Spend a day at the beach with Jane Dunlop-Stevenson for Hands Across the Sands, a fundraiser for the Queens County Food Bank on Sunday at Summerville Beach. (Rick Conrad

You can help turn a day at the beach into a work of art this weekend, and raise some money for a local charity.

Liverpool artist Jane Dunlop-Stevenson is organizing Hands Across the Sands: Art with Heart for the Food Bank on Sunday at 1 p.m. on Summerville Beach.

The idea is to draw 30-foot tall stick figures on the beach at low tide. You make a $20 donation to the Queens County Food Bank for each figure. And Dunlop-Stevenson and other volunteers will help you bring your beach art into the world.

“It started with a gentleman saying to me it would be neat to see people being drawn on the beach,” Dunlop-Stevenson said in a recent interview.

“And that led me to think of a picture of all these stick people and what we could do with it and it just evolved into let’s charge some money and help out the food bank and create this great picture.

“The original goal was to draw 150 30-foot stick figures at $20 a piece which would then (be) $3,000 to the food bank. We’re at a third of that right now. So that’s really good. I’m pleased with that. Just to envision 77 30-foot stick drawings is incredible across the beach, all holding hands, … with their feet in the water. It’ll be really neat to see the tide coming in and touching their toes.”

After everybody has drawn their figures, Dunlop-Stevenson will take drone footage of the whole scene and post it.

This is the first time she’s created sand art at Summerville with so many other people. But she’s a veteran virtuoso at creating striking short-term sand art.

Probably her best known work was a 120-foot-by-60-foot tribute to Olympic shot putter Sarah Mitton before this summer’s games. That one featured an 85-foot Eiffel Tower, a Canadian flag and the Olympic rings.

Dunlop-Stevenson created this tribute to Sarah Mitton this summer at Summerville Beach. (Jane Stevenson photo)

She’s also recreated the logo for the Liverpool International Theatre Festival. And she’s taken small groups to Summerville to create mandalas and other images.

But Sunday’s event promises to be her biggest group effort yet. She and some other volunteers will sketch out the heads of all the stick figures ahead of time. 

And participants just have to bring their own rakes to help give their pieces texture, so that they show up against the smooth sand.

“And they will rake the head and choose their design however they want it, however simple or dressed up they want their little person to be, it’s totally up to them. No perfection is necessary. If you have your little picture drawn and you know what you want to put in the sand, it will probably take you 20 minutes maybe to draw a stick figure. So it’s very possible to draw a few.

“Nothing has to be perfect. It’s all just for fun and to see this really cool art.”

Dunlop-Stevenson has set up a Facebook event, which includes a link to a Google registration form. You can go by yourself or get a team of five together. 

And if the weather doesn’t co-operate this weekend, they’ll try it again on Nov. 30. Look for updates on their Facebook event Hands Across the Sands: Art with Heart for the Food Bank.

“Bring your rakes, find some pictures online, bring your 20 bucks and bring your friends. … We can always be warm at the beach.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

QCCR acknowledges the support of the Community Radio Fund of Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative.

Julie Babin crochets one of the items that will be up for auction at the LRHS Japanese exchange art auction on Friday night at ADJA Studio and Gallery on Main Street in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)

It will be the first foreign exchange trip for Liverpool high school students since before the pandemic.

And they and their parents are holding a fundraiser on Friday night to help get them there.

Ten students from Liverpool Regional High School are planning a cultural exchange next year with kids from a high school in Yokohama, Japan through the Nova Scotia International Student Program.

Julie Babin is one of the parents organizing a silent auction and fundraiser at ADJA Studio and Gallery on Main Street in Liverpool, from 7 to 9 p.m. It will feature local visual art, crafts and baked goods donated by people from the community.

“There will be anything from knit items, photographs, stained glass, paintings, jewelry, all kinds of cool stuff to help these kids get their goal met and get to Japan.”

People will be able to bid on items at the gallery on Friday night. And the auction will continue on Facebook next week.

Babin says the students are working hard to reach their fundraising goal for the two-week trip. 

“They’ve been working their little fingers to the bone to try to fundraise for the past six months. They’ve been doing beef jerky fundraisers, we have a fudge fundraiser going on, 50/50 tickets, bottle drives.”

She says the Queen’s Enviro Centre in Brooklyn is accepting donations of bottles for the trip. People just have to tell them it’s for “the Japan trip”.

The group has to raise $5,000, with each student expected to pay another $3,500. 

Babin says they’re pretty close to their group goal. But any money raised above $5,000 will help lower the students’ expenses.

“If we can get that, the kids feel pretty good. … It’s exciting for them to see it slowly go up. We have a couple of more things on the horizon but we’re really hoping that this fundraiser gets us to that goal.”

Her 16-year-old son, Desmond Danylewich, is one of the 10 students going on the trip next July. 

She said he’s excited to experience Japanese food and culture first-hand.

“It’s an opportunity of a lifetime to go and get to just immerse yourself in the culture of Japan. He’s looking so forward to trying real sushi and real tempura. It’s going to be exciting for him.”

Babin said it will also be interesting for students and parents to host 20 Japanese students in Liverpool for 10 days in April. 

“So every one of our students will have two Japanese students come stay with them. See what eating Canadian food is like, going to school in a Canadian school. And then they’ll also get to go on excursions.”

Babin says they’ll be accepting art and craft donations for the auction right up until Friday evening. 

“If you made it, we will appreciate it.”

And she says most of the kids going on the trip will also be at the fundraiser on Friday.

“7 to 9, come by, see the art, maybe lay a couple of bids, meet the kids. They’re pretty stoked to talk about their hopes for it and they’re really excited for the Japanese kids to come here.”

The LRHS Japanese exchange art auction begins at 7 p.m. on Friday at ADJA Studio and Gallery at 177 Main St. in Liverpool. You can leave donations for the fundraiser at the gallery. And you can also follow the event on Facebook.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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QCCR acknowledges the support of the Community Radio Fund of Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative.

Liverpool artist Jane Stevenson created this tribute to Sarah Mitton on Wednesday in the sand at Summerville Beach. (Jane Stevenson photo)

For most people, a day at the beach might involve some swimming or lounging on the sand.

For Jane Stevenson, a day at the beach involves creating a 120-by-60-foot piece of sand art as a tribute to Olympic shot putter Sarah Mitton.

The Liverpool artist’s creation on Summerville Beach featured an 85-foot Eiffel Tower with a Canadian flag in the middle and the Olympic rings at the base, with Paris 2024 on one side and “Go Sarah!” on the other.

“She’s a friend and she’s a marvellous person,” Stevenson says of Mitton, who is from Brooklyn.

“I’m enjoying drawing in the sand and I thought what a great thing to be able to do. So I started with the rings one day and I thought that’s not enough. So I stuck a little Eiffel Tower on it and looked at it at home and said that’s not good enough. So, four more tries and not succeeding. Finally, new strategies and a little more homework on the design, on the fifth try, it all came together.”

Stevenson created it in about two and a half hours late Wednesday afternoon. 

She shared a photo and drone video to her Facebook profile Wednesday evening. That post was shared widely. And CBC’s Olympics reporter Devin Heroux posted the photo on his Twitter feed Thursday morning after Mitton qualified for the shot put final.

“It’s gone far and wide, so that’s kind of cool. And lovely comments about it. So that’s really nice too. People really enjoyed the picture and the sentiment behind it. It was fun.

“That’s the most far-reaching anything I ever do will get. So that’s quite a compliment to have them want to do that with it. So I’m pleased with that, it’s more than I thought would happen with it.”

It was Stevenson’s fifth time trying to get her design down in the sand, after plotting it out precisely on paper.  

“The first one went down on the sand on the 27th of July, so between then and yesterday I finally got it right.”

She and her husband Garth used a very long tape measure and a homemade compass to plot out the basic lines of the piece. And then she used a rake to fill in the detail of the Eiffel Tower and the Olympic rings.

Stevenson says that she used the drone only once as she was putting it together.

“Just eyed it. Did it by eye. My lines and my paper that I was going off of were really precise and then we really measured precisely this last time. I had my homework really well done on the fifth try. And then you can just can tell visually that it looks alright. It was math, and drawn lines.”

Stevenson has created eye-popping pieces of public art before, most recently for a Privateer Days parade float for the Mersey Rose Theatre Company. That featured a huge tea party set for the company’s upcoming production of Alice in Wonderland Jr. She’s also created displays for the Astor Theatre, including a life-sized Barbie doll package.

She’s done six or seven other beach art pieces this summer, but this one was the biggest and most complicated. She started at 4 in the afternoon near low tide and finished it around 6:30, racking up about 50,000 steps along the way. 

“I thought I’d won the gold medal, the gold medal in the Olympic sand drawing. It was a very good feeling to get the result I wanted.

“This was fun to do. I really wanted it to work for Sarah. … Not bad for a day at the beach.”

She’s not sure if Mitton has seen it yet, but she knows her mother Bonnie has. Stevenson says she’ll be at home on Friday afternoon cheering on Mitton as she goes for gold.

Mitton qualified for the final on Thursday with her first throw, which was also the farthest in the field.

The Astor Theatre is holding a live viewing party of the shot put final from 2 to 4 p.m. It’s free to everybody. The final is scheduled to begin at 2:37 p.m. Atlantic time.

“On the edge of our seats. She’s looking pretty good. This morning it looked effortless for her. She qualified so easily. I have good feelings for her tomorrow. I think she’ll do well. She’s worked hard, she’s ready.”

Stevenson says she appreciates all the positive feedback she’s received on her beach sand tribute.

“Thank you to everybody who has commented on it. That means a lot as well that they have enjoyed it so. That’s made it even more worthwhile. And, go Sarah!”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Scot Slessor at his stained glass studio SAS Glass, just off Main Street in Liverpool. Slessor is one of the organizers of the Queens Coast Art Tour on June 22 and 23. (Rick Conrad)

Liverpool stained glass artist Scot Slessor wants the Queens Coast Art Tour to be memorable.

But he also wants the map for the tour to be just as unforgettable, and useful. Last year, he recruited Region of Queens Mayor Darlene Norman to help him with a video explaining how to make a paper airplane out of the map.

Obviously making a paper airplane isn’t the map’s most important function. In fact, Slessor wants people to unfold it to reveal the many Queens County artisans listed there and pay them a visit during the Queens Coast Art Tour.

The map plots all participating artisans and businesses, with QR codes that link to their websites or social media accounts.

Slessor owns SAS Glass in downtown Liverpool. He and some other local artisans got together last year to form the Queens County Arts and Crafts Society, taking over from the Queens Arts Council. 

One of their first projects was to create an art map and studio tour. That happened last October, and it included almost 25 artisans from Liverpool to Western Head to Port Medway.

This year, it’s expanded to more than 40 artists, shops and popups all over Queens County. And there will be two chances to participate, in June and October.

The first one is coming up on June 22 and 23. The tour runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

Slessor says it’s all about promoting Queens County as an arts destination, and about artisans opening up their studios or demonstrating their craft to local residents and visitors.

“I’ve been on a ton of these studio tours,” Slessor said in a recent interview.

“What I’ve told everybody, you’re just not another sale. Just don’t put stuff on a table. If you’re painting, paint. I’m glass, I’ll be doing something with glass those days. People can come in, I can show them what I do, what the materials are, how I play with them. That has to be there, because people do find that interesting. … We need to be different. Everybody does craft sales up and down the shore. So what’s the difference? I think the difference should be come on down, we’re throwing some pottery, we’re making some jewelry, you can see what we’re doing.”

Slessor says last October’s art tour was a success for many of the artists, some of whom were surprised by how many people dropped by to see them in action.

“I had 30 people each day in here. All I did was gab all day to people. And then I talked to other people who never really opened their studio and they said, ‘I can’t believe all these people showed up to my studio.’ So, it was kind of cool.

“You might show one person your studio and have a cup of coffee, but when you have 20 people rolling through in a day, it is kind of neat.”

In addition to visiting artisans at their studios or work spaces, art lovers can also meet them at three popup locations: the Astor Theatre, White Point Beach Resort and Coastal Queens Place in Port Mouton.

“Some artists are very quiet and unassuming. And suddenly you find there’s a guy on the street here who’s a fantastic portrait painter. You didn’t even know he was there. And locally, I think it’s important. Last October, when we did this, a lot of folks who came around were local.

“One of the wider goals of something like this is you feel like you have a sense of community and that you’re not working totally in isolation. Doing art can be a very isolating thing. To let them know that they have a community to be part of.”

Aside from the obvious goal of giving artisans more chances to sell their work, another objective of the tour is to bring art lovers to the area from all over the province and beyond.

“In the perfect world, I’d love to see artisans selling stuff and making some money,” Slessor says.

“I think if we bring people to the county, whether they buy from one of us or just spend some time in a restaurant or going to the Astor or doing whatever, that’s all positive. So we (hope to) increase the number of people coming into the county.”

Slessor says the Queens County Arts and Crafts Society has also applied for provincial funding to help them work on their online marketing and promotion. 

And he says he’d like to see international artists come to Liverpool for four-week residencies.

The former diplomat has reached out to some of his contacts overseas.

“It would be great to have, I don’t know, a Taiwanese artist here for four or five weeks. They’d be at the Astor. We would introduce them to other artisans. It would be fun and informative and something totally different.” 

People can pick up a Queens Coast art tour map in Liverpool at the Visitor Information Centre, the Astor Theatre, Main and Mersey coffee bar, Shore Thing Studio and Emporium or at SAS Glass just across from the Astor.

You can also find the map online here: https://sasglass.ca/resources/map6.jpg or follow Queens Coast Art Tour on Facebook.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Sue and Chres Jensen, owners of Gallery 244 in Brooklyn, are holding a Carnival at the gallery on Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. (Rick Conrad)

Since Sue and Chres Jensen moved to Nova Scotia from Alberta three years ago, they’ve carved out a distinctive space for the creative community at their gallery in Brooklyn.

And they’re using it to host an event called Carnival that’s just as unique on Saturday.

The owners of Gallery 244 are planning to showcase art, music, poetry, henna body art, laser engraving, hula hooping and even some osteopathy at the free event. And food truck Mama Pita will be onsite too.

Sue Jensen, who is also a musician, said she wanted the event to be as individual as their gallery and the other artists they’ve met.

“I wanted to do something that would be different,” she said Wednesday.

The couple live in East Port Medway, and opened the gallery a couple of years ago, turning a building that used to be a gas station into a space that now features work from half a dozen local artists. It also features a cozy music room in the old service station’s attached garage.

Saturday’s carnival will feature Sue and other musicians playing throughout the afternoon.

Chres says they want their gallery to be a welcoming place for anybody who creates.

“This acts like a mini hub for artists and people to stop in, play music, talk about art, or literature, try to be creative. It’s growing every year.”

Chres works in different media, but with a distinct musical theme. Many of his pieces feature deconstructed string instruments like guitars or ukuleles in sometimes whimsical, sometimes elaborate scenes. Since they opened the gallery, he says, many people have donated their old guitars for his art.

“It’s worked for us really well. My studio where I came from, maybe it’s as big as this room which is 16 by 20 and I have eight, nine, 10 times more space (here).”

Chres says the couple quickly realized the abundance of artists of all kinds in the area.

“Even Brooklyn as a small microcosm is a vibrant arts community. We have a wood carver here, we have MJ (Dominey) and she paints and this lady over here she has crafts. And then you expand it to Liverpool, it’s just a dynamic area for arts and music.”

That’s what they hope to showcase on Saturday from 1 to 5. 

And don’t forget the hula hooping. A friend of theirs is a hula hooper, so they invited her to demonstrate her craft. And then a few other people contacted them to do the same thing.

“We have a dark horse who’s too shy to advertise but is actually a freak hula hooper,” Sue says.  “It was just a fun (thing), maybe the kids will bring their hula hoops.”

That co-operation and collaboration are some of the things the couple love about their new community.

“Everybody just seems to be working together so that everybody can have fun and be creative,” Chres says.

Saturday’s event is also a fundraiser for the Mill Village fire department. Sue says they have just one goal for the carnival.

“For people to participate, that’s our goal. To show up, to see what’s here. … We just want them to come. If you want to watch, watch, if you want to participate, participate.”

The gallery is at 3549 Highway 3 in Brooklyn. For more information, you can check out Gallery 244 on Facebook or their website at gallery244.com.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Velta Vikmanis’s art exhibit, Chaos to Calm, is on now at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)

As many others did during the pandemic, Velta Vikmanis and her husband were looking to move from the crush of the city to the calm of the country.

“With the pandemic I think everybody kind of did an inventory and reprioritizing of life,” the Liverpool resident says. “And so we were very fortunate that we came to Nova Scotia. Neither one of us had ever been here or visited. We drove around for two and a half months and came across the South Shore and fell in love with it.”

That examination of where you’ve been and where you end up is a central theme of Vikmanis’s art exhibit, now on at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool. 

Chaos to Calm has its official opening with a reception on Friday at 6:30 p.m. It runs for the month of May. 

“Coming from Ontario, from a large metropolitan city of 4.2 million people and constant traffic and people on top of each other to this slower, calmer pace. … The show itself is an opportunity for me to do a kind of retrospective.”

Vikmanis and her husband Peter arrived in Liverpool in November 2021, part of the influx of people who moved to Queens County in the midst and the aftermath of the pandemic.

Before that, they lived in Toronto for 16 years, where Vikmanis worked full time. She pursued her bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture and installation at OCAD University as a part-time student.

“The show is really a reflection of things I did in the past, things that I did in school and an opportunity for me to get back into a daily practice and reflection of my art,” she says.

“I’ve never been what I consider an artist who makes work for a living. I’ve always done it for myself and if it happens to inspire or spark joy in someone else and they appreciate it and want to purchase it, great. That just buys me more art supplies.”

While Liverpool has served as a respite from the bustle of a bigger city, it also allowed her to rediscover her passion for art. After going to school, working full time and living through a pandemic, Vikmanis says she was burnt out after years of what she calls “forced creativity”.

“It was signing up to do this show that actually forced me to do an assessment, an inventory, catalogue, and actually create new works. Because prior to that, I went through a period of no creativity and just putting it on the shelf.”

When artist Velta Vikmanis moved to Liverpool, she was inspired by Queens County’s beaches. (Rick Conrad)

Vikmanis’s show features an eclectic mix of styles, media and topics. From photography in the Azores or on the beaches of Queens County to painting to sculpture, she says it represents 20 years of work.

The centrepiece of the show is Vestige Echo, her thesis project at OCAD. It is a paper-based sculpture that consists of literal pieces and mementoes of Vikmanis’s life, quilted together and hung in the window. A metronome ticks on the windowsill behind it. 

Her parents had been packing up her childhood home in Minneapolis. They started to send her boxes of her old report cards and other keepsakes they collected over the years.

At the beginning of the pandemic, her father died. And that spurred Vikmanis to go through all of the memorabilia from her parents and from her own collection. 

“It was this whole very strange experience of having to mourn and grieve from afar. So that’s when I started gathering and looking through all the things I had collected.”

She tore everything into smaller pieces, ordered them into boxes by the weight of the paper and stitched them together according to how she picked them up out of each box.

It took her 24 weeks to complete the original eight-by-10-foot installation piece. What’s on exhibit at the Astor is a much smaller, but no less compelling, version.

“It was liberating. Certain things, you put them away and you don’t really ever really pull them back out, do you? So the fact that I was deliberate in looking at every single item, reminiscing about it, but the fact that I could have that moment and that time with that person, with that event, with that lived experience but then pass it along. For the Vestige Echo, hopefully (people) find something in it that triggers something in them.”

“It’s fun to experience it with somebody who has no idea who I am and who these people are and someone who’s present to have that shared memory. It triggers something really fun.”

Vikmanis says she loves finding beauty in the mundane. 

“At the end of the day, I’m still drawn to the ordinary. I”m not somebody who’s very gifted in realism. I can’t paint in a realistic manner. I’ve never been interested in that.”

Vikmanis jokes that since she moved to Liverpool, she’s worked almost everywhere. She now works at Main and Mersey on Main Street, and she volunteers with QCCR on its board of directors. She is also the host of two shows on the station. 

She says she’s looking forward to the opening reception on Friday, to hearing what people think of her work and to meeting other artists from Queens County.

“This is my last stop. I’m not going anywhere. Liverpool is my home now. I love all the people here and getting to know everybody. It’s a great opportunity to meet people and engage with the artist community and to meet folks that I haven’t come across yet. For me, it was that, OK I’ve transitioned, I’ve moved, I’m settled in, I’m truly calm now, so now I need to get back into that practice, and this was that kickstart to get back into that practice of thinking about,, OK what am I going to create next?”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Cathie Pincombe and Ray Leger of the Medway Head Lighthouse Society. The group is looking for volunteers to help preserve the iconic light near the end of Long Cove Road in Port Medway. (Rick Conrad)

A local community group is hoping to recruit more people to help preserve a historic lighthouse in what some refer to as the Peggys Cove of Queens County.

The Medway Head Lighthouse Society took possession of the lighthouse in 2014. 

Near the end of the picturesque Long Cove Road in Port Medway, the current light has been standing since 1983. But there has been a lighthouse of some kind at the site since 1851, when I.K. Perry was the inaugural keeper.

Cathie Pincombe is secretary of the Medway Head Lighthouse Society and is an organizer of the Medway Head Lighthouse Art and Craft Show. Both are run entirely by volunteers. She says they need more to make sure this piece of Nova Scotia’s heritage survives.

“We are a dedicated hard-working group of people that want to save our iconic Medway Head Lighthouse just like all the other iconic lighthouses in this province. And if not for societies like ours, we would not have lighthouses in this province.”

Like all Nova Scotia lighthouses, the Medway Head Lighthouse was automated in 1983. But it still opens in the summer to tourists, who can learn about the vital part these structures and their hardy, brave keepers and their families played in seaside communities like Port Medway.

The society maintains the lighthouse, doing necessary repairs and upkeep.

Some of the art from last year’s Medway Head Lighthouse Art and Craft Show in Port Medway. (Medway Head Lighthouse Society Facebook page)

To do that, they hold a major fundraiser every summer in the village of Port Medway. The society will hold its 11th annual art and craft Show in August.  

“We are the largest art show on the South Shore. And it’s a pretty impressive show. We have anywhere between 70 and 80 artists that are part of the show every year.”

To run the lighthouse and the art show, however, Pincombe says they need more volunteers. The lighthouse is open three days a week from late June to early September. And the art show goes from Aug. 17 to 25. 

The show alone requires eight volunteers daily for nine days. And the lighthouse needs enough volunteers to cover 36 shifts through the summer.

Sales at the art show are vital to pay for lighthouse repairs and maintenance. Last September’s Hurricane Lee blew much of the siding from one side of the structure.

“It still is going to require some specialized equipment and we’re hopeful we can get it done in the $10,000 range. So it’s not inexpensive to maintain a lighthouse.”

Pincombe says it’s getting more difficult to find volunteers, even as it becomes more important to replenish their ranks.

The society hopes to hire a student for the summer to help with tours and administration. And she says they’re also on the lookout for a treasurer.

“I think it’s getting tougher because even though there are a lot of people moving into the area, and we try to get to know our new community members and hope that they will get involved, it doesn’t seem to be quite as easy to get volunteers as it has been. And we’ve expanded the locations (of the art show) and the number of days. So we’re giving ourselves a bigger number of shifts to cover. So it’s not as easy.

“We volunteers are getting older, so we need younger people to get involved.”

Pincombe says the lighthouse and the art show draw people from across Canada and around the world. Her partner Ray Leger looks after the building and its volunteers and leads many of the tours at the lighthouse in the summer.

“I think we had something like 800 visitors to the lighthouse last year. And Ray … tracks where everybody comes from. And it’s a wide range of people from all over the place. And you’d be amazed how many local people like to come out to the lighthouse.

“So it’s a great cause. The art show is a fun thing to volunteer with, because it’s busy. You meet lots of people. And the lighthouse is a fabulous place to volunteer because you meet people from all over the world with stories and why they came here. It’s really an exciting thing to do.”

If you’re interested in volunteering with the Medway Head Lighthouse Society or the art show, check out their Facebook page, or email them at medwayheadlight@gmail.com.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Melissa Labrador with one of her paintings on display at the Astor Theatre. Photo Ed Halverson

An Art exhibit at The Astor Theatre hopes to educate visitors about the need to connect with our natural environment.

Artist and Indigenous Guardian Melissa Labrador calls the show “N’in L’nu”.

“So it’s N’in L’nu which [means] I’m L’nu. L’nu is who we are as Mi’kmaq people and then I did North, South, East and West because regardless of where I am on the earth, I am who I am and that doesn’t change,’ said Labrador.

A self-taught painter whose work is inspired by her relationship with Mother Earth, Labrador said, “A lot of my art focuses on that connection. It incorporates stories and traditions of my ancestors, my family, my people and also things that are important that we pay mind to as our climate is changing and the world that world that we know is changing everyday.”

Labrador says she tries to balance the negative messages of climate change with the positive experience of getting out and connecting of nature.

Some of the paintings on display at the Astor Theatre as part of Melissa Labrador’s N’in L’nu art show. Photo Ed Halverson

Many of the figures in this show are inspired by the petroglyphs found in Kejimkujik and images of whales and stars also feature heavily in the collection.

So much of what is happening in artist’s life goes into their work and Labrador tries to ensure when a piece of art finds its forever home the owner has the best impression.

“With everything that I create, I try to have a positive message there,” said Labrador, “So when the person or persons are taking that piece with them, they will feel that positive energy that went into creating that.”

Labrador’s N’in L’nu art show is on display at the Astor Theatre until the end of August.

E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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