Upcoming Exhibition
ECHOES
Camrose Ducote Paintings
Kathryn Youngs Ceramics
April 11 to 27, 2024
Noon to 5 pm Tues. to Sat.
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 13th
2 to 4 pm
Exhibiting the work of two long-time friends who have explored the concept of “vessel" through their respective chosen mediums of two-dimensional nib pen and ink/collage drawings on board and of clay sculpture.
Kathryn Youngs
Biography
Born in Southern California, I moved to Canada in the early 1970’s. After studying printmaking at the Vancouver School of Art, I was mentored in clay by Gail Carney at what is now the Shadbolt Centre. I have exhibited since 1981, both locally and internationally, in solo, group, and invitational shows. After a 10-year hiatus, I have started again making works in clay. It is great to be back.
Camrose Ducote
Biography
As an only child I had lots of time to myself, and I loved making things and doing art. But setting out for college I decided I should concentrate on a field that would pretty much guarantee me a living, so I majored in Bilingual Elementary Education. One day in a chaotic classroom convinced me I had made a big mistake. Having suppressed my creative drive in university to get a diploma I decamped immediately upon graduation to Aspen, Colorado where I skied, nannied three kids plus several animals and earned extra cash creating and selling jewellery I made mostly out of chicken bones.
When the nanny job ended I moved to Los Angeles followed by a summer in New Orleans where I enlarged my jewellery business adding exotic materials such as dried goat turds, snake skins, feathers and even a turquoise raffia placemat to my repertoire of materials. The work sold well in the French Quarter.
In 1977 I came to Vancouver and scored a free studio downtown in what was the new Harbour Centre. When I lost that space, I worked in what was formerly the laundry room of my apartment building casting some twenty life-sized fabric/plaster figures for the B.C. Pavilion for Expo 86 followed by a life-size sculpture of then Mayor Mike Harcourt for the Vancouver Museum. Then, inspired by some papier-mâché animal sculptures I saw while travelling in Mexico I made a series of over 70 chicken wire trophy heads using materials as diverse as a red shower curtain which became a ten-foot-long alligator as well as a Frilled Lizard with teeth made of cut-up erasers.
In 1985 I sent a herd of twelve ghostly cows of cast fabric supported by split cedar armatures to the 12th International Biennial of Tapestry exhibiting Textile Sculpture in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In the mid 1980’s I made a number of sculptures which I referred to as my egg/nest/womb series using gauze, twigs and rose thorns. Looking back I wonder if those creations, which were almost like three-dimensional drawings, were leading me to work in two dimensions. By the time I got my job as a Sculpture Technician in the Synthetics Department at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1989 I was no longer doing sculpture.
Though I enjoy working in two dimensions now I confess to secretly hoarding scavenged deer antlers and recently sawed up a 1950’s horn ashtray that my parents used when I was a kid in order to make a necklace. After all, no one smokes anymore