Blyth Festival Art Gallery season begins tonight with return of The Student Show
The Blyth Festival Art Gallery Committee is pleased to introduce the 2023 season show listings. For the first time since 2019, the gallery will host a full slate of shows, starting in April and running through into September.
Beginning on Friday, April 14, creations by Huron and Perth County’s secondary school art students will fill the Bainton Gallery. This annual celebration of student creativity will feature the best works of art students in Grades 9 to 12 from both school boards. Many different artistic techniques will be featured, including mixed media, sculpture, photography, drawing, painting, printmaking and digital illustration. The show runs April 14-May 5.
Works of local artists, of all experience levels, will grace the gallery once again this spring with the community art show. This non-juried show will demonstrate the incredible depth of work being created by our neighbours and community members. Works can often include oil, acrylic or watercolour paintings, fabric arts, sculptures, pottery and multimedia creations. The show runs May 19-June 9.
The gallery’s season opener is a show by local photographer Hannah Dickie. “Home Grown” aims to string together the influence a rural upbringing can have on an individual. Seen through the eyes of the photographer, Hannah Dickie, she documents how small-scale agriculture has played a role in her life. The show opens June 16 and closes July 15.
The second show is a group exhibition being led by local potter, Rob Tetu.
In the Mino region of Japan lie rich deposits of a clay suitable for making durable domestic pottery. Traditionally fired in wood-burning kilns, the smoky atmosphere and drifting firewood ash inside the kiln, combined to give the pottery its distinctive colours; bone, orange, grey and black, often with a gorgeous pewter lustre and ripples texture.
“Shino: Oriental Aesthetic-Contemporary Expression” features eight Ontario potters who have dedicated much of their careers to exploring this fascinating Japanese technique. The exhibition opens July 21 and runs to Aug. 12.
The year’s final professional show is presented by Kelly Stevenson, Through a multi-disciplinary exhibit, entitled “How Far I’ve Fallen”, Stevenson uses the changing state of the rural landscape and experience to explore her own state of mind – one of living with severe and chronic mental illness. Finding a kinship with the abandoned and falling down buildings that fill the countryside, she explores if there is life and hope in the debris and darkness, and of life beyond illness, beyond the seemingly never-ending falling apart.
The presentation opens Aug. 18 and closes the season on Sept. 9.
All shows are open during the Blyth Festival box office hours. Admission is free to the gallery.