{"id":7282,"date":"2024-05-08T17:33:54","date_gmt":"2024-05-08T20:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=7282"},"modified":"2024-05-08T17:40:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T20:40:53","slug":"from-chaos-to-calm-liverpool-artist-rediscovers-creative-spark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2024\/05\/08\/from-chaos-to-calm-liverpool-artist-rediscovers-creative-spark\/","title":{"rendered":"From Chaos to Calm, Liverpool artist rediscovers creative spark"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Velta Vikmanis’s art exhibit, Chaos to Calm, is on now at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWith the pandemic I think everybody kind of did an inventory and reprioritizing of life,\u201d 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.”<\/span><\/p>\n

That examination of where you\u2019ve been and where you end up is a central theme of Vikmanis\u2019s art exhibit, now on at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chaos to Calm has its official opening with a reception on Friday at 6:30 p.m. It runs for the month of May.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cComing 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. \u2026 The show itself is an opportunity for me to do a kind of retrospective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve never been what I consider an artist who makes work for a living. I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cforced creativity\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

When artist Velta Vikmanis moved to Liverpool, she was inspired by Queens County’s beaches. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

Vikmanis\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s life, quilted together and hung in the window. A metronome ticks on the windowsill behind it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

It took her 24 weeks to complete the original eight-by-10-foot installation piece. What\u2019s on exhibit at the Astor is a much smaller, but no less compelling, version.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was liberating. Certain things, you put them away and you don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s fun to experience it with somebody who has no idea who I am and who these people are and someone who\u2019s present to have that shared memory. It triggers something really fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Vikmanis says she loves finding beauty in the mundane.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, I’m still drawn to the ordinary. I\u201dm not somebody who\u2019s very gifted in realism. I can’t paint in a realistic manner. I\u2019ve never been interested in that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Vikmanis jokes that since she moved to Liverpool, she\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She says she\u2019s looking forward to the opening reception on Friday, to hearing what people think of her work and to meeting other artists from Queens County.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my last stop. I\u2019m not going anywhere. Liverpool is my home now. I love all the people here and getting to know everybody. It\u2019s a great opportunity to meet people and engage with the artist community and to meet folks that I haven\u2019t come across yet. For me, it was that, OK I\u2019ve transitioned, I\u2019ve moved, I\u2019m settled in, I\u2019m 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?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/vikmanisartshowmay824.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cWith the pandemic I think everybody kind of did an inventory and reprioritizing of life,\u201d the Liverpool resident says. “And so we were very fortunate that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[364,2155,1004,2156,38,2154,39,241,2158,2157,2153],"class_list":["post-7282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-art","tag-art-exhibit","tag-artist","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-astor-theatre","tag-chaos-to-calm","tag-liverpool","tag-nova-scotia","tag-ocad-university","tag-toronto","tag-velta-vikmanis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7282"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7290,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282\/revisions\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}