“The themes that emerge in my work are primarily perception, mediation, connection, adaptation and longing.”
Joanne Salé has been working as an Artist-in-Residence at Island Mountain Arts (IMA) in Wells, and this Friday, an exhibition featuring her works will open at the IMA Gallery at 2323 Pooley St.
The exhibition opens Friday, Oct. 11 with an Artist Talk at 7 p.m. Salé will be speaking about the ideas behind a series of carved panels she has created while in Wells and sharing how they relate to the body of work she has been engaged with for the last six years, according to her Facebook page.
“I am deeply affected by my sensory experience of the natural world,” Salé says in her artist statement. “Those experiences inform the way that my ideas are shaped and provide a doorway into understanding. From this emerges a visual language in my work wherein specific sentient and non-sentient ‘characters’ serve to carry forward concepts beyond what they would typically signify. I base much of my work on the supposition that humans and other forms in nature are overlapping, no space exists between, and that they are in fact interchangeable not as a metaphor, but literally. The unintended result of this sensibility is that, in retrospect, my work appears to express fables of my own creation.”
Salé says she is influenced by the work of artists such as Tim Hawkinson, Bill Viola, Rebecca Horn, William Kentridge and Betty Goodwin.
Salé earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from UBC-Okanagan in 2005, where she worked in sculpture, drawing, etching and painting. She has had solo exhibitions and been included in group exhibitions throughout the province. Her professional activities have included teaching art, prop/set work for Runaway Moon Theatre, illustration work and jurying group exhibitions, and she is currently Head of Exhibits at Okanagan Science Centre.
The timing of Salé’s Artist Talk is such that anyone visiting the IMA Gallery can also take in the premiere of Emma Jarrett’s one-woman play, Breastless, at the Sunset Theatre at 8 p.m.
To learn more about Joanne Salé, visit joannesale.com.
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