Local artists Connie Chapman and Maureen Sugrue unveiled a new exhibition at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt on March 20. Journeying Inward is an invigorating collection of abstracts, inspired by Coast viewscapes, that unite textiles, photography, and printmaking.
Chapman, a graduate of Emily Carr University, weaves silk and cotton threads into cloth-printed photographs. The three-dimensional effect of works like Portal are at once intoxicating and steadying, thanks to their rich palette of earth tones.
Sugrue is originally from New Zealand, and was shaped by Maori art of the Land of the Long White Cloud. Her combination of machine and hand stitching, together with collage, produces nuanced landscapes that mirror the dimensionality of the natural world. The seductive complexity of patterns in works like Memories of Good Times offers comforting communion with the organic plane.
A well-tempered tempered birthday celebration
Nikki Weber, a pillar of the Sunshine Coast music scene, celebrated her 95th birthday on March 19 with appropriate fanfare. Among the artists performing in her honour at the Sechelt Seniors Activity Centre were Miles Black, Trudi Diening, Definitely Divas and The Wildflowers.
Weber has led numerous choirs, duos, trios, quartets and jazz groups, never charging for her services—and leading the way, by doing it for the love of music!
Lunar probes launched by Peach
The Gibsons Public Library is presenting a live performance by Vancouver musician, composer, and activist Earle Peach and his partner Barbara Jackson.
Earle and Barbara (known as the musical duo Songtree) will read and sing selections from Peach’s new book, Questions to the Moon: Songs and Stories, describing how music drives his social and environmental activism, and his deep belief that “everyone has the right to create beauty.”
The performance takes place at the library on March 26 at 2 p.m. Registration is required; a Zoom broadcast will also take place. Proof of vaccination is required. Contact the library to register: 604 886-2130.
Rose returns to her roots
The Sunshine Coast Film Society is presenting the 2018 musical drama Wild Rose, directed by Tom Harper and staring Jessie Buckley as Rose-Lynn Harlan.
After her release from jail, the rebellious, free-spirited Rose-Lynn tries to rectify her chaotic life in Glasgow, Scotland. She reconnects with her children and her disapproving mother (Julie Walters) and returns to Glasgow’s “Grand Ole Opry” and her true passion: belting out songs and rekindling her dream to become a country singer at the real Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, Tennessee.
There are two screenings of Wild Rose: Saturday, April 2 at 2 p.m. at the Raven’s Cry Theatre in Sechelt, and Monday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse. Proof of vaccination is required and masks are recommended. Tickets are available at the door. The movie is for patrons 18 years and up; details can be found at www.scfs.ca.
Lay out the good placemats
Tickets for the Driftwood Players’ production of A.R. Gurney’s play The Dining Room are now on sale. The nostalgic comedy of manners premieres on March 31 at 7:30 p.m., with a total of seven evening and matinee performances also scheduled at the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse (April 1 to 3 and 7 to 10).
More information and tickets ($25) are online at www.driftwoodplayers.ca; tickets can also be purchased from the Gibsons Florist and Sechelt’s Strait Music.
Museum fans can handle history
The Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives is running a membership drive in anticipation of its Annual General Meeting on April 20. An opulent gift basket, filled with $200 of history-themed items, will be presented to a new member or renewing patron.
Memberships can be purchased online at www.sunshinecoastmuseum.ca.
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.
