Arts grants, poetry and knitting, oh my!
Posted By Ryan Paulsen
Posted 3 months ago
The Ontario Arts Council recently awarded grant funding to the tune of $5,000 to Barry's Bay's own South of 60 Arts Centre, director Anya Blake says.
The money will go to finance two new interactive installation exhibitions, set to be open to the public in late June or early July of 2010.
The first, entitled Hockey Stick Junkestra, and will be presented by Mark Sepic, a Toronto artist who has created similar pieces for various shows across the province. Junkestra is a "four-by-eight-foot interactive music sculpture" made out of a wooden frame with the sound component being provided by broken hockey sticks and other articles of "junk" donated by the community.
The construction process will be open to the public and will take place over five days, at the end of which Sepic will perform at an event to showcase the musical possibilities of such an unusual instrument.
Also opening next summer will be The Nesting Habit, built and shown by two women who live in Toronto, but have strong ties to the Barry's Bay area. Cara Bleskie grew up in Barry's Bay, while Catherine Toth's family has cottaged in the area for years.
Toth and Bleskie's exhibition will consist of an indoor component, made up of photographs and nests suspended from the ceiling of the gallery, and an outdoor installation featuring a suspended wire tunnel train whose interior is modelled after a first class Canadian Atlantic Railway car, circa 1900.
Keep your eyes on www.southof60.com for details on these and other upcoming events. There will be a large bin set up at the Paul J. Yakabuski Community Centre to collect donations of old, broken wooden hockey sticks.
Some current and upcoming shows at South of 60 include 20 And Under, a showcase of young local artistic talent running until Nov. 14, a poetry reading being held at the Wilno Station Inn on Nov. 8 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. There's no charge for the reading and the public can come to either read some of their own work or just enjoy the poetic talents of other community members.
If knitting is closer to your preferred method of creative expression, you may be interested in attending the gallery's Knit-In on Nov. 14. Participants are welcome into the gallery itself where they will be invited to knit various items to be donated to the Child Poverty Action Network's Operation Snowsuit program, collecting winter clothes for children whose families are in difficult financial situations.
