Anybody who has been to a house party knows how easy it is for all the action to drift into the kitchen. One or two people drop in for a visit with the host as he or she is bringing food out of the oven and before long almost everybody is in there chatting way.
Buffalo Lake artist Vivian Bennett’s exhibit at the Okotoks Art Gallery (OAG) celebrates times, decades past, when the kitchen was even more central in people’s lives. The exhibition, entitled “Kitchen Talk”, currently resides in the large gallery at the OAG.
It was greatly inspired by the 61-year-old artist’s experiences as a child.
“When I was a girl growing up my mother’s kitchen was very small but I’ll tell you it was the heart of the house,” Bennett said. “I remember so many times coming home to that kitchen and she’d have the radio on, it would be in the middle of winter and all the diapers would be frozen and my mother would be ironing them dry. Then there’s all the smells like the coffee on the stove.”
The painter learned early in life the kitchen was also a safe haven.
“It was such a warm and inviting place to come home from after school,” Bennett recalled. “If you had any troubles or anything you talked about it in the kitchen. It was a very private place.”
Andrea Spiers, visitor services specialist at the OAG, explained “Kitchen Talk” is the right show at the right time for the arts facility at The Station in downtown Okotoks.
“It’s a really neat show,” she said. “It’s nice, bright and colourful especially for January in the dead of winter.”
Spiers said the gallery has borrowed some artifacts from the Okotoks Museum and Archives and placed them in the large gallery in the midst of Bennett’s kitchen-themed paintings. Old baking pans and a high chair are among the items that have been placed in the large gallery to accentuate the vitality of a kitchen in day’s past.
Bennett was unable to attend the opening gala in Okotoks for the exhibit on Jan. 7, because she broke her painting arm.
“It’s going to be two or three months before I can even think about painting again,” she admitted. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens and see if I can paint again. I think I will. I’m pretty stubborn.”
While the central Alberta artist recovers from her injury many foothills area painters and photographers are pleased they currently have work on display in the small gallery down at The Station. These artists have contributed to an exhibition with a theme of “Life on The Prairies.”
Spiers said it is large and varied collection of work.
“It’s a members show where all the members of the gallery are welcome to bring and show pieces,” she said. “We’ve got a mixture of everything; watercolours, oils, acrylics and some photography. Obviously, there are similarities in the pieces because of the prairie theme. There are images of landscapes, hayfields and things like that, but there are also some very different things that are very neat to see.”
One person who has strayed from just painting the grasslands of this province is Okotoks artist Joan Moore.
“I’ve got two badlands ones,” she said of her contributions to the show. “I lived in Medicine Hat before I came here and I used to go out and paint some of the most beautiful stuff not far from there. They are off the beaten track type scenes.”
Moore contended many people aren’t aware of areas in the southern part of our province, which are barren as well as beautiful.
“The badlands you’ll find of course in Drumheller but also around Brooks and Tilley,” she said. “There are just a lot of places that people don’t know anything about and it’s all part of the prairies. You go along in this province and it’s flat then you drop into some of these coulees and there you’ve got it, something different.”
“Kitchen Talk” and “Life on the Prairies” will both be on display at Okotoks Art Gallery through Feb. 13. The new hours at the gallery are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
