There’s plenty to see around downtown Chilliwack right now when it comes to arts and culture.
At least five different exhibitions have opened in recent weeks featuring works by self-taught artists, an up-and-coming painter, a light sculpture artist and an exhibit on loan from the Royal BC Museum.
Lucas Simpson • Chilliwack painter Lucas Simpson’s solo exhibition is on display in the O’Connor Group Art Gallery at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre from Feb. 8 to March 19. He describes his work as “fragmented impressionism: fragmented in regards to form, but impressionist in regards to richness in colour, essence and atmosphere.” Gallery hours are Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free.
Sylvie Roussel-Jannsens • Local light sculpture artist, Sylvie Roussel-Janssens, has two installations on display from now until March 15. Gratitude will be in the lobby of the Royal Hotel while Towers is in the front windows of the Chilliwack Cultural Centre. Both installations are visible day and night.
‘Gratitude’ by Sylvie Roussel-Janssens is on display in the lobby of the Royal Hotel now until March 15. (Sylvie Roussel-Janssens)
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Trina Schols (Art on Main) • Trina Schols’ artwork is on display as part of Art on Main, an exhibition people can view as they walk past the windows of Royal Hotel on Main Street. She is a self-taught painter and, as an avid gardener, her work often reflects this hobby with roses, sunflowers and peonies often the subject of her paintings.
Self-taught Chilliwack painter, Trina Schols, will have her artwork on display in Royal Hotel windows throughout the month of February. (Submitted)
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Anita Symonds • Cultus Lake painter, Anita Symonds, is the featured artist at Cornerstone Custom Picture Framing on Mill Street until March 31. She has been painting for 50 years and the landscapes displayed in the exhibition are inspired by the natural beauty that surrounds us and they showcase her love of brilliant colour.
Anita Symonds’s artwork is on display at Cornerstone Custom Picture Framing at 9369-A Mill St. from Feb. 1 to March 31. (Anita Symonds)
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Our Living Languages • Interactive exhibition, Our Living Languages, highlights the state of Indigenous languages in British Columbia. Through interactive stations, video and audio, it provides visitors with the opportunity to learn more about the history of 34 disrupted First Nations languages in B.C., the complexity of these languages, and what people and communities are doing to help their languages survive and flourish. Our Living Languages has been produced and is on loan from the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. It’s on display at the Chilliwack Museum now until May 24.
Sydney Laiss (left), curatorial assistant, and curator Anna Irwin stand in the ‘Our Living Languages’ exhibition on Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. It is currently on display at the Chilliwack Museum and on loan from the Royal BC Museum. (Jenna Hauck/ Chilliwack Progress)
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
