“Our Earth” kicked off on Tuesday at Pearl Ellis Art Gallery in downtown Comox and runs through Feb. 3, 2024. The juried art exhibition portrays society’s relationship with Earth and the environment, and is free for the public.
“I think most people on the planet right now have climate anxiety,” said Pearl Ellis’s president, Teresa Kachanoski.
“Whether you are actively looking for solutions or not, everyone feels some degree of dread and uncertainty about our future,” she said.
The gallery includes a selection of acrylic, oil and watercolour paintings, alongside some photography and collages.
Pearl Ellis Gallery opened in 1977 and is run by member volunteers. The gallery is not-for-profit and aims to promote visual arts within the community and provide opportunities for members to showcase their work.
Interdisciplinary artist Trish Malcomess, one of the featured artists, said she has always been passionate about coastlines and oceans.
Originally from South Africa, she studied environmental studies in Cape Town including conservation, horticultural practices and landscape architecture.
From there, her studies took her to Florida where she volunteered for a tropical garden doing horticulture work. She moved to Vancouver Island in 1986.
While environment and art had always been a part of her life, the pandemic inspired her to jump into the blend of the two on a deeper level.
“We were all so isolated,” she said. “Just to get away from it all I started walking up and down the coastline with my camera… Anything to distract me from what was going on.”
Since then, the Comox-based artist has been creating art in a range of mediums including sculpture, ceramics, drawing, photography and painting.
One of Malcomess’s pieces is an oil painting featuring a sand-verbena moth and a discarded piece of nylon rope at the water’s edge.
Though this specific painting is not at the exhibit, it is one of her many art pieces that fit into the theme of ‘Our Earth.’
“It depicts the beauty and fragility of nature juxtaposed with discarded nylon,” said Malcomess, who wants to call attention to the amount of plastics along shorelines.
The moth depends on yellow sand verbena, a coastal flowering plant, to survive. The moth has a parasitic relationship with the plant and is dependent on it at all stages of its lifecycle.
The moths are listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act. Its coastal sand dune habitat is rare and threatened by erosion, sea level rise, development, pesticide use and other human impacts.
For the exhibit, Malcomess is showcasing a collage commentating on the current energy crisis and the shoreline of South Africa’s East Coast.
“Our Earth” is a juried exhibit, which means that the artists submitted work that has then been selected to fit in the theme of the show.
“An open call for a juried show is really a shot in the dark; you never know what kind of pieces will be submitted,” said Kachanoski.
She said that although the artists featured in this exhibit created their pieces independently, she found it interesting to see common themes encompassing a range of environmental concerns.
“The overall thread seems to be the interconnectedness between all things — human and physical,” she said.
She finds it exciting to see how an artist’s vision, which often stems from something very personal, can be universally relatable to viewers.
“We hope that the pieces will inspire our viewers to feel something,”
The gallery is located at 1279 Comox Ave. and is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. There will be an opening reception for “Our Earth” on Saturday, Jan. 13, from 1 to 3 p.m. Patrons will have an opportunity to meet the artists, and refreshments will be available.
