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Crows, ravens take flight in new art show

The latest exhibit at the Station House Gallery is about taking a theme and running with it creatively.
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Karen Thompson (left) and Terri Smith tip their glasses at a piece called the Crow Bar Thursday during the opening of the Station House Gallery’s latest art show

The latest exhibit at the Station House Gallery is about taking a theme and running with it creatively.

In Murders and Unkindness, artists Terri Smith, Karen Thompson, Lynn Capling, Julie Burns, Susan Fletcher and Raymond Fletcher explore the theme of crows and ravens.

Included in the show are sculptures, textiles, paintings, facts and folklore, along with some installations that enjoy a wonderful play on words.

A fun piece titled the Crow Bar depicts several birds mingling at the counter for a drink.

“As we get older we have different understandings of what things mean,” Thompson said of her creation during the show’s opening Thursday.

Alongside an array of tasty crow and raven treats placed on a mantle in the upstairs gallery, Capling placed a quote by Thomas Jefferson which evoked many smiles during the evening.

“If you have to eat crow, eat it while it’s young and tender,” the quote reads.

Smith said many people were asking  why crows and ravens?

She went on to explain that every year Thompson and some of her friends go away to Gibsons for an art week where they have fun being creative.

During that week, Thompson made a crow and mounted it on a piece of driftwood she found on the beach.

From that one piece, she was encouraged to do a show.

When Smith, who happens to be her daughter, said she would collaborate with her on an exhibit, they invited the rest of the gang, who also all happen to be related in some way.

“Crows and ravens are the trickster animal,” Smith said. “They are in mythology and everywhere that people are.”

Crows and ravens are also very beautiful, clever, intelligent, fascinating and will to eat the garbage no one else will, she added.

As they researched for the show Thompson admitted it was a bit of a transformation as far as her attitude towards crows and ravens goes.

All her life growing up and living on a ranch, they were not her favourite birds.

“But doing this show and working on it, I’ve kind of made my peace with them and you could probably notice, I’m starting to look like one,” she smiled.

Raymond used to fly an ultralight and had a raven who liked to accompany him when he was flying, he said when it was his turn to talk about the show.

“Once he learned he could fly much better than me, he used to like to play with me up there,” he chuckled. “He could outmaneuver me.”

Some of the items Raymond used to create a sculpture of a raven were an old earth scraper, bicycle fork, excavator tooth and a pressure gauge.

He had flowers in the earth scraper for years and then turned it upside down to make the raven, he said.

“I call it the Trickster, aka the cocky raven,” he added, noting the scraper probably was kept busy during the gold rush days.

Using newspaper clippings, Smith created a set of three pieces where ravens are commenting on the news.

“Not a single murder in today’s paper,” a crow comments in one of the pieces.

Murders and Unkindness is on display until Nov. 21.



Monica Lamb-Yorski

About the Author: Monica Lamb-Yorski

A B.C. gal, I was born in Alert Bay, raised in Nelson, graduated from the University of Winnipeg, and wrote my first-ever article for the Prince Rupert Daily News.
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