Events | The Natural World: Participating Artists |
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View Schedule of Artists' Celebration Events Learn more about the Artists' Celebration We are pleased to introduce the following artists who will participate in "The Natural World: An Artists' Celebration" as artists-in-residence at the Iris Griffith Centre between April and September 2007... For her project, Ms. Paul will create a unique Coast Salish welcoming pole. The seven-foot sculpture will be in female form. It will stand in front of an eight-foot traditional floor loom warped with copper and copper wire, and inlayed with stained glass. Water will run down and over the weaving, enhancing the tranquility of the surrounding environment. At night a luminous atmosphere will radiate through the woven copper onto the female figure. The pole will stand at the entrance to the Iris Griffith Centre where it will greet all visitors to the facility. Dionne will carve the welcoming pole in Sechelt between December 2006 and March 2007 but will create the woven sculpture on-site at the Centre in April 2007 where visitors will have a chance to view the creation process and speak with Dionne about her work. In addition, Dionne will offer periodic weaving classes to adults and to school-aged children to enhance community engagement, while teaching about traditional art forms and the importance of forests to First Nations peoples. The completion of the sculpture will be celebrated with a traditional pole raising ceremony and feast attended by members of the Sechelt Nation, the Lagoon Society, the local community, local schools, municipal officials, and neighbouring bands and Nations.
A professional artist with a long history, Ken Walters has been a working artist since graduating in visual arts in 1979. Ken has been involved in 33 one-man and group exhibitions in art galleries throughout the Lower Mainland. He has designed and created murals at a variety of venues. Now living on the Sunshine Coast, Ken has worked as a painter, ceramist, woodworker, illustrator of children’s books, and as a restorer of antique model railway coaches. From 1978 to 1988, he served as co-director of the White Rock Art Gallery, and in 1993, he won a public art competition to design a plaque for the sidewalk of City of Surrey Parkway. In 2006, Ken has just gone over 600 career paintings and completed his 15th mural, the last 10 in the Pender Harbour area. At age 65, Ken speaks passionately about the importance of arts mentoring programs for older artists to pass on skills and inspiration to younger generations. For their project, Emily and Ken will create a unique mural that will take advantage of the unique log frame of the Iris Griffith Centre building. The mural will involve regional landscapes and local ecology and will integrate a human presence amongst the natural scenes to illustrate that humans and the natural world are not isolated from one another and that we must learn to integrate and coexist. Ken and Emily will work together on the project, with Ken serving as Emily’s mentor and collaborator as he has in the past. Emily will use her skills and experience working with youth to offer a diversity of children’s arts programs during her month in residency. Programs will include painting classes for all ages, printmaking with leaves, taking casts of wildlife tracks in the mud, playing art/nature related games and creating some small scale group mural work. For their project, Sweet Cascadia will create a CD of at least five original songs for the Iris Griffith Centre. The songs will be written to complement the Centre itself, and the displays, and will be used in future Lagoon Society programs and special events. The musicians will interact with children in Nature School classes, offer songwriting workshops for adults, and provide at least one special public concert during their month in residence. Sweet Cascadia’s music will encourage both adults and children to reflect on the wonder of nature, their responsibilities as stewards in their home place and their part in the move towards a sustainable society. With insight and wit, Stewart describes himself as follows: Stewart will carry out his artist’s residency during an intense but short time frame over the course of a week. During his seven day period at the Iris Griffith Centre, he will conduct his painting outdoors, rain or shine, each day from morning to night, pausing only to sleep and eat, creating a series of paintings on different themes. In the event of rain, he will set up a free standing under cover area to conduct his work. This small artist’s "camp" and will have a bohemian aesthetic and follow in the tradition of Emily Carr and her use of a similar trailer for her painting expeditions in the Coastal BC Landscape. Stewart will invite the public to be present throughout the creation of the project. The public will be invited to engage the artist in an informal discussion of the work, the themes of the art and the Centre, or any other topic of interest, while observing the creative and logistical process in the production of a painting. This process will be interactive, as the observers, will have an opportunity to interact and influence both the artist and the artistic process itself. Alan’s artist-in-residence project will involve a photography collage exhibit related to the Caren Range. Located in the mountains above the Iris Griffith Centre, the Caren Range is a unique and important ecological treasure on the Sunshine Coast. Recognized as the ´oldest forest in Canada´, the ecosystem contains groves of the oldest known living Yellow Cedars, Mountain Hemlocks and Western Hemlocks in the world. At an elevation of approximately 1,000 metres, the Caren Range forest is essentially a 'cloud forest', with many fog-shrouded days and a long season of snow cover. This produces a spongy, wet, forest floor with beautiful moss gardens and ancient cedars festooned with moss and lichen. The Caren Range is well known for its great diversity of flora and fauna, including many rare and threatened species. For his artist’s residency project, Alan will spend a 24-hour period photographing within a 24-metre diameter. He plans incorporate numerous perspectives from the macro world to vistas; from dawn to late into the night; from abstract to realism. From this experience, he will create a large mural incorporating the different images. Community members will have the opportunity to watch Alan work with his slides at the Iris Griffith Centre and will be invited to accompany him on Caren Range scouting expeditions in advance of the 24-hour photography project. In addition, Alan will offer a series of slide presentations on nature-related themes and special wilderness areas, including the Caren Range, Atlin BC, Skowquiltz Valley on the mid-coast of BC, and the Gospel Rock area of the Sunshine Coast. During her month as artist in residence at the Iris Griffith Centre, Jan will produce a series of colour and black and white botanical and wildlife illustrations representing the typical birds, bugs and amphibians of the Ruby Lake Lagoon Nature Reserve in their natural wetland habitat. These illustrations will ultimately form part of permanent outdoor visual displays in the Reserve (i.e., information panels, signage, education points of interest on the trails, banners). They will used to produce a natural history wetland guidebook, including illustrated line drawings for children to use for colouring and learning wildlife identification. The public will be invited to visit Jan at the Centre to view and discuss the drawing, painting and preparation of the illustrations while she is working on site. In addition, Jan will offer special event days including demonstrations for active learning with participants sketching or painting while participating in guided nature walks.
For her artist-in-residence project, Annathea proposes to create a group of mixed media and multi media ‘portraits’ of plant and animal species and places within the Ruby Lake Lagoon Nature Reserve. The video/sound portraits will record particular ‘places’ within the Reserve through time to witness changes in light, environmental conditions, wildlife, etc. The goal is to condense the time frame in order to communicate the feeling of a place, and to be a witness. The mixed media paintings will focus on individual species, trees, or again, specific ‘places’, and will include writing on particular characteristics of the subject (i.e., historical uses, medicinal qualities, ecological role). As an outreach component of Annathea’s project, she plans to work with a group of Sunshine Coast young people on a short video project based in the Reserve, and filmed and narrated by the children.
A writer and editor and mother to a young child, Christine’s work recently appeared in Momentum Magazine. In 2004, Christine won first prize in non-fiction writing contest at the Surrey International Writer’s Conference Writing Contest. Christine graduated from University of Ottawa in 2002 with a BA in English and Women’s Studies, and has since taken several professional writing courses at Simon Fraser University. In 2000, in Ireland, Christine worked for Amnesty International, organizing volunteers and publishing an 18-page magazine for staff and volunteers. In India in 2001, she volunteered at a children’s home where she worked with children aged 3 to 17. While at the Centre, Christine will work on a book-length project on the topic of Pacific Salmon. Tentatively titled Taliesin after the god in Welsh mythology who is bestowed with the wisdom of the salmon, the book will weave historical, fictional, factual and mythological elements. It will look at myths surrounding the salmon as well as current day environment and sustainability issues affecting its habitat, spawning and survival. Christine also plans to establish permanent "reflection points" along existing trails in the Nature Reserve, to include notepads, pencils and a drop-off slot for people to contribute their observations and words to the vision of the Centre. While at the Centre, Christine will also offer public outreach activities in the form of readings, writing workshops and drop by writing/drop-in poetry/prose sessions. Framed collection of writing samples acquired over the month at workshops will be posted on the wall of the Centre.
To learn more about this initiative, please contact us at 604-883-9201 or by email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The Lagoon Society is very grateful to the generous contributions of the many private individuals, businesses, foundations, community groups, corporations, and government agencies that make up our many sponsors. We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Province of British Columbia.  RR#1 Site 20 C16 Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0 Phone/Fax: 604-883-9893 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Iris Griffith Interpretive Centre 15386 Sunshine Coast Highway 101 North (1KM south of Ruby Lake) Phone: 604-883-9201 Open Thursday-Sunday 10AM to 4PM
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Well-respected within her community, Dionne serves as the Sechelt Nation Cultural Coordinator and is at the forefront of efforts to maintain, strengthen and revitalize traditional aboriginal cultural practices, values and art forms in the context of contemporary society. Dionne is a member of a Salish weaving guild where she is learning traditional Coast Salish techniques of weaving. In addition, she has had the exceptional opportunity to work with Lawrence Paul (Yuxweluptun) as an apprentice and studio assistant to a master First Nations painter and internationally recognized artist. Dionne graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2005 and now serves as the Sechelt Nation Cultural Coordinator. 
An exceptional student and artist, Emily Gray is a young rising star on the Sunshine Coast. In 2005, Emily won a Governor General’s Award for achieving the highest academic standing in her high school graduating class and she has received numerous Fine Arts, Top Student, and Service Awards over the years. Emily is currently completing her second year of Fine Arts at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, but returns to her home in Egmont each summer. At home on the Sunshine Coast, she is an active community participant, teaching art classes for children, volunteering on various community initiatives, and working at the Egmont Heritage Centre. In 2004, together with mentor Ken Walters, Emily designed and created a 600 square foot mural at the Pender Harbour Aquatic Centre. In 2005, she independently designed and painted a 300 square foot mural for the Egmont Heritage Centre. 
Sweet Cascadia is a musical trio consisting of Mark Lebbell, Jenny Groves and Simon Hocking. Cumulatively, the members of the group have over 45 years of experience playing their instruments, including guitar, mandolin, stand-up bass and other stringed instruments; 25 years of songwriting experience; and involvement in five full-length album recordings, all in a variety of musical forms from folk to jazz, rock to children’s music. All three band members are certified teachers with six years of indoor classroom teaching and 35 years of outdoor ecological education background. 
An emerging artist, Stewart currently works as a full-time dad, but he dreams of pursuing a living through painting as his children reach school age. To date the bulk of his work has been paintings of cedar, Douglas fir, and arbutus trees, rocky shores with coastal forest mountain backdrops, flowers, breezy skies, and other natural scenes of coastal life. 
A well-known local photographer, Alan has published many magazine and book images, features and covers and held exhibitions on the Sunshine Coast and in Vancouver. Alan’s artwork and portfolio attest to his careful consideration and celebration of the natural environment. His work is thoughtful, powerful and provocative and has been recognized by many collectors and galleries as well as international photographic and nature organizations. Alan has won photo contests in Popular Photography Magazine, Photo Digest Magazine, and Photo Life Magazine, and in 2004, he was recognized with the Sunshine Coast Arts Council’s Gillian Lowndes Memorial Award for most outstanding artist on the Sunshine Coast. In addition to his art practice, Alan dedicates considerable time and effort to community groups and initiatives in support of protecting habitat and nature spaces. He is not just a talented local artist - Alan also demonstrates inspiring stewardship and citizenship. Alan’s public slide shows are extremely popular, informative and entertaining. Alan’s gentle character, warmth and humor never fail to deliver a strong message as well as captivate a crowd. 
Jan majored in Painting and Printmaking at the Vancouver School of Art and her teaching training continued in Art Education at the University of British Columbia. Jan’s illustration and rendering abilities have contributed to her fine art career with expertise in drawing, watercolor, pastel and oil painting. Showing in private galleries, solo and group exhibitions since the late 1970’s, her work is based realistic and colorful subjects including landscapes, interiors, and floral studies. In 2002, Jan’s work shifted to creating a collection of strong and vibrant oils, acrylics and smaller watercolor studies done on location to reflect the beauty and unique character of the local coastal surroundings. Keeping pace with the current technology in computer graphics and web media, Jan also does commercial illustration work for international corporate commissions and has contributed to many non-profit organizations and events with logos, paintings, illustrations and promotional materials. Jan has over 20 years of teaching experience all levels of fine arts, including teaching fine arts classes for Capilano College and participating in Artist in the School Programs. 
Annathea has studied and practiced art for more than 10 years, focusing on printmaking, painting, film and video. She completed her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in December 2004, graduating with honours and an interdisciplinary major. She is also a poet and has continues to explore the combination of writing and visual art. Annathea’s most recent body of work is inspired by forms found in the microcosmos of cells and organisms, as well as larger forms found in nature. In these recent abstract works, she has taken elements directly from the natural world, including animal, plant, cellular and microscopic features, and created "environments" where these familiar, but unidentifiable forms act and interact. She has extensive experience working with children and youth. 
