Category Archives: Arts

Arts, Indigenous Nations History

NameSake: A filmed Journey towards Recognition, Reconciliation and Place

Leave a comment

The radio version of this story opens with a short clip from the documentary NameSake in which Dr Evan Adams welcomes viewers to Tla-amin territory. Then he adds,  ”A lot of people who live here now don’t know us. They forget that all of this used to be ours, and that this city is still in our territory.” 

NameSake will be playing in the House of the Klahoose People, on Cortes Island, at 2 PM on Tuesday, June 30. It is about the Tla’amin People’s connection to the ancestral village site that was taken away from them and renamed Powell River. Then they asked the city to change its name back to  Tiskʷat. The film was screened at Hot Docs in Toronto, the DOXA Festival in Vancouver and will be shown at the Victoria Film Festival this coming July. In this morning’s interview we talk to Dr Evan Adams, who just welcomed you to Tla’amin territory, and Executive Producer Claudia Medina. 

Continue reading NameSake: A filmed Journey towards Recognition, Reconciliation and Place →
Arts

At the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery: Meinsje’s Uncanny Puppets and Sublime Paintings

Leave a comment

‘The Uncanny and the Sublime’ exhibition opens at the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, June 19, and runs until July 5. In this morning’s interview, exhibiting artist Meinsje Vlaming discusses her puppets and paintings.

Meinsje: “I’ve been involved with the Academy of the Wooden Puppets. That’s a two-year education online by Bernd Ogrodnik, a German teacher, master puppeteer, and carver who lives now in Iceland. That’s one of the good things that happened with COVID: we have a lot of things online now, and we don’t have to go there.

“Bernd put together a program on carving puppets—from the beginning, very simple puppets, to a very, very complicated marionette. Of course, being a puppeteer, that had my interest. So I enrolled.”

“Well, actually, I first applied for a grant. I got it, I enrolled, and I started carving. I got all these puppets that are not really related, and I haven’t put them in a puppet show, but it would be nice to hang them on the walls in a gallery and display them.”

Continue reading At the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery: Meinsje’s Uncanny Puppets and Sublime Paintings →
Arts

Last Weekend of the 2026 Members Show

Leave a comment

By Christann Kennedy, Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery

The Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery is special. For more than 20 years it has served as a place for artists and art enthusiasts to gather, share new work, and build bonds of community around the desire to make, think, and talk about art. The 2026 Members Show, currently on exhibit at the Gallery, is a beautiful example of this art community in action.

Continue reading Last Weekend of the 2026 Members Show →
Arts

Quadra Island Studio Tour 23 fever

Thirty-six artists. Twenty-seven studios. One weekend.

The Quadra Island Studio Tour returns for its 23rd year this weekend, June 5 to 7, offering visitors the chance to step inside creative spaces across the island and meet the people behind the work. Woodworkers, painters, jewellers, potters, photographers, fibre artists, printmakers and mixed-media artists will all be opening their doors. The range is staggering.

This year also introduces a new Friday evening preview from 6 to 9 p.m. at select locations, marked with a star and moon on the tour map. It is the official start of the tour and an opportunity to spread studio visits
across the weekend.

Continue reading Quadra Island Studio Tour 23 fever →
Arts

Inspirations: An interview with Ruby Singh

Juno-nominated musician Ruby Singh recently returned to Cortes Island, both as a facilitator for the CASE Youth Leadership Conference at Hollyhock and to give a concert at Manson’s Hall. In this morning’s interview, he talks about his many forms of artistic expression, inspirations, and relationship with Cortes Island. 

Ruby Singh:  “I find inspiration in a lot of different ways. I feel like we are all just small tendrils of creation, so the act of creation and the act of creativity are among the most natural ways of being. Other artists really inspire me. I am deeply inspired by ancestry and futurity at the same time, so finding ourselves where we are in this timeline of inheritance from our ancestors, and what we are thinking about leaving here when we leave. Long timelines really inspire me, and deep time is a very inspirational thing. I get a lot of inspiration from my community, from the people around me, and from this more-than-human world that surrounds us.” 

Continue reading Inspirations: An interview with Ruby Singh →