This weekend will prove the arts have of a home to bloom and grow in the Diamond Valley.
Alberta Arts Days will be celebrated Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 and the Sheep River Public Library in Turner Valley is taking a homegrown approach to activities they are holding Saturday.
“Were putting on a day-long event called Flower Power,” library board chair Diane Osberg said
A floral theme will run throughout a new art display featuring a proliferation of local artists as well as a collection of local hand made quilts. The subject matter will also sprout up in public discussions.
“We’re going to have a couple of talks throughout the day on the use of flowers for cooking, for medicinal purposes and in the dyeing of fabrics,” Osberg said.
The library will also present an examination of the Victorian Tradition of the Language of Flowers to answer questions like, “Why do we carry ivy in wedding bouquets?” and “Why do roses represent love?”
Osberg explained the floral theme for Arts Days was chosen when she and others realized the event would fall at a time when fall flowers are having their last colourful hurrah in many people’s yards.
“We’re hoping people will come enjoy everything. See what we’re doing and maybe sign up for some of our courses,” she said.
Up the road in downtown Black Diamond, Bluerock Gallery is using Alberta Arts Days to launch a new exhibit, Sound of Wings. This showcase of bird paintings features the works of four Alberta artists including Turner Valley’s own Mady Thiel-Kopstein.
“I love ravens,” the artist said of her preferred feathered art subject. “They speak to me. Not that I actually sit in the woods and speak to them but I have always been strongly attracted to ravens and how they are, their story and all the First Nations mythology around them.”
Also part of the Bluerock Gallery exhibition, which runs through Oct. 24, are far less literal takes on the winged theme from Redwood Meadows artist Kim Bruce.
“You will notice if you look very closely there are very small birds in the three pieces I have there,” Bruce said. “They are abstract landscapes and I try to tie female idioms into them. The backgrounds of all the pieces are encaustic but they look like lace.”
Encaustic art is the ancient medium of working in molten wax. In Bruce’s case it is pure bee’s wax infused with pigments, which give the material a range of colours to go along with a unique texture. The artist admitted she is pleased the Diamond Valley — like so many regions around the province — is making a big deal of Alberta Arts Days.
“I think it’s great,” she said. “The more exposure people have to art the more educated they will become. They will get to know what the process is in someone becoming a creative artist.”
Other Black Diamond spots embracing Alberta Arts Days are Marryanne’s Eden Art and Garden Gallery on Centre Avenue East and the Griffith Memorial Centre on Government Road south. The centre will be hosting a Pumpkin Patch Tea and Quilt show Oct. 1 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
