Art
Pursuing a lifelong passion for art – Vancouver Island University News
Pam Vickars has always been passionate about art, but a demanding career and busy family life left little time for her to pursue it in depth.
“I took pottery, a few crafts and interior design in continuing education classes and really enjoyed them. I had this vision that when I retired I would pursue painting, which I foresaw taking more time,” says Pam, a VIU Bachelor of Arts student.
Pam has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria and a Masters of Social Work from McGill University. She worked in health care, post-secondary education and private practice. After semi-retiring, Pam took watercolour painting at the Old School House Arts Centre in Qualicum Beach and silversmithing with a master goldsmith in Parksville. She is now pursuing her love of art through VIU’s Visual Art program.
“It’s allowing me to explore art in a comprehensive way – from drawing, painting and ceramics – through art history and curating,” says Pam, adding that like many programs people study, it begins with your university degree and you carry onward. “Learning is lifelong.”
Pam hopes to work part-time as a curator, as well as a practicing artist. Her interest in curating was piqued when Jesse Birch, Curator of the Nanaimo Art Gallery, attended one of her classes as a guest lecturer.
“Jesse spoke passionately about his journey into curating. He has since shared that while the exhibition is about both the artist’s work and the viewer, the curator will work with a story in mind or perhaps an issue to speak about through the art,” says Pam. “Those aspects really interested me.”
Pam curated the latest exhibit at VIU’s View Gallery – Figuratively Speaking: A Journey Through Movement – which runs until February 12. The exhibition features the work of Chintan Bolliger, Katarina Meglic, Joel Prevost and Kathy Venter. There was also a contemporary dance performance by Maya Campbell as part of the opening reception.
“The theme of figurative work and movement spans movement in the broad sense across physical, psychological and emotional perspectives. It’s really about our movement through life,” says Pam.
She wanted the exhibition to be pertinent to both students and the broader public and says it is particularly relevant to visual arts students, who study figurative work in class.
“I thought this exhibition would demonstrate a variety of creative ways figurative work can be undertaken,” says Pam.
A curator has numerous responsibilities which include: communicating and building relationships with artists; selecting artwork that works well with the evolving theme; displaying the art in a meaningful way; writing a curator’s statement, press release and booklet for the exhibition; and event management.
Pam has been learning more about curating in a directed studies course with Chai Duncan, VIU Visual Art Instructor and View Gallery Curator.
“It’s been an enlightening opportunity to work one-on-one with Chai and learn about his perspective on curating. He provided a nice balance of guidance while giving me the scope to do what I envisioned in setting up the exhibition,” says Pam.
Pam is currently studying Advanced Drawing with Pamela Speight and Contemporary Art with Justin McGrail, both VIU Art and Design Professors, and Art of West Coast First Nations with Rodney Sayers, a VIU Sessional Instructor.
The View Gallery is VIU’s contemporary art gallery. Learn more by visiting the gallery’s website.
A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
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- Duration 4:42
Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
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