Homecoming: Art as Path and Portal

OPENING RECEPTION

The Dal Schindell Gallery invites you to an evening reception on Wednesday, September 13 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm for the opening of artist Katrina Grabner’s exhibition Homecoming: Art as Path and Portal. During the reception, there will be a guest performance by contemporary dancer Joanna Anderson.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

“Separate, together, empty, full, undoing, weaving, leaving, coming. We are always flowing. We are always on the path and yet we are always home. Homecoming.

Situated on the stolen, unceded land of the Musqueam Nation, Homecoming is a multi-medium meditation of becoming human and what it means to live as intra-beings. Over a decade ago, I dipped a sealed letter into hot wax: an invitation to begin a journey of turning loss, questions, fragments, and loose threads into a different approach to creativity and art making. This grounding process brought me back to my body, heart, and wisdom. I now extend the same love letter to you: an invitation towards healing, wholeness, and intra-connection through the death-life-death creation process.

Homecoming experiments with plant-dyed silks and cottons embedded between wax (either beeswax and damar tree resin or microcrystalline), miniature clay figures, life-sized plaster cast figures, pounded flowers, moss, finger-paints, film, words, DNA and morse codes, as well as simple watercolour meditations. Each piece is a conversation with self, environment, and ‘other’ and has been co-created through a process involving embodied listening, making, writing, sharing, and witnessing.

You are invited to join the conversation. To be. To listen. To feel. To respond. To make. To be woven-in. To feel the edges of yourself as you respond to the edges of mine.” – Katrina Grabner, Artist

ABOUT THE ARTIST

“I’m interested in bringing to light that which is hidden or sealed within.”

Katrina Grabner is a visual artist, art therapist, trauma counsellor, writer and professor residing on the stolen unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil Waututh) Nations. Often drawn to creating site-specific installation works, Grabner uses mediums such as encaustic (Greek ‘enkaustikos’, meaning to burn-in), ceramics, paint and fiber to explore themes of identity, place, embodiment, myth, and collective healing.

Katrina holds an MA in Psychotherapy and Spirituality with a specialization in Art Therapy through St. Stephen’s College, an affiliate college of the University of Alberta. Originally from Treaty 6 Territory, just west of the Rocky Mountains, Grabner locates herself through her German, Scottish, Irish, Mi’kmaq, and French ancestors. She founded Open Book Art Collective and has participated in numerous shows at galleries such as Silk Purse Arts Centre, Massy Arts Society, Britannia Art Gallery, Langley Centennial Museum and Exhibition Centre, and Seymour Art Gallery and has participated in MAWA’s Mentorship foundation program.

Through her works, Katrina’s hope is to encourage curiosity, play, wonder, conversation, and deeper connection with self and other.

www.katrinagrabner.com

VISIT THE GALLERY

The Dal Schindell Gallery is located at Regent College, which sits on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nation.