Opening Night of the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery’s 2024 Season

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Eighty-three people turned out on Friday June 7, for the gala opening night of the Old School Art Gallery’s 2024 season. This was a group show, with 28 contributing artists, that will be open to the public on Fridays (6-9 PM) and on weekends (2-6 PM) until June 16th.

Bianca Lee,  Manager of the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery, was delighted by the large turnout, “I wasn't sure how it was going to work out having the member show at the beginning of the season, but it worked out pretty magnificently. There was so much interest and participation in the show. It seems like a really beautiful way to start out the season, get people excited about the gallery and also avoid the burnout of late season.”

Early visitors were treated to an instrumental selection by Cortes Island guitarist Rick Bockner.  

At 7:00 Kristen Schofield Sweet gave a welcoming address,  “We had 28 artists this year. (Cheers and clapping) It's the most we've ever had and I’m going to read out the names of a group of people, just to give you some sense of what it takes to hang a show.  Besides myself, we are thanking Christann Kennedy, Gerry Davis, George,  Orien Lee, Bianca Lee, Pamela Boles, Janet Turpin, and Ayami Stryck. It took that many people four days to get all that on the wall.”

“Next Friday, the 14th, I'm going to be doing a walking tour of the show saying, ‘To get it on the wall didn't just happen by accident, here's some of the things that we considered. Why is this piece next to that piece? And those two are over there, but not with this one?’ A show is also a piece of work. How those parts come together is really fascinating. Especially when you have nine people doing it.”

One of her colleagues, Christann Kennedy, later explained, “The idea is to try and create a dialogue so that the different pieces are  talking to each other. Maybe they have a similarity of colour or a similarity of subject matter or a similarity of material that makes them  seem like they might have something to say to each other.  What we try to do with a group show like this is set up some relationships that are interesting, and that might illuminate the artworks in a way that if you were just seeing one piece, you might not see that.”

“It's great to have so many creative people living on this island and to have a venue where everyone can come together and show their work and open up conversation between each other. I just think it's a really exciting thing that this gallery exists and I feel really lucky that I'm getting to participate.”

Several viewers remarked upon their success. 

Sole Arico said, “It’s just an incredible diversity and the quality is just  really high. Very beautiful work.” 

Jonathan Ogilvie went further, “I will say,  as someone who has spent a good deal of time in art galleries as a religious practice, that this collection  is exquisitely put together, that each one of these pieces complements  all of the others.  And that's not easy to do when you have so many artists at play together.  So I'm feeling it.”