Putting her home field advantage to work has paid off for a local painter as she and other members of the Big Rock Artists are hoping to garner some support for a worthy cause.
As a practitioner of both floral and landscape art Alice Clarke, 73, is fortunate to be able to scratch both of her creative itches at her foothills residence.
“I have got a gazebo I can paint in,” she said of capturing her backyard flowers on canvas. “As far as landscapes go, I live south of the Big Rock (the Okotoks Erratic) so I have one fantastic view from the living room window. So I can paint anything I want without leaving my house.”
Big Rock Artists are taking a page from Clarke’s no-place-like-home philosophy to conduct their upcoming sale in Okotoks at St. Peter’s Anglican Church on Riverside Way Oct. 21-Oct. 22. Event organizer Marg Smith said the local artists group had one small sale last year in Calgary but this is the first time they are making collected works from its members and invited guests available in Okotoks.
“We’re hoping to have all sorts of genres,” Smith said. “From pen and pencil sketch to acrylics to pastels to oils from abstracts to landscapes to figures; we’re having everything we can think of.”
More than 200 original works from more than 18 different artists will be for sale Friday Oct. 21 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday Oct. 22 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thirty percent of the proceeds from all sales will go in support of Foothills Country Hospice, a facility dear to Smith’s heart.
“It’s such a lovely place,” the artist said. “It gives people the care, the dignity and the warmth they need during their final days and let’s them appreciate the beauty around them. The place itself is absolutely beautiful, the views are beautiful and the people there treat the residents with such empathy and compassion. It’s something I really want to be a part of and help.”
Smith volunteers weekly at the local hospice, creating new landscape and nature works on site while some of the residents look on and interact with the artist.
Wanting to do as much as she can for the facility Smith was pleased when acclaimed B.C. artist Roger Arndt decided to make a donation to the upcoming sale. During a workshop this past spring Arndt agreed to offer up a giclee of one of his landscape works to the fundraising event. All proceeds from its sale will go will to the hospice.
“He said he’d bring the giclee with him when he was in Calgary for the Stampede,” Smith said of attempting to secure the print this past summer. “I very naively said I would jump on the c-train, meet him there (at the Stampede) and pick it up.”
Luckily for Smith, Arndt insisted on having it delivered to Altitude Art Gallery in downtown Okotoks where he regularly has his original pieces for sale. Once Smith learned the fully framed giclee amounted to three-by-six-foot she was glad she wasn’t going to have to try and juggle it on a packed commuter c-train.
Like Arndt, when the Big Rock Artists and Guests sale hits town Oct. 21-22 Clarke’s work will be well represented. She will have works in acrylic, watercolour and pen and ink available for purchase. She also plans to be onsite at St. Pater’s Anglican Church to chat with perspective art buyers.
It’s something she admitted having little trouble doing.
“I have been in the arts field for 25 to 30 years in some capacity,” Clarke said. “And I really do enjoy the people.”
