CALEB NICKERSON
PORTAGE DU FORT
Aug. 7, 2020
The Stone School Gallery in Portage du Fort was bustling on Friday night for the first vernissage the group has hosted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The typical spread of . . .
hors d’oeuvres and wine was moved to a tent on the lawn outside so guests could mingle while keeping their distance.
In the upstairs gallery, the mother/daughter duo of Marlene and Dayna Shaly had their exhibition Body and Land Intersections on display. The room was filled with a vast range of media, from sculptures and fibre art, to large paintings.
The junior Shaly said that the selection of both collaborative and solo work took about a year to produce and was inspired by their property across the river.
“Our exhibit is dealing with land and the way that our bodies interact with land and place,” Dayna explained. “A lot of the work is surrounded and located in Kippen’s Creek, which is a creek right behind our home in Burnstown, Ontario. A lot of the work is about that and about our time there and the space that our family has there.”
The third-year student at the Ontario College of Art and Design said that she enjoys mixing a variety of media.
“Painting is definitely what I do the most, but when I work in fibre arts, when I work in sculpture, my paintings look a little different,” she said. “That kind of informs what I make in the future.”
Marlene grew up drawing but has tried her hand at many different disciplines over the years. She said that collaborating with her daughter for the exhibit was an interesting experiment, as they both draw inspiration from the land near their home.
“I studied all the different disciplines, from silver smithing to pottery clay, painting, photography, just about everything I could, and fibre arts as well,” she said. “This just kind of evolved together, because we started doing some collaborative pieces, the two on the back wall we did together. We’re very influenced by the area that we live, which is Kippen’s Creek, so we decided to just feed off of each other, and support each other and inspire each other and … enjoy just exploring this theme.”
Dayna said that working together was a recent development, pointing out one of the large canvases on the gallery wall.
“I started it and it was a painting that I wasn’t quite happy with and she ended up finishing it,” she said. “That’s how it came together and we’ll be doing a lot more in the future I think.”
Downstairs, Louise Butler showed off her printmaking skill with a collection titled Amalgam.
“The theme that is woven throughout is colour because it was meant to be a summer show and I just wanted to present colour in a pleasant way,” she explained.
After a career in education, the Ottawa based artist decided to get a diploma from the Ottawa School of Art in 2012 and has been working in a variety of paper media since.
“I prefer printmaking, I like to do a lot of printmaking, but also encaustics and those are the things that I wove through this exhibit.”
Encaustics involve mixing hot wax with pigments and applying them to either wood or canvas. She said that she enjoys experimenting with different disciplines, but mainly sticks to works on paper.
“The more I do, the more I like to do,” she said. “It’s very flexible. I like working with paper, I find that it’s economical in a sense, I go through a lot of it.”
Both exhibitions will be on display at the gallery until Sept. 6.
