Nigel Fox Artworks

Kitimat Exhibit

Well, another busy week is over and the Kitimat show opening has come and gone, the exhibit goes on until March 26th.  It truly was an honor to show along side artists such as Sammy Robinson and Lyle Wilson.  I got to meet Summer Breeze-Kent for the first time as well.  I’m glad that I did.  We have similar backgrounds, in that we both have computer science degrees and it turns out that we both drew in our youth.  I told Summer that I drew my first comic book when I was twelve, she upped me on this and told me that she drew her first comic when she was twelve, too, plus she made a replica by hand.  She was in to color and I am in to color.  Ironically, as she left, she said “talk to you on the internet” to me, which is probably exactly what we will both do.  I even think that we have similar plans to expand our respective art businesses.  It was funny.

Anyways, the exhibit went good.  A lot of people commented on the high quality of the work being displayed.  A few people commented on the contemporary nature of the work that was there.  I think that they were right in some regards.  But as Dempsey always says, “the contemporary always has to come from the traditional.”  Because, “you can’t make something from nothing.  Something always has to come from something.”  I believe he meant that even the contemporary art forms have to have roots, but that is my own paraphrase.  It is so true.  I find more and more people saying that they buy the “traditional” art work, but what I think they mean is that they buy the work that has a sense of history.  It seems to give the work meaning.  Incidentally, we were also displaying our work beside museum pieces of old bent wood boxes, petroglyphs, and other artifacts.  They were so much more than artifacts in this context, though, and like the Terrace exhibit was a retrospective of the old, along side the emergence of the new; the Kitimat exhibit was a juxtaposition of ancient and fresh.  Sort of like combining the enthusiasm of the new with the temperance of the old.  It made for quite a powerful show in its own right.  The exhibit will be on until the 26th of March.