Slow Art Day is coming to the Northern Lights Gallery in Melfort on Saturday, April 10. The piece in Deschambault Lake Rocks by Melfort artist robert Billings/Facebook photo
Northern Lights Gallery, located on Main Street in Melfort is bringing Slow Art Day to the community on Saturday, April 10. The worldwide event is coming to Melfort for the first time as a chance to appreciate the art that is made in the area. According to gallery owner Sandra Dancey, in the times we are in, an event like this is beneficial.
This is the eleventh year for the event internationally. It’s designed as a day to slow down and appreciate art.
“It makes more sense than ever now given the current circumstances globally speaking that everyone is isolated,” Dancey said.
“Get out and go see art, and you don’t even have to go indoors if you don’t want to. But there are events all over the world and the point of this, the message is slow down and actually look at and appreciate art,” Dancey said.
The five artists contributing works include Monica Whenham-Daschuk, Linsey Levendall, Beth Bentz, Jim Mason and Al Jardine.
“These are all incredibly talented artists and they all live in this part of the world and that’s what is so nice about it. You can promote artists from all over the planet but I like to promote people from this neighbourhood,” she said.
She described the area as deep in talent in the visual arts. Slow Art Day will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on April 10 and everyone is encouraged to come to the gallery and view the work of the five artists taking part.
Dancey described the concept as relaxed and basic. Come down to the gallery, wearing a mask and if you don’t want to come in you can look through the window.
“But because it is going on all day it will be very low key and you can just wander through and look at the art. It’s limited to just five artists and just one piece each. I think Beth Bentz might have a collective of three small pieces that basically represents one.
“The point is to actually look at a piece, not just glance and walk by, not pull out your phone and take a picture of it but stand there and look at it and try to fully appreciate what the artist is doing, what message they are getting across, what you can find in it,” Dancey said.
“We are of an age of everyone moves really fast and snaps a picture with their phone and keeps moving. And this is to encourage you to not do that, to just actually stand there and look at it. And that is why it is good if you bring a friend with you, you can look at it together and discuss it. You can discuss it there in the gallery or you can go somewhere else for a cup of coffee afterwards and talk about it there,” she explained.
According to Dancey, there is no common thread or theme among the five pieces and you can choose to look however few or many you want. Some work will have a writeup by the artist, some will have questions from the artist to start a conversation about the piece.
“Pick a piece or two and really truly look at them and you can decide which one you like the best that way and beyond that no obligation. We just want you to actually appreciate the fact that everyone is surrounded by art, it’s everywhere and especially in the case now of when people aren’t inside so much they are outdoors and you are starting to notice more things like murals,” Dancey said.
She gave an example of seeing art everywhere like on trains as you are stopped by them.
“It’s things like that that force you to actually stop and look at the art and then you start to appreciate it,” Dancey said.
People are also encouraged to make a day out of it as there is also a show at the Sherven-Smith Art Gallery in the Kerry Vickar Centre. The Melfort Arts Council and OSAC are hosting the display Accidental Utopia by Sylvia Ziemann from April 1 to 23.
“I’m encouraging people to tie it all together. A nice way to get out and appreciate art around town not just in my shop but at the Sherven-Smith Gallery as well,” Dancey said.
For more information Dancey, encourages people to look up Slow Art Day on the internet.
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.
