Life is a combination of crossroads intertwined to make us who we are, and Rails End Gallery and Arts Centre in Haliburton is holding a new exhibit showcasing the stories that helped mould some of the community’s most accomplished and up-and-coming artists.
Running until April 1, ‘Intersection’ is the latest offering in Rails End’s annual members’ salon exhibition series. It features works pieced together by some of the Highlands’ most creative minds in painting, sculpture, fabric, and jewelry.
Curator Laurie Jones welcomed invited guests to the show’s kick-off Feb. 4, saying she was pleased to see the arts are “alive and well” in Haliburton County. She noted there were 63 entries to the exhibit.
“We had a lot more three-dimensional works and fibre pieces than usual, which I think speaks to the different ways people interpreted the theme,” Jones said. “It was a challenging theme this year, one that made people really think. It brought us probably our most diverse selection of submissions in years.”
Speaking to her own entry, which she called Witness Tree, Jones said she drew inspiration from a forest in upper New York state that was long used as a landmark, or navigation tool, for settlers in the area. When sharing her story, Jones said the conversation pivoted to focus on how a place can remain the same, untouched through time.
“That got me thinking into how time is this three-dimensional thing that intersects everything – our passions, our lives… and the more we talked, the more people took it in different directions. So, that painting (Witness Tree) really became the source of the name of the show,” Jones added.
Harvey Walker talked about his piece Patterns Repeating, an oil painting on canvas. He said it depicts the “ultimate intersection” of two lives he saw come together on a park bench while he was attending a competition at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Vaughan last year. Inspired, he finished his piece in a couple of hours.
A long-time supporter of the gallery, Christine Mino, said she found out about the exhibit during a dinner party at her Halls Lake home earlier this winter.
“I knew I wanted to submit something, but I had no inspiration,” Mino told The Highlander. After some reflection, she drew from some of her favourite places and people from across the County to create Where, When, Why We Met. The piece is made up of 16 small paintings that intersect – one of undisturbed water on Boshkung Lake, another of her husband walking on the ice at Halls Lake. There are also sections dedicated to skiing, the environment and one of her favourite sculptures, a dinosaur left behind by the owners of the old Camp Kawabi in Algonquin Highlands.
The exhibit can be seen in-person Wednesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is also available online through railsendgallery. Com
