Olds resident Lorene Runham is the featured artist in this weekend's Olds Art Club Spring Show and Sale.
It takes place March 30 and 31 at the Evergreen Centre.
On Saturday, March 30, the show will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Sunday, it will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Runham is a full-time artist living in Olds. She was born in B.C. and raised in Manitoba. Runham and her husband have been living in Olds since 1995. Their two sons also live in Alberta.
By the age of 12, Runham knew she wanted to go to art school.
"I knew I was going to art school, wherever that was or whatever that would be," she said during an interview with the Albertan.
Runham took art and design at Red Deer College, graduating in 1976.
She has worked in pastels, watercolour, acrylics and mixed media/collage.
Lately, she's been doing digital collages on computer and utilized in clothing which she calls "wearable art." Examples include scarves, totes, beanies and leggings. Some of that art will be on display during the show.
Runham was asked if wearable art differs from fashion.
"It's the same thing. I don't control the cut or the pattern of the pieces. A company in Montreal does that for me. What I do is I do all the designing of the print," she said.
"I import that print because I have a good digital file because the work is digitally created. I import that into the design lab and then I decide how that image/print is going to line up on the leggings or the scarf or beanie or what have you."
She also does what might be called "traditional art."
"(It's) traditional in the sense that it's on canvas and it's framed, yes. But the image itself is relatively new. Digital art is now been recognized as an art form, whereas 50 years ago it wasn't even thought of," she said.
"I start with a photograph and then through the process of filters and layers on the computer, I'll alter that photograph into artwork."
She works with images which are almost always of trees, grass and leaves. She does not do portraits of people.
Runham pointed to one piece.
"It's beautiful, but the actual photograph started out as just dead leaves and grass in mud. Because there was texture, I was able to turn that into beautiful artwork on the computer," she said.
Although much of her work at the show will be wearable art, she will have original pastels at the show as well."They're mostly of sunsets."
Runham's show is entitled My Kaleidoscopic Lens.
There's good reason for that.
"I'm describing these pieces as what maybe you'd see through a child's kaleidoscope. That was my inspiration. So that's why I called this body of work My Kaleidoscopic Lens," she said.
"It has always fascinated me to see how objects and photos are altered using the multi-cut lens of a kaleidoscope," Runham wrote in an invitation to those who might want to attend the show. "Shapes became a series of continuously changing colours of repeated patterns."
"I am very much loyal to place, which is rural Alberta. And that's all the imagery is -- pretty much mostly from rural Alberta," Runham said during the interview with the Albertan.
"Like, I travel across Canada and I take pictures and create pieces from my photographs from other places, but my loyalty is to rural Alberta. So that's a pretty big deal for me.
"And I also believe that artists are the keepers of our culture. If not for us, then our culture doesn't exist in history."
Runham has been strongly influenced by the impressionists; also by religion.
"God's signature is found in every sunset, on every mountain top, tree, leaf and blade of grass. Making art is my answer back, as an expression of gratitude," she says in her biography.
