A range in esthetic and mixed media for everyone’s appetite can be currently found in one space. Jewelry, ceramics, glass, wood and metalwork are all currently being displayed in the Canmore Art Guild Gallery at Elevation Place.
The exhibit, entitled Off the Wall, offers the public a showcase of three dimensional art with all facets of media covered by the participating artists.
The variety of mixed art was a perfect fit for new local artist Craig Cooper, who has two pieces of his own on display in Off the Wall.
Photography, frames and furniture are what Cooper enjoys creating. He can take the photo, make you a frame to eloquently highlight the picture and, while he’s at it, construct a beautiful new table or cabinet to showcase said photo.
“I joined CAG about six months ago and I heard about the exhibit. It’s been all about my photography and frames until now, but this exhibit came and I knew I had some tables I wanted to supply,” said Cooper. “That worked out so well, I’ve just kept going ever since then.”
A romantic at heart, Cooper’s fiancée wanted a certain style of table. He found himself falling for woodworking just as fast as he did for the woman. “She wanted a slate in it and she wanted two levels,” said Cooper. “When I’m making my own thing, I take what I have and put it together in a beautiful way. If someone comes to me with an idea, I take what they want and figure out how to do the same – I haven’t had anything brought to me yet that I haven’t been able to do.”
Cooper was last living in Golden, B.C. and had been commuting between there and Canmore for the last year, but now calls the Bow Valley home. “It was frustrating, just trying to make something with half your tools here and half my tools there, it’s nice to just be here.
“Now I have a shop, I permanently moved here at the end of August. I went into the Canmore Trade Fair and I had three or four members of the guild come up to me and say, ‘your stuff would look good in our gallery and the framing itself is good for other artists’,” Cooper said.
“Most of my pieces are similar – a big fat piece of wood with a piece of slate embedded into it. Often I work with wood bottoming (for the tables) but there are metal frames I found and reclaimed. Since I have a small shop, once I make a find like that I make it and get it out of there as soon as I can,” explained Cooper on his love of working with found material. “If it’s something I think I can use and make into something nice again I’ll take it – there’s always stuff.”
Cooper’s signature style involves a routed veneer on his table sides. “I’ll use whatever I want,” he said on the types of wood chosen for his projects. Cooper added he likes the challenge of meeting a client’s needs to accommodate existing furniture and esthetic.
“Someone came to me two weeks ago and wanted a reclaimed wood piece to match the wood pieces they had already, and I ended up building them a triangular table that would fit perfectly with that. I have a signature style, but I can do whatever you need as long as it’s woodworking.”
The Off the Wall exhibit at CAG Gallery in Elevation Place runs until Nov. 26.
For more information on Cooper’s Custom Woodworks and photography visit, www.cooperscustomwoodworks.com and www.coopersphotos.zenfolio.com.
