.jpg.bee6da21545b36ee147b8b8fe68bc87e.jpg)
Events
Events happening today
-
ALL
DAY
May 02, 2019 May 05, 2019
FASHION MACHINE opens this week!
Our well-loved show Fashion Machine is back in Victoria for May 2-5, make sure you get your tickets now before they're all gone!
When is it?
Thursday May 2 - 7:00pm (SOLD OUT)
Friday May 3 - 7:00pm
Saturday May 4 - 7:00pm
Sunday May 5 - 2:00pm
Where?
SKAM Satellite Studio
849 Fort Street
How much is it?
$10 per person
OR
$30 for a Family Pass
(up to 2 adults and 3 youths)
Remind me, what's Fashion Machine?
Part performance piece, part theatre, part fashion extravaganza, Fashion Machine invites you to witness the creative process in action: 20+ kids redesign audience members outfits and put on a fashion show. Don't worry, they know what they're doing - they trained with SKAM experts in preparation.
Feeling brave? Pick an "I'm In!" sticker, and you might be chosen to get your outfit completely made over! We'll deck you out in a sweet robe while the children redesign your outfit. You'll get to see them work, watch videos from their training, see a constantly evolving photography slideshow, and get some coffee and snacks if you're hungry. Then you'll don the completed piece and strut your stuff in a fashion show with commentary from the kids.
Don't want your clothes remade? That's okay! Wear a 'chicken' sticker and you can take part without anyone touching your clothes. BUY TICKETS NOW
Upcoming Events
May 02, 2019 May 11, 2019
My Soul is Escaped:
Healing art of Patricia June Vickers at Christ Church Cathedral
April 28 to May 11
One woman’s healing journey, expressed powerfully through her art, is the subject of the next exhibit to be held at Christ Church Cathedral’s Chapel of the New Jerusalem.
Patricia June Vickers, an artist, psychotherapist and spiritual director, addresses the issue of sexual abuse and intergenerational trauma in her exhibit. Two years ago, Vickers underwent an intensive period of neurofeedback and psychotherapy to heal her dissociative amnesia, an involuntary response to trauma. As she restored her spiritual balance, she documented her journey in small paintings.
There are more than 30 mixed media works in the show, pieces that use acrylic, watercolour and collage to create layers. These abstract images are coupled with written reflections on the artist’s healing process. “Life is a midden,” she said. “Truth can sometimes be underneath all these layers.” She began to paint out of an inability to find words to communicate the raw reality. “It came out of a need to express what I couldn’t say in words,” she said. She believes that continuing intergenerational and sexual trauma among First Nations, “is the root problem in our communities that we are still not facing.”
Vickers, 63, is of British, Tsimshian, Heiltsuk and Haida First Nation ancestry and was raised in Hazelton and Victoria. She grew up with art all around her, learning traditional applique fabric designs and later, painting. Her brothers Arthur Vickers and Roy Henry Vickers are both well-known artists. Roy has partnered with her to create a potlatch screen that will be on display during the show.
Having Christ Church Cathedral host the show is really significant, says Vickers, who always loved the words and music of the Anglican service.
Christ Church Cathedral Dean Ansley Tucker said such an important exhibit creates valuable insights. “Long before we learned to speak, we learned to see,” she said. “In this exhibit we have the benefit of visceral visual images, as well as Patricia Vickers’s own words of reflection to guide and teach us. We are grateful for her courage and honesty.”
Sunday, April 28, 5.30 pm. Opening reception (Chapel of the New Jerusalem)
Sunday, May 5 at 3.00 pm, Connecting Hearts, artist talk on personal reconciliation. “People know the history. What isn’t being spoken about is our internal worlds and what connects our hearts,” she said.
Hours: The show will be open to the public 10.00 am to 4.00 pm Monday to Saturday and 1.00 to 3.00 pm on Sunday.
Patricia June Vickers is a counsellor and artist living in Vancouver. She is clinical director of mental health and wellness at the First Nations Health Authority and has a PhD.
Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria stands on the traditional lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. It is the episcopal seat of the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, which includes Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. The Cathedral also has a large and active parish community and contributes to the cultural, social and spiritual life of residents and visitors in the Capital Regional District. The gothic cathedral, one of Canada’s largest churches, was designed in 1896.
Christ Church Cathedral
930 Burdett Ave, Victoria BC V8V 3G8
250.383.2714 x 228, cell 250-634-3696
www.christchurchcathedral.bc.ca
Upcoming Events
May 02, 2019 May 30, 2019
ON THIS APRIL DAY, a steady drizzle enhances Chinatown’s eccentric visual splendour. I pass through the narrowest of doors, upon which reads “Mitchell Villa Art Studio,” hand-lettered in a style evoking a 1940s accounting firm. At the top of Chinese-red stairs, I arrive in a compact live-work studio full of outsized canvases.
One wall is covered by Villa’s latest work in oil, still wet: an eight-by-fifteen-foot triptych of a larger-than-life dinner party. The energy of the guests’ shifting gestures and expressions frames a decadent, Renaissance-inspired feast. Villa’s trademark realism, with its stuttered, multi-exposure layering, accentuates the lively, debaucherous scene. A pair of alert, stud-collared dobermans (the breed often makes appearances in Villa’s work) add a sense of foreboding.
Villa moved to Victoria from Ontario at age three, and grew up mastering various media and rendering techniques (“instead of doing basketball and all that stuff, I was always in art classes”). At the Vancouver Film School, he immersed himself in digital image-making. Both the dinner-party triptych and a couple of six-by-eight-foot “middle-aged” portraits are created from assemblies of photographs Villa has costumed, staged and directed. He shows me the printouts of the collage-like images he’s created in Photoshop as reference for these meticulously styled visions.
"Midlife" by Mitchell Villa
Villa set up a stationary, time-lapse camera for the first actual dinner party he’d ever hosted (he learned the hard way not to try out new recipes in that context). “I ended up with three or four hundred photos…piecing everyone together with my favourite moments of that person…showing the movement, the passing of time, not just a snapshot, to emulate that environment in a dinner party. It’s somewhat chaotic; food being passed around, drinks are flowing.”
The juddering, filmic quality of Villa’s canvases has both a surrealist and cubist flavour at times. “Working with design and film definitely influences my work,” he says. “I incorporate that into my paintings.” Like a film director, “I can play god with what I’m working with— shift colours and add elements into a scene—from there applying it to the canvas.”
Mitchell Villa, “Prologue” solo exhibition at Fortune Gallery, 537 Fisgard Street, opens May 2, 7-9pm, and closes May 30. 250-383-1552, www.fortunegallery.ca or www.mitchellvilla.com.
—Mollie Kaye
Upcoming Events
