A reception celebrating the life and work of artist Sybil Andrews Sunday featured the serving of cake and coffee — with a twist that even Andrews should have appreciated.
The ninth annual Sybil Andrews Day was marked April 19 at the heritage cottage in Willow Point that bears her name. The reception was attended by dozens of members of both the arts and heritage communities, who mingled while viewing a variety of art pieces and historical information on the artist who gained international renown for her work in the linocut printing medium.
The cake provided for the reception featured the image of her linocut “Wings”, which portrays a flock of birds wheeling and dipping to feed in the furrows left by a receding tractor and plow.
And the featured art piece, displayed on an easel, was the original painting of her “Coffee Bar”, which showed colourfully dressed loggers taking a break in the coffee shop which once stood across the highway near her cottage.
“She loved the way the colours of their shirts looked as they sat together,” said Fern Seaboyer, president of the Sybil Andrews Heritage Society.
Mayor Andy Adams provided a short address, and the crowd was welcomed by remarks from both Sandra Parish of the Campbell River Museum and Heather Hughson of the Campbell River Arts Council.
Andrews was born in the U.K. and first took an art correspondence course while working as a welder in an airplane factory during World War I. She began producing and exhibiting linocuts — many of them featuring workers in their environments — from 1921 to 1939. With the outbreak of World War II, she returned to work as a welder, this time constructing battleships.
She and her husband, Walter Morgan, were married in 1943 and moved to Canada four years later, settling in Campbell River and resuming her work as an artist and art teacher. She died in 1992 at the age of 94.
Sybil Andrews Day was first proclaimed by city council in 2007.
