Summerland is a great place to be an artist, says Val Eibner, featured artist at the Meadowlark Nature Festival this weekend.
She has worked as an artist in many parts of Canada and travelled the world meeting artists. She finds Summerland to be unusually helpful. Tradespeople and businesses are quick to lend a hand cutting a piece of wood or shaping a piece of metal and ask nothing in return. She has made her home here for the last decade, and also worked here in the 1970s and 1980s.
Eibner has donated a fused glass sculpture entitled Eye Spy a Meadowlark to be raffled off during the 15th Meadowlark Nature Festival. Her work will be on display at the Penticton Art Gallery from May 18 to June 17.
She has worked in glass for the last 10 years, but her first career was as a master potter and sculptor. She built kilns from scratch and made clays and glazes.
A native of Manitoba, she taught in Ontario and Calgary before moving to Summerland for the first time.
In 1978 she purchased the old nurses’ residence on Solly Road and established a pottery studio. During this time she was one of the artists mentored by George Ryga, novelist and playwright.
Further accomplishments followed at Banff School of Fine Arts, a pottery studio in Abbotsford and in work as a set dresser and sculptor for movies.
Eibner returned to Summerland in 2002 and began to work in her new medium of fused glass. She and Summerland glass artist Maryan Dennison worked on commissions for the Osoyoos Indian Band and Nk’Mip Winery.
Eibner also created windows for the Moog and Friends Hospice House in Penticton. She continues to do private commissions as well.
For nine years she has been a member of the Ars Longa artist group in the Okanagan, which promotes Canadian artists, art in the home and emerging artists.
