Sandra Kessler is an Okanagan based artist who works with a wide variety of mediums. In her exhibition, Moving Beyond, she focused on a series of abstract and floral pieces that were influenced by the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

These acrylic and watercolour works were produced as a reaction to the evolving stages of the pandemic, from the initial release, restrictions, variants, and all the uncertainty that has followed. Working with abstract painting techniques, Kessler used mark making to reference these stages, such as red blobs symbolizing how the pandemic was blasted onto the world.

As we progressed through months of ups and downs and following protocol there seemed to be a glimmer of hope that things were actually improving. Then the variants appeared, complicating things further. Kessler responded to the constantly evolving situation through visual materials, but after time it seemed rather all consuming.

It seemed compelling to Kessler to turn her attention away from something that felt so unnatural, thus she looked towards nature. As the world came to terms with what was happening, Kessler grappled with the meaning of it all. Now focussed on depicting florals found in the gardens that surrounded her, she was able to direct her attention on the beauty around us we often neglect, and less on the uncertainty of the pandemic. The main theme that seemed to emerge was acknowledging the restorative beauty in the expression of flowers as a metaphor for the healing following this moment in history.

Sandra Kessler was born in Taber, Alberta and has lived and worked across Canada for many years before settling in the Okanagan. She has crafted her practice and interest in art history over the years, including studying at University of Ottawa. Kessler has been actively engaged with the local arts community and has exhibited across the Okanagan.

Legroom for Daydreaming was a solo-exhibition of sculptural work and photo documentation that explores the alternative form and function of common objects as pseudo-technological devices. Inspired by the blurring of cultural boundaries evident in Métis architecture and the integration of research, play, and domestic design within European Court Salon inventions, these works explore an intersection of culture and discovery within the domestic device. Familiar yet strange, the works appropriated consumer material into failed-luxury objects that exhibit visual phenomenon or inexplicable functions.

By altering familiar forms with mechanics, optics, photography, and staging with one another, Legroom for Daydreaming provided a dissimilar experience of the domestic objects we are accustomed to interacting with. These alterations gave physical form to phenomenon and create curious, often humorous, situations where the line between image and object was blurred. Combined together in an installation that would warrant leisure and interaction, these works provided legroom for another way of seeing the world or the whatchamacallits that populate it. 

Glass’ practice focuses on an integrated studio process as an alternative to medium specificity. In this integrated practice he has increasingly employed alternative forms and optical technology and as a way to create an immersive experience for audiences and expand the capabilities of traditional mediums of photography, sculpture, new media art, and architecture. “At its centre, my artwork deals with how images are created and experienced in contemporary culture in relation to technology and viewing habits.” 

This concern for an integrated studio practice and research sit at the heart of his professional practice where the methodology of research, play, exhibitions, and theorization come together. Studio experimentation, or play, and public exhibitions offer a way to merge a consistently innovative practice with group curiosity and serious research. “This directly mimics my interest in European Salon culture, where a group of people would watch demonstrations of an experimental device as a way to come up with explanations of phenomenon together. I seek to link this concept further by generating work and exhibitions that combine research and platforms for audiences to see and discuss acts of play.” 

His work and research projects, such as Cineorama or Party Stacker, have continually focused on reworking optical technologies, expanding it’s use and reach. Glass continues this focus within new work in a reinvigorated way by utilizing interest in hybrid technology and art practices with hybrid identities. He has found his own mixed European and Métis identity to be at the root of his interest in developing these alternative domestic forms, hybrid technologies, and a reason to create new perspectives. His artistic practice has tied together an interest in early optical technology with acts of adapting and hybridizing image technology along deeply personal lines. 

Levi Glass is a Canadian artist of Métis and German descent. He has exhibited internationally at venues in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, UK, and frequently across Canada. He holds a BFA degree from Thompson Rivers University and an MFA degree from the University of Victoria. Glass’ research practice focuses on the mediation between images and objects that often result in new technologies in familiar forms. His artistic practice utilizes a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, and new media to experiment with a similar wide range of contemporary issues from self-representation to politics to phenomenology. In addition to his own research and artistic practice, Glass has been an assistant preparator at the Kamloops Art Gallery, a member of the programming committee at Arnica Artist-Run Centre, a research assistant to The Camera Obscura Project, an artist assistant to Donald Lawrence, Kevin Schmidt and Cedric Bomford, and a sessional instructor at the University of Victoria. He currently practices art in Victoria, British Columbia and works in Indigenous Education at Camosun College.

For more information or to see more of his work, please visit leviglass.ca .

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.

Jacen Dennis’ digitally animated and projected artwork links the creative process of animating to creating a meaningful relationship between his gender transition to his sister’s death, of connecting a new body to the past, and a past body to the future. He positions himself as a transmasculine artist who started transitioning shortly before his sister died of an unexpected overdose in late 2018.  His work explored the fact that he did not have the opportunity to recontextualize his relationship with his sister and how this impacts the parallel positive experiences in transitioning. Seen|Unseen was the final exhibition for his Masters of Fine Arts thesis at UBC Okanagan.

His artwork, it both nourishes and consumes expresses the joy of authenticity and gender euphoria in gender transition; what is seen on the surface of the body. At the same time, what is unseen, under the skin, touches on gender dysphoria.

The artwork seismic reversal represents gender transition and the sudden familial loss both existing together and existing separate. When viewing seismic reversal as a metaphor, the implied positions of the bodies at the graveside (standing over and buried under) are in opposition. Whether or not the earth is reversed to allow the one buried to stand once again, the implied bodies will never stand at the same time, one will always be horizontal in death. 

The works the mark left on the carpet and her grass that grew thereafter contend directly with the sudden loss itself. Making the mark is the last action his sister took, but the animation imbues that horrific symbol with continued life. Her graveside in her grass that grew thereafter allows for exploration of the conflict between what is seen and what is unseen, under the surface.

The imagery for the artworks was derived through a process of active imagination, a process within analytical psychology, and constructed within frameworks of expressive art therapy. These methods have allowed unconscious thoughts to be surfaced through the artwork and facilitate healing through the creation thereof. Jacen’s animations are designed as slow and ambient works, ones that move through time and experience change gradually, reflecting his physical transition and process of grieving.

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.

Growth Machine references the dominant role that capitalism and capitalists play in (re)making cities primarily as sources of continuous capital accumulation, rather than as living and dwelling spaces for the cities’ occupants. Beginning with a voiceover from found footage of a YouTube how-to tutorial video, this installation took a satirical stance (against) the development of urban space as a growth machine. In this how-to guide, all decisions about the development of a ‘successful city’ are based on land value and the accumulation of wealth. This work juxtaposes a broad range of urban scenes in order to illustrate the politics of urban transformation. Growth Machine both investigated and contested the commodification and financialization of both urban space and urban life itself. It contested (through satire and suggestion) the way that important questions of urban existence get reduced to questions of profit and loss in a system designed as an urban growth machine.

Alternator Chat with Aileen Bahmanipour, Godfre Leung and Yasmine Haiboub in a discussion about her practice and exhibition Wasting Techniques on February 18, 2021. (https://youtu.be/un7Jk4Jm7P8)

I am both the image-maker and image-breaker as I make things in order to destroy. In this order, I think about “wasting techniques” [1] : those which involve carving away a piece of material until the shape we want remains. These are also common techniques in subtractive industrial processes, for example in milling machines and extraction tools.  

I accumulate, manipulate, and trace explanatory diagrams of these useful tools to make diagrammatic drawings on a clear acetate sheet; they become scribbles, illegible, messy, sloppy marks. Leaving minimum negative space on the ground of the image, I turn that ground into an entire positive space, all occupied by drawings, to the point that I can’t see what I am drawing. So, I contradict the very purpose of Drawing, which is to see, to look at things. 

There is a machine, titled Spitting Machine, that squirts water to the Diagrams of Wasting Techniques and gradually washes them away and turning them into stains on the floor. “Visitors” [2] can see the process through two cameras in front and behind the drawings. The repetitive washing of the drawings creates a transparency for the visitors’ lens. This clear ground of the image allows the image to shift into a more transparent relationship through visitors’ participation in the act of looking.

Wasting Techniques exhibited Aileen Bahmanipour’s exploration into contemporary forms of Iconoclasm. She defines Iconoclasm not to reject or negate the image but to redefine it. To do that, she challenges the figure/ground relations. The ground of the image, through the history of image-making, has been always suppressed and hidden by the covering image. By vandalizing the image, the iconoclast gives an opportunity to the ground of the image to find a language, to become visible, and be part of the image.

Using available imagery and through disturbing the pattern of already established representations, Bahmanipour searches for a new way of perceiving the image and ground of the image. She disturbs the seemingly know quality of images in my works and trouble distinguishing the image from its ground. With situating herself in the existing hybrid dialogues between Western and Eastern perspectives, she challenges the very idea of perspectives in order to reach an anti-perspectival point of view, from which the subject’s understanding of image and the truth behind the image’s appearance can possibly construct a transparent relationship.

I would like to thank Denise Ryner, Yasmin Haiboub, Godfre Leung, Setareh Yasan, and Chris Warren for their kind supports. Also, I would like to thank BC Arts Council and Alternator’s members and staff for giving me the opportunity of exhibiting this work and helping me through the exhibition.

Aileen Bahmanipour is an Iranian-Canadian artist. She has received her BFA in Painting from the Art University of Tehran and MFA in Visual arts from the University of British Columbia. Bahmanipour has exhibited her work in a body of solo and group exhibitions in Iran as well as in Canada, including her solo and group exhibitions at Vancouver’s grunt gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Gallery 1515, Hatch Art Gallery, and Two Rivers Gallery.

She is the recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant in 2017, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Artist in 2019, and the Early Career Development grant from BC Arts Council in 2019.

For more information on Aileen’s work, visit her website.

The Voice of the Land brings together the rich tapestry of sounds and visuals from the local natural landscape through real-time audiovisual processing. Emerald Holt created a unique personal view of the Okanagan environment through an exhibition that became a vessel for collaborative and poetic exchange and opened meaningful approaches for shared or individual appreciation of our local sonic and visual landscape through visual music expressions.

Visually, The Okanagan landscape was abstracted and pieced together in a variety of simultaneous video streams from multiple viewpoints, each one projected on multiple screens installed in the gallery space, to create a depth of field and perception in time and space. This visual technique Holt employed is similar to David Hockney’s Joiners, which are like a temporal montage of shifting footage, and puzzles viewers with anticipation in a similar experience of being in nature. The screens were hung in shapes and patterns that correspond to non-representational musical expressions similar to Wassily Kandinsky, but use visual material derived from the landscape. The type of field research that Holt carried out is essential for developing an experienced understanding of the Okanagan typography, and each screen reveals a specific location, whether it be from local creeks, lakes, or ponds. Each place inspired Holts interest in the diverse experiences of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

The work shifted from one season into the next. The changes in seasons were observable in many ways, but colour is one aspect that Holt found most visually inspiring. Colour strengthens the temporal dynamics of the landscape and signifies the visual transitions and reflexive state of the seasons during specific times of the year in the Okanagan. For example, the ripe juicy berries of the Wild Saskatoon in summer have key ecological and cultural associations, as do many other plants such as the Wild Chokecherries, Red Elderberries, and Red Raspberries that feed the wildlife in the region. The natural rhythms of the landscape were explored through the vivid display of seasonal colour ranges, which were part of the methods used to develop the animated visual media for this project.

As Holt is interested in the local soundscapes of the area, it was important for her to consider what Pierre Schaefer coined “sonorous objects,” which are sound objects that function autonomously from their own noise, (an example being recorded sounds on live radio technologies). Similarly, his aim was to reproduce music without the physical instrument, and this led to his developing the concept of “acousmatic listening”.

This division between sound and object relates to how we navigate the natural landscape. Often in nature, we hear before we see, such as hearing the snap of a branch in the stillness of the forest and wonder, ‘what made that noise?’, hearing the Screech Owl pierce the silence of night with its high-pitch shrill, hearing the ice breaking on a frozen lake on a sunny winter day, or hearing the residual sound of a noisy airplane as you look up into the sky to try and trace its whereabouts. In her own approach, sound is the best vehicle for understanding the multimodal sensory streams of the land. This approach for deciphering the mysteries of sounds of the landscape through marvel and wonder for nature is necessary for understanding the audible life forms of the land.

The microtonal nuances and dynamic inflection of the bird’s vocal character are reflected in the variety of tonal techniques employed by each musician (the cellist, flutist, and pianist). This compositional method highlighted the specific tonal environment associated to each bird Holt chose for each season, such as the Robin and Northern Mockingbird to name a few. For this project Holt hired two musicians, concert cellist and composer Nicholas Denton Protsack (San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and classical flutist Emily Richardson (The University of British Columbia School of Music) to instrumentally interpret each bird song she had recorded. She asked them to mirror the bird’s unique vocal abilities by using their instrumental techniques and musical expertise. Holt showed them the spectrograms she made from the birdsong and asked them to record their interpretations, either as full song sets or song syllables.

Concerning how Holt combined audio and visuals from the Okanagan landscape, she mapped the particular colour range of seasons with the specific soundscapes to create a cohesive method that bridges the relationship between colour and sound in the Okanagan. This approach calls to attention the temporal associations of climate and region, more importantly, communicates how we share the shifting landscape with many animal and plant co-habitants and how these non-human life forms contribute to our vivid perception of place and reality. More than a visual music installation, The Voice of the Land brings viewers a unique immersive space to reflect on their relationship with nature.

The Voice of the Land was on view in the Members’ Gallery from January 29 to February 20 as part of the Living Things International Arts Festival.