Arts festival welcomes special guests
Amongst the more than 60 artists showing this weekend during the Creemore Festival of the Arts are members of the Barrie Art Club.
Eleven members of the club will be showing artwork at the Dunedin Hall, representing a wide range of mediums and styles, including landscape, portraits, figures, photography, and pen-and-ink.
Watercolourist Lorraine Maher, who has been a member of the art club for more than 30 years, said she is happy to join the Purple Hills Arts and Heritage Society’s event and sees its as a great way to broaden the art community.
“I’m excited to be part of it myself, personally,” said Maher.
She said the club has members representing a wide range of disciplines and abilities, from novice to acclaimed. The volunteer-driven club had almost 300 members pre-Covid, and has since been rebuilding its membership through online workshops and studios and include members who have relocated to other parts of the country and others who cannot physically make it to the club, all thanks to technology.
During the festival, Water First is hosting three young Indigenous artists, including two from the 7th Generation Image Makers program and one who worked for Water First over the past summer. (Information about the third artist will be available during the festival.)
Trevaun Robinson is an Afro-Indigenous artist who is part of the 7th Generation Image Makers program who was born in West Bay on Manitoulin Island and raised in Toronto, and Terra (Ter) Roy is an artist in her local communities of Barrie, Chimnissing (Beausoleil First Nation) and Nipissing First Nation.
7th Generation Image Makers is the signature interdisciplinary arts and media program at Native Child and Family Services of Toronto. Since 1996, it has provided urban Aboriginal youth with access to high quality arts programming and professional arts training in a culturally supportive and safe environment. Aboriginal youth work with artists, mentors, and elders to engage the community from an Aboriginal perspective through art-making.
Artists on Location is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday Oct. 1 and Sunday Oct. 2. Admission is free. Each artist in the show will have a piece at Station on the Green, which will act as a home base, where people can get more information and plan their tour.
