Nature is the common thread surrounding two exhibits at the Okotoks Art Gallery for the next six weeks.
Calgary area artists Verna Vogel and Eveline Kolijn are challenging viewers to delve into the wonders of nature and human behaviour in their respective exhibitions, Fragile Planets and The Ocean Inside, which are on display Jan. 11 to Feb. 21.
In Fragile Planets, Calgary artist Vogel explores one of the ancient symbols used by human civilization for centuries – the circle.
Vogel said Fragile Planets materialized while experimenting at a print-making art class she was teaching to primary school students.
“It started with a simple idea of printing anything in texture in front of a class of seven-year-olds and it kind of brings life to all these connected ideas of things being the same but a little different, like people are all the same but we’re all a little bit different,” she said. “As I’m working on things it all bubbles up in my brain.”
Rather than coming up with a concept to work from, Vogel works with the materials first and the concept develops from there.
“My installations usually come through the materials,” she said. “I get work in my hands and get a basic idea and then as my hands are making the work these ideas float up into my brain.”
Vogel began creating each piece by stitching random patterns on six-by-six inch canvas using a sewing machine, then layering on top using printmaking techniques.
“Each piece is square but has a circular image on it,” she said. “I researched circles and found they are one of the ancient symbols.”
Vogel said some of her images are reminiscent of cup and ring marks – a form of prehistoric art found mainly in the Atlantic seaboard of Europe.
“Often we don’t realize we’re doing things that have been done,” she said.
The installation will be suspended on invisible thread in a circular pattern.
“I like the idea that things are floating but they’re not floating in an ungrounded way,” she said. “The idea of putting artwork into exhibition spaces in communities that maybe don’t have access to a big city gallery really appeals to me.”
In naming her exhibition, Vogel said she worked with several words before Fragile Planets resonated with her. In looking up the definition of fragile, she said she learned the Latin definition means delicate, easily broken and transient while the Greek definition for planets came up as wandering stars.
“I feel like through this art I wander and explore,” she said. “That’s a human way of interacting with the world. There’s this whole ecological idea embedded in that.”
In the large gallery, Kolijn will bring viewers underwater with The Ocean Inside, a print and video installation that explores the devastating effects of climate change and other human-made environmental stresses on the coral reefs in the Caribbean, where she grew up in the 1970s.
“It’s all about the coral reefs and what’s happening to them,” she said. “I grew up in the Caribbean and I have seen the changes to the reefs. I did a lot of snorkeling and diving as a teenager.”
The rural Calgary artist said the exhibition is centred around video footage, mostly in the Caribbean and around coastal shores, projected onto a translucent, hand-printed veil. The soundtrack is compiled of recorded soundscapes and waves of voices in various languages in Kolijn’s effort to bring a more global feel to her exhibition.
While The Ocean Inside explores an issue thousands of miles from Alberta, Kolijn said the province was once a tropical sea.
“We have an ancient provincial ocean that now when you hike in the mountains over 2,000 metres you find an old seafloor that has coral pieces that are like the coral pieces at the beach at my parents’ place,” she said. “In the news there’s this urgency for what’s happening there. I realize that in Alberta it’s not a very urgent idea because we’re a land-locked province, but that’s why I love that idea.”
Kolijn will also have on display her own artwork relating to the ocean including prints, etchings and fossils.
“I have an installation where I mix fossils from that time period in Alberta with some current coral and shells and a couple of prints that relate to the history of the sea in Alberta,” she said. “It’s a bit of a mix and match of prints from the tropical coral reefs and a few from Alberta.”
Having studied marine biology years ago, Kolijn said The Ocean Inside allowed her to revisit her passion for microbiology and marine biology through art.
“It’s a passion I’ve always had,” she said. “I love the shapes and forms and patterns. I’m very interested in evolution, the idea that the first life forms we found are in the sea. I always have my personal wonder of these beautiful shapes and forms.”
The public will have the opportunity to meet Kolijn and Vogel at an artists’ reception in the gallery Jan. 11 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is free.
