism and storytelling, Nicole’s works are as much science experiments as they are conversations on ways to approach climate justice. She creates her own pigments and dyes out of natural and often wild foraged materials including plant matter and minerals as a way to deepen her connection with the land, and to create a dialogue about waste-free practices. Moving seamlessly between large scale textile installations, works on canvas, garments and graceful drawings, Nicole’s works aesthetically resemble collage while maintaining their painterly qualities.

Born in Ontario, Nicole attended the University of British Columbia Okanagan where she received a BFA in Visual Arts and Art History, and studied studio arts and art history at the University of California Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and abroad since 2010, and her paintings are in private collections throughout the globe.

To view more of Nicole’s art, take a look at her website here: https://www.nicoleyoungart.com/

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, Sheldon Louis’ Front Lines explored 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.

Mat Glenn & Lucas Glenn’s My Horse was Hit by Lightning explored ecology and masculinity in the context of anthropogenic climate crisis. The exhibition used 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).

View his website here: https://lucasglenn.net/

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.

View his website here: https://matglenn.com/

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.

Joanne Salé’s Connections is 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.

Vikki Drummond finds beauty in the strange, the dark, the madcap and the silly. She is interested in a unique and unpredictable story over a happy ending. In this body of work, Drummond had taken a well-loved children’s tale and re-imagined it. Gazing at a tale from a different angle emphasizes the importance of storytelling and how a story’s message can affect collective perceptions. Depending on the interpretation of a story, something can be seen as macabre or joyous, it all depends on how it is told.

Drummond does not have a plan when she begins a painting. She may begin with an image or a shape. She uses colour as an essential form of communication and graphite lines in a reckless, errant way. The original markings could disappear altogether or remain peaking through as she worked in and out of the piece with paint, lines and any manner of tools.

Though figurative images may appear Drummond was not concerned with realistic representation. In fact she is happiest when a painting achieves a kind of jagged, twitchy finish. As a child’s creation might. She hoped to incite feelings of happy abandon, perhaps a touch of uneasiness and a somewhat compelling need to look again.

Vikki Drummond is an autodidact who left the BFA program at Okanagan College after one semester. She followed a boy into the Business Administration program and graduated with a Diploma in Marketing. She then spent 20+ years in Sales & Marketing, eventually meeting her husband and owning/operating a restaurant and bar. She left her position with a multi-national company to have a second child and found her way back to her love of art in 2012. She now has a studio and gallery in historic FanTan Alley, downtown Victoria BC. She lives minutes away with her husband and 2 lively dogs.

For more information about Drummond and her work, visit her website here: https://vikkidrummondart.com/

 Brit Bachmann’s Aidan Comes Home was a vinyl-based wall installation. With the appearance of a line drawing pulled straight from a sketchbook, Bachmann’s highly personal installation filled the Alternator’s window exhibition area. Her piece was a continuous-line “drawing” that documented changing facial expressions.

Aidan Comes Home focused on the line as a metaphor for our lives and converging narratives of strangers and friends. The drawing documented a personal moment once witnessed. Bachmann’s work is known to voyeuristically chronicle the everyday and the intimate with a linear flare that can only be traced back to the hand that made it. Her drawings, made with a single line, illustrate a sequence of figures and actions that compose a single, often fleeting, moment. Aidan Comes Home was no exception, and flowed synonymously with the hallway that the display occupied. With visual emphasis on Aidan’s facial expressions, Brit explored both staged and organic movement.

Brit Bachmann is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada, on unceded lands belonging to the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She is the Executive Director of UNIT/PITT Society for Art and Critical Awareness, and co-founder of ReIssue.pub, an art writing partnership between UNIT/PITT and VIVO Media Arts Centre.

Bachmann has previously worked in administration and outreach at VIVO, The Cinematheque, Capture Photography Festival; and notably, as Editor-In-Chief of Discorder Magazine (2015-18). She is a board member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (PAARC) on behalf of UNIT/PITT. Brit has served on the programming committee of CFRO Vancouver Co-op Radio (2015-18), and the Polaris Music Prize jury (2016-19). She has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of British Columbia–Okanagan.

In addition to cultural labour, Bachmann maintains a visual, sculptural and sound art practice working predominantly with clay and radio.

For more information about Bachmann and her work, visit her website.

Jarod Charzewski’s sculptural installation Knox Mountain - Rearranged used discarded clothing from local second-hand stores. Sculpting with the colours and textures of post-consumer textiles, he built geological forms to create the appearance of sedimentary rock. Local residents might’ve found their old pants or jackets transformed into an organic landscape reflecting the cultural values of our consumer-driven society. 

Working outside the gallery, Charzewski transported one of his sculptures throughout the city on the back of a trailer. These new outcroppings appeared within the city, challenging individuals to consider their own consumer habits. Like sedimentary rock, these ways of being can also be transformed over time and with pressure, often into unexpected forms.

Charzewski’s work is influenced by his experience growing up in the inner city of Winnipeg and summers spent in rural Manitoba. In his art, the geology and changing ephemeral qualities of light and climate of the Canadian prairies is moulded within a critical urban awareness. 

Jarod Charzewski grew up in the inner city of Winnipeg where the attitudes and esthetics of an urban setting tookhold. He also spent time on a family farm in rural Manitoba. This combination of surroundings is where he gained appreciation for natural and manufactured landscapes. He fuels his art with visuals of change; landscapes and recreates aesthetics that investigate mankind's evolving influence. Artistically he uses these sensations to release ethereality in site-specific experiences.

Charzewski holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba (1996) and an MFA from the University of Minnesota (2005). He has received artist grants from several US and Canadian arts organizations including the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts and received a Puffin Award for the environmental content of his work. He has exhibited across the US and Canada including such venues as the Grand Canyon National Park site specific installation, Le Biennale de Montréal in Montreal Quebec, the Bunnell Arts Center in Homer Alaska. In addition, in Spring of 2018 he had a mid career retrospective at the Begovich Gallery at the University of Southern California, Fullerton. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina

For more information about Charzewski’s work, visit his website.