September is the Month of the Artist, and Okotoks has plenty on the docket to celebrate.
“Historically, September was Alberta Culture Days, and last year Town council proclaimed September would be Month of the Artist,” explained Allan Boss, culture and heritage lead for the Town of Okotoks.
“This relates back to one of council’s strategic initiatives, which is to have arts, culture and education as a driver in our community and in alignment with that we decided to put on a bunch of events.”
Tanya Zakarow, the town’s inaugural artist in residence, will be at the Okotoks Art Gallery for the first half of the month and the Okotoks Public Library for the second half as she works on her project to paint Okotokians who have had an impact on the community. There will be a meet-and-greet with Zakarow at the library on Sept. 6 where those she will paint will be announced.
https://www.okotoks.ca/your-community/living-okotoks/community-event-calendar/sheep-river-artist-residence-meet-greet
https://www.westernwheel.ca/local-arts-and-culture/okotoks-artist-to-paint-those-who-created-a-legacy-7194193
At the Rotary Performing Arts Centre, a new event format kicks off Sept. 5.
“We were looking to create more activity in our downtown core, so we partnered with the Okotoks Arts Council to start this event called Acoustic Nights,” Boss said. “We tested it out in the spring, ran three events, and at the end of it everybody was eager to come back in to play their songs.”
As a unique twist, the events will feature a challenge prompt.
“At the end of April, I challenged everybody to go away for the summer and write songs using the chords C, G, D and B, with the phrase ‘Acoustic Nights,’” Boss explained. “So on Sept. 5, they’re all going to come back and we’ll all be playing original songs.”
The Okotoks Museum and Archives also kicks off the month with two exhibits, explained museum and archives specialist Kathy Coutts, one honouring a revered Okotoks artist, the other highlighting endangered arts.
“One is Dr. Morris Gibson, the Artist," said Coutts. "Some people only recognize the name because we have an elementary school named after him, some remember him as a family doctor and some remember him as a best selling author.
“Few people know that he was an artist, and we are very fortunate here at the museum to have several items of his, some sketchbooks and paintings.”
The second exhibit was inspired by the Red List of Endangered Crafts put out by the Heritage Crafts Organization in the United Kingdom.
“We tried to localize that list, see who in our history were craftspeoples and see which are now on the list,” Coutts said, adding among those are wheelwrights and milliners.
“So we’ve tried to capture a local angle on that. Some of the crafts still exist, but the craftspeople are a dying breed because they can no longer compete with mass production, and some of the items have just become obsolete,” Coutts said.
The month as a whole, Boss explained, is about celebrating creation as a unifying force in a divided world.
“One of the most important things that is happening right now is we’ve got an environment in which people are being divided. We’ve got different polarities; it happened coming out of COVID-19, it’s happening politically, we’re seeing it in the environment.
“One of the roles I think the arts play is as a connector, as a gathering place. I think it is essential right now for people to have that opportunity to express themselves and to gather around something that will bring us together, rather than separating us."
For a complete list, visit the events calendar at okotoks.ca.
https://www.okotoks.ca/your-community/living-okotoks/community-event-calendar/month-artist
