The McMillan Arts Centre (MAC) in Parksville will host three new exhibitions next month.
The work of Deborah Philipp, Debra Hagen and Jim Decker will be on display from May 3 to May 29.
Philipp’s exhibit Home Reimagined is a canvas series, paying homage to home, that began with watercolour studies and iPad sketches. It is a reimagining of Vancouver Island landscapes she explored over the years. Philipp moved to the Island from San Francisco in 2007.
“In the past couple of years with COVID raging and now with the events unfolding in the Ukraine, I have had to rethink what home means for me. It’s about our basic needs and beyond…a peaceful country, a comfortable home with people around you that you love,” Philipp said in a news release.
With her exhibit Tesselations – Mosaics in the Modern World, Hagen hopes to educate, inform and excite viewers about an art form relatively unknown in Canada. As a mosaic artist, Hagen is interested in increasing both the audience for and the knowledge of contemporary mosaic art.
She has master’s degree in education and worked most of her life in public and post-secondary education. Her focus has been on mosaics for almost two decades and during that time she has completed a master’s in Mosaic class at Orsonis Glass Factory in Venice, Italy.
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Hagen loves the challenge of combining a wide variety of tesserae in such a way that when viewers look closely they will be delighted and surprised by what they find. The tesserae used can include dishware, glass tiles, smalti, jewelry bits, pebbles, shells, found objects and mirrors.
She will host several free artist talks at the MAC this month.
Decker’s exhibit, Oceanographer/Wildlife/Landscaps, includes nature photography from land and sea, including underwater.
“While I always enjoy a beautiful portrait of any wildlife subject be it bird, mammal or undersea creature, I usually endeavour to capture the subject within and interacting with its environment or even sometimes the photographer,” Decker said. “A bird in flight, an animal hunting for food or an inquisitive fish looking at the photographer always adds an extra element of interest to a photograph.”
Decker has been able to reconnect with his love of photography since retiring as a veterinarian. He has embraced new camera technology and also started a new activity, recreational diving, which has provided him a whole new world to capture in pictures.
— NEWS Staff, submitted