[BCMA] Nanaimo Art Gallery, 900 Fifth Street presents "Illuminating Peace, Seeking Peace" Amy Loewan, Deryk Houston

Thu Jan 12 12:10:46 PST 2012

Deryk Houston (installation detail)   Seeking Peace
Amy Loewan, Lantern 2009, Illuminating Peace

Illuminating Peace, Seeking Peace

Amy Loewan, Deryk Houston

January 13 - April 14, 2012

Opening Friday, January 13th from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Artist's Talk: Amy Loewan, Friday, January 13th from 4:30 - 5:30pm

Campus Gallery - 900 Fifth Street, Entrance 5D

Curator: Ellen McCluskey

The Nanaimo Art Gallery is excited to be presenting two talented artists
with the theme of peace prevalent. The gallery at 900 Fifth Street will be
transformed into a sanctuary for contemplation, and hope from January 13th
to April 14th 2012. An artist's talk with Amy Loewan will take place on
Friday, January 13th from 4:30-5:30pm. Both artists will be in attendance at
the opening reception on Friday, January 13th from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm.  

Illuminating Peace: Amy Loewan's exhibition and artist practices center on
"creating work as a vehicle for personal transformation and promoting human
understanding. I am dedicated to peace building and my career as a visual
artist provides me with the avenue to carry out this task." 

Loewan was born at the end of Second World War. During a time when peace was
finally declared in Hong Kong, she was named Wai-Ping - Wai, in Chinese,
meaning gift, and Ping, meaning peace. While growing up her memories
"include my parents caring for orphan cousins and relatives fleeing from
war-torn China to British Hong Kong. After living in Hong King, the U.S. and
Australia she immigrated to Canada. In the last decade Loewan has been
focused on integrating her multicultural learnings and reaching into the
roots of her Chinese heritage by studying ancient symbols and eastern
philosophies. By experimenting with the Chinese traditional art materials
such and rice paper and ink, the large scale rice paper weaving installation
of Illuminating Peace was created.

She states "When viewers are close enough to read this work, they are
presented with eight values vital in human relationships: compassion,
kindness, respect, understanding, patience, tolerance, gentleness and
forgiveness. More than 35 world languages are interwoven into this work."

Loewan encourages the public's participation as viewers are invited to
write/draw their visions of peace onto strips of rice papers and then weave
them onto a separate panel. Loewan states "In our contemporary society when
we are constantly tempted to fear and to despair because of terrorism,
global warming, nuclear weapons, depletion of natural resources, rending of
social fabric and so on, I strongly believe a message of hope is crucial for
our well being."

Much of Deryk Houston's work over the past fifteen or so years has been in
support of  children's rights and peace.

His installation "Seeking Peace" is inspired by a life altering event.
Houston elaborates, "It started with a journey to Iraq and a tour of the
Ameriyha bomb shelter in Baghdad, where several hundred men, women and
children died in a blinding flash of agony. The simple, concrete and
reinforced steel, box like structure, with four foot thick walls and
ceiling, was considered to be a safe place to find shelter from the constant
air attacks during the first Gulf war. I was accompanied by an elderly woman
who had lost her entire family in the blast. Since her loss, she has spent
her time taking people through the shelter, explaining how the two massive,
guided missiles burst through the roof and found her family inside. She had
just left the shelter, thinking that everything was safe for a while between
attacks to go back to her nearby home and hang up her laundry. (Life had to
go on despite the daily bombing runs and so it was normal to come and go
from the shelter.) The first missile sliced a hole in the roof and exploded
inside where her family and several hundred people huddled. A second missile
entered the same hole in the roof and burst through the main floor to the
next level below the first, where it exploded and created even more horrific
carnage and incinerating heat. Anyone who has entered through the large,
five ton doors of that shelter and witnessed the remains inside, leaves in
shock."

Houston asks "But what does one do about it? How does one find any hope? I
found it in the Iraqi people themselves. They demonstrated to me a deep
eternal hope that always survives despite the darkness and it altered my
ways of thinking in a profound manner over the years. Their strength helped
me retain my sanity when world events might test us to our limits."

Houston has chosen in his installation to not focus on the grim physical
tragedy of this event but to rather turn the focus on life over the
destruction of war because it is the only way forward. In Seeking Peace
Houston would like visitors to contemplate the crisp white sheets that are a
part of it as fresh ideas, including new beginnings, surrender, nationalism,
as well as an international signal of peace to strangers entering foreign
lands.

Houston's wish is that the viewer "will find some kind of hope after viewing
this installation."

For more information please call the gallery at 250-740-6350. Gallery hours
are Monday to Friday 10:00am to 5:00pm, Saturday 12:00-4:00pm.

Description: NagLogo_Black-Gold-2in

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