If 2022 is feeling bleak and dreary, it’s time to nourish your soul with art.
New Westminster’s galleries and art spaces have numerous options for you to check out in February and March. Here are some highlights:
EIGHTH & EIGHT (two shows)
Eighth & Eight is the new arts complex that includes the Massey Theatre, Plaskett Gallery and surrounding studios, rehearsal rooms and other creative spaces at 735 Eighth Ave.
You can find two separate exhibitions here, so be sure to set aside time for both.
First there’s the Plaskett Gallery, the longstanding gallery adjacent to the theatre lobby. It’s hosting a new exhibition, B&W On Film: Photography by Kevin Green, exploring various locations around B.C., including New Westminster, Burnaby, Tofino and Qualicum Beach. It runs until March 31.
Down the corridor you can find In-Visible, an exhibition of work by New Westminster Secondary School students that grew out of an intergenerational partnership, Elders in Our Midst. Students were teamed up with elders from the community and got to know them before creating portraits. Their works will be on display on the main level until April 29.
Both spaces are open to the public 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Friday, during Massey Theatre performances, or by appointment at 604-517-5900.
NEW WEST ARTISTS
New West Artists has a new show, Beyond Abstract, ongoing at the Network Hub at River Market. The show and sale features work by 22 different member artists.
You can enjoy an array of work by BCJP, Hanna-Barbara Berwid, Karen Borody, L. Dennis, Alicja Draganska, Selena Drake, Katrina Ewanchuk, Faye Gordon-Lewis, Jacky Hosford, Stella Hyx, Candice James, Robert Jost, Kirstin, Janet Kvammen, Lavana La Brey, S. Letwiniuk, Nickie Lewis, Therese Mah, Ramona Mosoiu, C. Reimer, Donald Sands and Julia Schoennagel
Check it out Wednesdays and Fridays between noon and 5 p.m. on the second floor of River Market (810 Quayside Dr.). It runs until April 14.
GALLERY AT QUEEN’S PARK
The Arts Council of New Westminster presents Looking at Local Nature, a new exhibition of work by artist Eric Hotz. The acrylic and ink works take viewers on a journey around the natural beauty of the region. It’s on until Feb. 27 at the Gallery at Queen’s Park (in Centennial Lodge, near the bandshell), and the gallery is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
NEW MEDIA GALLERY
New Westminster’s New Media Gallery, on the third floor at Anvil Centre (777 Columbia St.) presents the new exhibition Eyewitness, running until March 30.
The exhibition explores the rise of digital technologies that paved the way for “citizen journalism” and a new era of civil rights activism.
You need to book a time slot to view the exhibition, and the slots fill up quickly, so be sure to book yours soon.
COMMUNITY ART GALLERY AT ANVIL CENTRE
Art lovers can stop in to the Anvil’s gallery space to check out Ideate, running until March 4. The exhibition features work by artists Elena Ballam, Riette Gordon and Dianne Reid, with individual interpretations of common images.
Then, from March 11 to April 22, you can enjoy Convergent/Intersections, an exhibition of work by the bolder gallery artist collective: Axel Breutigam, Melenie Fleischer, Annette Nieukerk, Joyce Ozier and Richard Wilson.
The collective is described as a “loose association of like-minded people, 65 years and plus.”
“What do you get when you combine seven distinctly different mature artists? EXCITEMENT!” promises a press release.
The gallery is on the third floor at Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St.
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.
