Artist Speaks Series

Two local creatives, Squamish Arts Council Director Amy Liebenberg and photographer Thomasina Pidgeon, offer their respective collections as a critical conversation about Squamish’s overwhelming gentrification and the province-wide destruction of old growth landscapes. If the principle of “sight unseen” has historically enabled ignorance about our fading natural environments, then the stark reality of each collections’s imagery forces the issue unavoidably into view.

Blue, deep blue. Isn’t it the colour of peace and serenity? A colour that cools our peaked summer skin with its waters and enfolds us in its velvet winter skies when it is time to rest? Derived by the Egyptians some 5,000 years ago from the semi-precious stone Lapis Lazuli, deep-blue pigments remained a staple among creatives, meeting the brushes and panels of Renaissance artists before becoming prevalent in printing processes of the last two centuries.

In sculptor Andre Paixao Siqueira’s world, every single rock is imbued with the spirit and history of its formation. This natural personality—a composite of sedimentary layers bound to human’s presence —is synthesized over time like any other living entity. Siqueira adopts his family of rocks from rivers, raw coastlines, and inland terrain, building short cairns or rock stacks like those guiding a hiker’s way.