Installing a new art exhibition is always exciting but Two Rivers Gallery curator George Harris is particularly proud of this one: Eagle Transforming: the Prints of Robert Davidson. The works are by one of Canada’s most respected, important contemporary artists and they span four decades.

“We are very fortunate indeed in getting this exhibit as one of just two galleries in B.C. (along with Surrey Art Gallery). Robert Davidson is a very important figure in the history of Haida art. He has actually taken it beyond traditional Haida art into the more contemporary,” said Harris. “His work is very highly regarded. He’s been honoured with the Order of Canada (1996) and Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts (2010).”

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The creative spirit that has graced Frelone’s Grocery in the past with yoga, music and film continues with a new art gallery and studio space.

Corre Alice, a professional artist and longtime Pender Island resident, has actualized her dream of making art in the extraordinary town of Cumberland. After a stint of living in her Chinatown studio in Victoria, she was inspired to purchase this commercial building in order to paint, exhibit and make her home in the Valley.

However, the board had a meeting last week and no firm decisions were made on where to make up for the loss.

“We don’t have any definitive action at this point in time but we will be doing some homework and expect to have some ongoing dialogue with the city,” said Robert Morton, the board’s president.

Counc. Christine Thompson said in an email that she had not been contacted by the gallery yet and wasn’t aware of anyone else in council being contacted either.

Ehren Salazar, one of the principals of the gallery, located at 195 East 26th Avenue, said the space had been hosting, on average, two concerts a week for the past two-and-a-half years. But following noise complaints, the concerts have ceased. Salazar is in the process of working with the city’s office of cultural affairs in refining an application for rezoning the space as a legitimate theatre.

“It’s still difficult to make your way through all of the city-hall bureaucracy,” he said. “They’ve told us it would be a pretty unprecedented scenario if we were able to go from a DIY space to a legit theatre. In my mind it’s a 50-50 chance. But it’s probably less than that.”

It opened on Sept. 17, and Parkside director Joanne Young says it met with instant success.

She was one of the main supporters of the idea to make student art visible to the public. What she hadn’t anticipated was the immediate embrace it got from local schools.

With participating schools each allotted one month to display their works, the student gallery is already booked for the year.

“I didn’t know that teachers would be so gung-ho about it. They’re just thrilled and it’s really inspired them to do something special to put on the wall.”

As part of its recent annual review, the Gallery announced that 178 artworks were acquired through purchase and donation in the last fiscal year, bringing the total number of works held in trust for the people of British Columbia to 10,004.

Major contemporary and historical acquisitions build on the strength of the Gallery’s collection, renowned for its excellence in art produced in British Columbia and, in particular, the photo-conceptual work of the ‘ Vancouver school’. Exciting additions of painting, sculpture and photography were made with the assistance of generous donors and funders.

A month after renovating and moving to a new location in the old Bank of Montreal building, Louise Drescher is literally beaming with optimism about Rouge Gallery’s future.

With its tall, luminous walls, natural light, honey hardwood floors, deep, airy space and high, ornate Rattenbury ceilings, the gallery not only lends itself to monumental displays of art and sculpture but is looking to expand its repertoire to include other forms of artistic expression.

So far Toop says about 25 artists have registered to participate in the fundraiser and they are hoping for more participation with the extended deadline.

Canvases one-foot square and 1 1/2 inches thick are provided to participating artists who create an artwork on the canvass without revealing their name.

Lawrence Paul Yuxwelupten will join Meeka Morgan’s workshop for aboriginal youth, which uses collaborative art to explore how the future should look for rural and urban aboriginal communities.

Yuxwelupten will be joined by artist and graphic designer Tania Willard and George Ignace as the professional artistic guides for the group of youth who will be building images on a 3 1/2-metre teepee.

Located on the second level, Satellite Gallery is a joint project of three institutions: the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of B.C. and Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver.

Satellite has been able to open thanks to financial support from the Michael O’Brian Family Foundation. It’s paying the bills for the space, estimated to be about $100,000 a year according to Michael O’Brian, the foundation’s president.

“You know what excites me? I really do think that the arts generally are so important to a community,” O’Brian said.

The gallery’s curator/director, Anh Le, made the case for financial help at a meeting of the committee of the whole on Tuesday.

She said there had been significant cuts in financial support from the B.C. Arts Council and also from gaming grants as part of a province-wide reduction in support for the arts.

That had left the gallery – situated at Sixth and Duncan in Courtenay – facing a shortfall of approximately $50,000 this year, and efforts were being stepped up to save money and attract additional income to plug the gap.

The gallery — represented by curator Anh Le and financial officer Linda Gooding at Tuesday’s committee of the whole meeting — is requesting $25,000 per year for five years, to be reviewed in 2014.

Comox director Paul Ives — mindful of the regional district’s duty of prioritizing how it spends taxpayers’ money — questioned why the gallery is more entitled to funding than other arts and culture organizations. Area C director Edwin Grieve, though a champion of the arts, echoed Ives’ comments, noting the committee awaits a report on a recreation/culture facility research project, which includes the gallery.

Presenting New Westminster Artists:
Internationally recognized Leslie Poole draws on years of experience to create works of deeply felt emotion. Poole’s paintings, drawings, and prints question life and art through subjects as diverse as: male and female figures, still life, landscape, and self-portraits from realist to expressionist in style.

Angie Au Hemphill’s art is inspired by love, life experience, and the nature around her. “Painting for me is personal and my goal is to make a connection with viewers. If I can enlighten others I have succeeded” (Hemphill). The work 65 Red Roses, inspired by Eva Markvoort, is one of the highlights in this year’s New Westminster Cultural Crawl.

Nicholas Bott loves the scenic beauty of the BC landscape and spends many days on remote mountain slopes, some locations accessible only by helicopter. His work has evolved continuously to his current impressionistic style, with images both vivid and compelling.

Besides showcasing native culture to the public, it employs K’ómoks Band members and provides a vehicle for native artists to sell their creations, explains I-Hos manager Ramona Johnson.

Before I-Hos existed, Johnson took the resort management course at North Island College before working at a great lodge on the Pinkerton Islands in Barkley Sound near Tofino for two years.

She returned to the Comox Valley and discovered the K’ómoks Band planned to build a gallery.

Hirst, believed to be the wealthiest artist in the world and for years the enfant terrible of the British art world, found what he was looking for at the Douglas Reynolds Gallery on South Granville. After initially picking up few pieces Northwest Coast art, Hirst moved on to a commissioning a sizable project from the gallery.

By the time it was completed in November 2008, the commission had grown to include five 10-metre totem poles, several smaller totem poles and bent boxes and a number of panels, all of which were shipped to England. Gallery owner Douglas Reynolds wouldn’t reveal its total value, but put it between $2 million and $5 million.