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Events
Events happening today
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May 01, 2019 June 30, 2019
Art Show Opening: Spirit of Canada: An Artist’s Journal of the Canadian Landscape by John Stuart Pryce
“The Golden Years” by John Stuart Pryce
About John Stuart Pryce
John Stuart Pryce
John’s love for art began at a very early age, as he discovered the great satisfaction derived from his ability to draw and paint. He continued developing his artistic interests, and eventually became an art major at the highly acclaimed H.B. Beal Tech. in London, Ontario. Since that time John has worked and studied in Montreal, Chicago and Toronto. During a successful career as an architectural illustrator, his work was used in projects around the world. His seemingly loose yet eloquent technique is the result of years of experience in the disciplines of drawing, colour and composition.
John currently divides his time between painting and sharing his artistic knowledge with others through his painting workshops.
“The purest and most rewarding form of painting, in my opinion, is “en plein air” as it challenges all of the skills and discipline of the artist.” Show Dates: April 12 – August 29, 2019
Location: 634 Humboldt Street, Victoria BC
Hours of Operation:
10am-5pm, Tuesday-Sunday May 20 to August 29, 10am-5pm daily The artwork is for sale.
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
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May 30, 2019 02:00 AM 03:30 AM
Vancouver Island. It’s easy to romanticize our lush, idyllic home—but there’s more to life here than hiking, whale watching, and wine. In Island Home, local chronicler Anny Scoones gives voice to the quirkier side of Island life, from overenthusiastic foodies, to chainsaw carving festivals and the giant gnome just north of Nanoose Bay. No matter what prompts her latest “little think,” Scoones proves an essential literary tour guide for anyone intrigued by our eclectic corner of Canada.
Round up your neighbours and enjoy this local launch!
Upcoming Events
May 30, 2019 02:30 AM
“WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES in order to live.” Joan Didion said this, and it’s not hyperbole. Brain scientists, behavioural psychologists, and spiritual gurus all concur that storytelling is a fundamental aspect of our human experience. It’s the way we make meaning and sense of our experiences, how we learn and teach. There is both huge value and darkness inherent in the way we frame and tell our stories. Depression, at its root, is directly connected to stories we tell ourselves—as is every peak experience we celebrate.
The fact that there’s a local organization dedicated to the conscious art of telling stories shouldn’t be a surprise, then, but perhaps you didn’t know about the Victoria Storyteller’s Guild (VSG), or that they are now celebrating 30 years. Victoria Cownden, a member for two decades, says the group holds a meeting at the Quaker Hall on Fern Street on the third Friday evening of each month. “People can come and try it,” she encourages, saying the group is welcoming and supportive. “A story is a story. You can make doing the laundry a story. Everybody has a story,” she says. “We serve a nice tea party during the break.”
The group sponsors workshops and concerts where professional storytellers offer their craft and inspire others. This year’s VSG-sponsored concert, featuring award-winning Vancouver transgender author and storyteller Ivan Coyote, has particular cultural relevance.
Ivan Coyote
Coyote’s most famous book, Tomboy Survival Guide, got long-listed for Canada Reads. “Ivan is well known, and the press is quite positive,” says Cownden. “Ivan is a storyteller first, [with] the ability for their stories to transform the world and make it a better place. When you know a person’s story, it’s pretty hard to judge them.”
7:30pm, The Belfry Theatre, 1291 Gladstone Avenue. Call 250-385-6815 or see tickets.belfry.bc.ca
—Mollie Kaye
Upcoming Events
