The Wind and Its Shadow
Erick Jantzen
Carol Kong
July 30 to August 15, 2026
Noon to 5 pm Tuesday to Saturday
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 1st.
2 to 4 pm
Together, Erick Jantzen’s atmospheric landscape paintings and Carol Kong’s wood‑fired vessels transport the mind into quiet contemplation. Their works trace the ephemeral and the memory left behind when nature brushes past.
Bio
Erick Jantzen is a painter, printmaker and ecologist making art on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish. His art explores the complexity and beauty of the natural world and reflects the tension embedded in our relationships with nature. He holds a BFA in Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and a BSc in Biology from the University of Victoria. His work has been featured and published in both artistic and scientific spaces, including Canadian Art magazine. His awards include the Audain Travel Award, and the Jubilee Medal of Science.
Artist Statement
This series shares an intimate doorway to the natural world. They are earnest depictions of places that move me. In transmitting the beauty of shifting light, atmospheric volume, and reflected colour, the work is a meditation. It is a outlet of processing the disappearance of ecosystems and the impact of colonial industry on the living world. The paintings engage conflicting narratives of land, influenced by both western landscape painting and decolonial conceptions of nature. Perhaps, the anachronism of the landscape painting represents a refusal to abandon a dying biosphere on which our existence and our meaning-making depend.
Bio
Carol Kong is a ceramicist, painter, and professional engineer in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Applied Science in 2011 and began her artistic practice in 2019 at Emily Carr University of Art + Design through the Fine Arts Certificate program. Carol has exhibited in various solo and juried exhibitions and is an Associate member of the Federation of Canadian Artists.
Artist Statement
Inside the wood kiln is a raging inferno, where pots are kissed by flames and embraced by ash. Starting as a gentle meander, the flames grow to a turbulent storm when top temperatures of 1250-1350°C are reached, like magma in the earth’s mantle. Enduring these great forces, the pots become landscapes defined by the distinct wind and atmosphere they were exposed to for 99 hours in an anagama, or for 17 hours in a manabigama kiln. Firing this way – spending days in smoky exhaustion and embracing the unpredictable – grounds me to the earth. In search of beauty, I am transported to another place and another time.