OLDS — The Olds Art Club’s spring show and sale attracted about 150 people, roughly on par with last year, according to club president Cindy Boffey.
The show was held April 15-16 at the Evergreen Centre.
“We were really pleased. The numbers were good, we had a real steady flow of traffic,” Boffey said during an interview with the Albertan.
Sales were strong too.
“The sales were very good. The sales were way up,” she said. “And it was across the board. It seemed this time that everybody was selling some stuff.
“There were a few people of course that probably didn’t, but for the most part, it was good.
“Everybody last night was very pleased with the results of it and I think it was a good show.”
Boffey said last year’s spring show and sale had a good turnout and sales too, because it was among the first opportunities residents had to get out and do something after COVID restrictions were lifted.
Jan Thompson, a member of the club for five years, was the featured artist at this year’s show.
She had scores of her works on display, ranging from small and large collages to pieces done in watercolours or alcohol inks.
During a tour of her works, Thompson focused on a couple of collages she had done.
They featured bits of tissue paper, acrylics, clay, flowers, depictions of humming birds and a couple of layers of bee’s wax.
Thompson noted an artist from Edmonton came to the club and gave some tips on doing collages. That sparked her interest.
“I really like it,” she said. “I want to incorporate it into my fall show.”
Thompson was asked if the bee’s wax was applied to protect the work or was an ingredient, so to speak, in the collage itself.
“I think it just gives it a different look,” she said.
She decided to put two small collages on display in recessed shadow boxes to protect them.
One of the larger paintings in the show depicted bubbles on a bright reddish background.
Another, done in acrylics, depicted a stand of really realistic birch trees with leaves in golden fall colours on the far left and a series of very abstract looking hills in the distance, ranging in colour from blackish to a very faint whitish green.
“I just wanted kind of like, a calmness to it,” she said.
At the end of the display was another much larger collage, which Thompson made for a friend as a kind of commission.
Done in various shades of pink with big flowers, it features a couple of messages. One simply says “kindness.” Another is all about kindness and forgiveness.
Mixed media for that collage include acrylics, paper, clay, doilies and some pearl buttons.
Thompson figures it took about five days to complete.
"She said she wanted something that looked kind of antiquey and had a good message to it,” she said.
