CANMORE – With Alberta Culture Days wrapping up September with a variety of arts and culture day events around town, Elevation Gallery will be hosting its exhibit opening re:View and officially launching Canmore’s first gallery walk.
Re:View revisits the work of Bow Valley artists who have featured their art pieces at Elevation Gallery in the past 20 years. The name re:View plays on the idea of view, the picturesque landscape of the Bow Valley and the how artists navigate their careers in the Bow Valley.
“We’re surrounded by such an impacting [view], such grandeur that it’s kind of an assumption that why wouldn’t you paint that,” said Elevation Gallery director and owner Cheryl Baxter.
“I think there’s a little identity crisis that a lot of Bow Valley artists who are doing something different, contemporary artists, abstract artists – there’s a bit of an identity crisis in people questioning, why wouldn’t you just be painting the landscape all the time?”
While many of the artists from the Bow Valley were at some point taking inspiration from the landscape, re:View focuses more on their work outside of landscape art.
“I was feeling nostalgic and I wanted to look back at the careers of some of these very unusual Bow Valley artists,” Baxter said.
During Baxter’s nearly two decade career at Elevation Gallery, she witnessed the inception of many Bow Valley artists right there in her gallery.
“The interesting part about this show is the Bow Valley artists that I represented, I’ve seen them from the very beginnings of their careers and then this incredible evolution, so it is a great honour of my career … and all of them have transitioned so much,” Baxter said.
Featuring local artists like Chrissy Nickerson, Pascale Ouellet, Michael Camerson, Conrad Habing, Wanda Ellerbeck, Tony Bloom, Karen Maiolo, Lucie Bause and Don McIntyre, re:View is on display at Elevation Gallery, starting Friday (Sept. 27).
Along with the exhibit opening will be artist talks and demos from featured artists. The following day will feature Canmore’s first Downtown Gallery Walk hosted from 10 a.m. Canmore’s downtown houses many art galleries, though in recent years it has almost boomed.
“Certainly there’s a much changed presence of the street [in] the last year. All of a sudden, new galleries have popped up,” Baxter said.
Eight art galleries located from Spring Creek Drive’s Edge Gallery down Eighth Street towards Fallen Leaf Gallery have been conveniently mapped out for locals and visitors in time for Alberta Culture Days.
Other featured galleries include: Avens Gallery, Project A, Carter-Ryan Gallery, Elevation Gallery, Art Country Canada and Hoehn Walker Gallery.
“Each gallery has a very different identity and that’s a great thing and it’s a perfect opportunity for them to shine a light on what they’re individual identity is,” Baxter said.
For Alberta Culture Days, each participating gallery will be hosting an event, including artist demonstrations, artist talks, or opening a new art exhibition.
“The Edge Gallery in Spring Creek, he’s an artist himself and he does this really intricate style of collage work and he’ll be demoing that day. There’s just a lot of really interesting things happening. Project A Gallery, she’s got a couple of her artists coming in during that day,” Baxter said.
“I think it’s the time where the public, if it’s local, they can really see what the galleries are about.”
Re:View will be on at the Elevation Gallery with an opening reception on Saturday (Sept. 28) until Oct. 11 where people can revel in the work of local Bow Valley artists. The map of the Downtown Gallery Walk will also be available at the Elevation Gallery and each participating art gallery.
