Since pandemic restrictions began in March of 2020, the Vancouver Art Gallery has been hosting bi-monthly curator talks and tours online called the Art Connects series. The next virtual event will be a tour and conversation with Connie Wattsat YVR Airport.
Tour and Conversation with Connie Watts at YVR Airport
For this special Art Connects, viewers will go inside YVR’s Pacific Passage, a public art installation within one of the airport’s arrival gates that features the large-scale sculpture Hetux (2000).
I’ve chosen to highlight this particular event on its own as when I saw the listing, how much I really missed travel just really sunk in. There’s nothing like coming home through the Pacific Passage.
Hetux is Watts’ largest indoor sculptural work, and it greets guests and visitors to these unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Named after Watt’s grandmother, this dramatic work represents the mythological Thunderbird—known as the keeper of the city—and shares knowledge and stories through motifs that can be deciphered through close looking.
Following this behind-the-scenes tour, Watts will speak to her multi-disciplinary art practice and how it relates to ideas of welcoming. She will also discuss how she chooses to share the stories that are carried through her ancestors.
This event will be moderated by Melissa Lee, Director of Public Programs, and Stephanie Bokenfohr, Public Programs Coordinator. Special thanks and gratitude to Kate Swaney of the Vancouver Airport Authority for helping to coordinate this program.
You can watch all 32 previous Art Connects events online for free.
About the Artist
Connie Watts is the Associate Director, Aboriginal Programs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (“ECUAD”). She is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, educator and designer of Nuu-chah-nulth, Gitxsan and Kwakwaka’wakw ancestry. Born and raised in Campbell River, Connie has a Bachelor of Interior Design from the University of Manitoba and a BFA from ECUAD.
Since 2001, Heritage Vancouver has published an annual Endangered Sites Watch List, to raise awareness for ten places that they believe are vulnerable in the city.
Heritage Vancouver’s Endangered Sites Watch List
Little Mountain Comedy Department is a collective of Vancouver comedians, determined to produce Vancouver’s funniest live shows at Vancouver’s favourite hole-in-the-wall at 195 E 26th Avenue, Vancouver
“Whether it’s a Kingsway butcher, a Killarney bakery, or a Kerrisdale tailor, our neighbourhoods wouldn’t be the same without these go-to places and the personalities there that have gotten to know us.” – Tyee reporter Chris Cheung
In early September, they made a decision to release two entries on for the 2020 list that were especially relevant to the pandemic. They were the threats to Arts and Culture and the threats to local neighbourhood businesses. On December 31st Heritage Vancouver announced the rest of the Top Ten Watch List for 2020:
Arts and Culture
Neighbourhood Businesses
Henry Hudson Wooden Schoolhouse
Holy Rosary Cathedral Complex
St. Paul’s Hospital
False Creek South
Broadway Plan
Historic Street Elements
Vancouver Plan
Postmodern Architecture in Vancouver
The Broadway Plan and Vancouver Plan will be significant in changing contexts for heritage places across the city as the plans will determine how future development will unfold across the city.
There is tremendous public history and identity tied to St. Paul’s Hospital. Its move and the redevelopment of the site will mean substantial change to the character of the West End. The fate of the architecturally important Burrard Building also remains uncertain.
1923 – St Paul’s Hospital. Archives # Bu N251.
False Creek South makes its third appearance on the list as there remains great uncertainty around the aspects that make this a significant living neighbourhood.
Heritage Vancouver also wants to draw attention to some things that tend to be unnoticed by many people and have included an entry each on historic street elements and Postmodern architecture in Vancouver.
1906 Sidewalk Stamp along the 2000 block of Haro Street
“The best way to support local art and culture is through attending, purchasing, viewing, listening, watching—consuming—local art and culture. During the last couple of months, many artists have taken to on-line forums to communicate their art. While in the short term this is imperative to stop the spread of the virus, once we are able to gather together, the best way to support local artists is to get back out to visit galleries, listen to musicians and theatre artists, eat local cuisine, watch live dance, read and listen to poets, purchase local authors.” – Elia Kirby, the Arts Factory Society
Follow Heritage Vancouver on Facebook for more information, insights, and actions.
The Fort Langley Jazz and Arts Festival is looking for its next Rising Star. Each year the festival, which takes place in July, searches for an up-and-coming jazz musician to be featured. The Rising Star award winner will be given an opportunity to perform in their own featured performance at the 2021 festival. They will also receive a scholarship of $1,000.
Alvin Brendan Trio who performed at the 2020 Fort Langley Virtual Jazz & Arts Festival.
Festival organizers established the annual award in 2019 “to recognize an outstanding jazz student who demonstrates a high level of performance ability and is pursuing a professional career in jazz music.”
“I am very grateful to be given the chance to perform my art and see my name next to many of my local idols that shaped who I am as a musician,” says 2019 award recipient Alvin Brendan, a recent graduate of the music program at Capilano University.
Award submissions are open to all secondary and post-secondary music students from the Metro Vancouver area until March 31, 2021 on the festival website.
“One of our key mandates is to support youth and emerging artists,” says Dave Quinn, artistic director for the festival. “The award is a wonderful opportunity for an up and coming jazz student to perform with and be mentored by established artists, while also receiving financial support for their education.”
For 2021, organizers are planning a hybrid festival featuring in-person intimate events and pre-recorded and live-streamed concerts.
Established in 2018, the Fort Langley Jazz & Arts Festival is a not-for-profit organization whose mandate is to enrich cultural life in the Fraser Valley by bringing emerging and established jazz acts and visual artists to Fort Langley for all to enjoy. The annual festival, held over the last weekend of July, draws thousands of residents and visitors to the streets of the community.
Music on Main is hosting the World Premiere Livestream of Graveyards and Gardens, co-created and co-produced by Caroline Shaw and Vanessa Goodman. This livestream is a part of the PuSh Rally.
Graveyards and Gardens Livestream. Photo by David Cooper
Graveyards and Gardens Livestream
Where: Online When: January 28-29, 2021 at 4:30pm and 7:30pm Tickets: $15, on sale now.
Caroline Shaw, 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music winner, was Music on Main’s Composer in Residence from 2015-2016, where she shared insight, ideas, and beautiful music with audiences, forming a deep relationship with Vancouver. Vanessa Goodman is the Artistic Director of Action at a Distance Dance Society where she uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition.
In 2016, Caroline (voice) and Vanessa (dance) performed a captivating improvisation presented by Music on Main & Dances for a Small Stage. Now in 2021, these two exceptional artists come together again and with a new work, Graveyards and Gardens.
The performance takes place among 400 feet of orange sound cables and an arrangement of plants—nature and technology being another synthesis the artists explore. Things begin with a long passage featuring an array of sounds—some come from tape decks, some from a record player, some from old Edison wax recordings. What these two artists make will live on, and this live-streamed genesis is, among other things, a powerful display of the creative process.
Caroline and Vanessa are presenting Graveyards and Gardens specifically for online audiences. The four livestream performances will give audiences a chance to witness a visual and sonic album emerge before their eyes and ears; the artists create new ways of interacting with sounds, and bodies, to shape an analog experience that washes over the senses.
Read more about what to expect when you virtually attend the World Premiere Livestream of Graveyards and Gardens.
About Music on Main
Now in its 15th Season under founder and Artistic Director David Pay, Music on Main has presented more than 500 concerts and events, featuring over 1,000 musicians, and 100 world premieres, with daring programming for the musically adventurous. Watch and listen to concerts, festivals, and top-notch videos.
Celebrating the Lunar New Year and ringing in the Year of the Ox, the Coastal Lunar Lanterns display in Downtown Vancouver will feature the works of artist Susan Point and her family of artists starting February 11th.
Eight lanterns with designs from two Indigenous families originating from two ends of the Pacific Ocean will be part of the Coastal Lunar Lanterns – “Family Ties” in 2021.
Musqueam artist Thomas Cannell had been involved in both 2019 and 2020 editions of the Coastal Lunar Lanterns; his mother, the renowned Susan Point, will now lead her family of artists including Thomas, Kelly Cannell (daughter) and Summer Cannell (granddaughter) to be presented in an unprecedented artistic and cultural dialogue with the Pavavaljung family of artists from the Paiwan tribe in Taiwan.
For “We Are A Family”, the project’s artistic vision of family is everything is presented with festival partner, LunarFest Vancouver, LGBTQ2S+ artist Kent-Chan Kusalik. It will be featured for the first time alongside Filipino-Canadian artists Mayo Landicho and Bert Monterona, and returning Squamish artist Cory Douglas, as all of them will join the Lantern City family.
Special AR technology brings these art pieces to life, along with an immersive light show to brighten the long winter nights.
“These lanterns on display are side by side, just like we are as a family. Family, that’s a strong word,” Susan Point told The Lantern City. “Family for us means the ones who will be beside us no matter what happens. We support each other and inspire each other at home and while working together or apart.”
More details about Coastal Lunar Lanterns (formerly with LunarFest, now The Lantern City) will be available online in the coming weeks along with more LunarFest Vancouver programming.
