It was a beautiful summer weekend to be exhibiting art on Kennisis Lake for the 10th instalment of Art on the Dock.
Artists opened their homes and studios for people to tour, and see what they do. Twenty artists featured works at 10 properties. Artwork ranged from ceramics to water colour paintings to handcrafted woodwork, or functional art, to handmade soap and soap dishes.
Barb Larcina detailed a time when she was working at a firm and didn’t have time to paint. She would take a week off and come to the cottage to paint. It wasn’t until she took some courses at the Haliburton School of Art + Design that she pivoted to full-time painting. “That’s the passion that I knew I had in me. I just never had the time to do it,” Larcina said.
In her fifth year exhibiting at Art on the Dock, Larcina usually takes photos of nature when she drives up to the cottage with her husband, and uses those as inspiration. Larcina said, “it’s all about vibrant colour, I think that’s what sets me apart.
“I do impressionist art. The way I see a landscape and the way other people see a landscape are very different. When I look at something, I see a little bit of red sky, and all of a sudden, when I start painting, it becomes a really vibrant red sky.”
The impressionist artist starts off by painting her canvas red and then begins to paint her landscape. In some of her artwork, if held up to the light, one can see the red coming through.
This year, Art on the Dock held an evening sneak peek of the artists’ work on the Friday at the Kennisis Lake Marina before the weekend event. This allowed artists to see who else would be exhibiting and what kind of work they did, and allowed attendees to decide which stops they’d be hitting up and to sample all of the artwork in one place.
The event is organized by the Kennisis Lake Cottage Owners Association. Vicepresident and stewardship director, Jim Prince, said the Friday event was “extremely successful,” with lots of attendees arriving by boat and car to sample the works.
Niki Bezdikian, a ceramics artist, said of balancing commercial success and creativity, “I started making things I thought would be of interest to people in the area. So, make it more outdoorsy or nature, if it is up north, or tailor it to the region that I’m in. When I go into the studio, I just make what I love to make now.” Bezdikian learned ceramics in 2019 when taking classes at a local studio. She has a studio at her home in Burlington, where she spends her free time honing her craft.
A passion for woodworking and creating unique, “functional art” is what keeps Brian Kalanda busy these days. Kalanda transforms discarded pieces of wood into unique pieces of art, using creativity and techniques he’s honed throughout his 15 years of creating.
“It’s not just a plain bowl, it’s not just a plain board, each one has something in it that makes it different, unique, makes it stand out. It can be the quality of the wood, in the case of this one, where you can see different patterns in the wood.” Kalanda said, holding it up to the sunlight, where the pattern in the wood makes the surface look three dimensional.
