Artist Geert Maas has been working for months on a sculpture commissioned by MADD Canada at his studio located 250 Reynolds Road in Kelowna. The sculpture is now nearly completed.

He designed and created a large, visually appealing, and long-lasting monument dedicated to leaving a legacy to victims of impaired driving and to educating the public about the dangers of impaired driving. The monument itself is a large brushed stainless steel circle with a cast bronze relief on it. The images on the artwork are meant to evoke images that coincide with MADD Canada's message; to provide support to victims of drinking and driving and to heighten awareness about this issue. The entire artwork will sit upon a tall base made of exposed aggregate concrete. The monument pays tribute to those loved ones killed or injured in an alcohol related crash, and victims of impaired driving will feel that their loved ones are not forgotten.
This MADD Legacy Project is meant to inspire hope and offer strength and courage to move forward.

The monument which will impact many people will be donated by MADD Canada’s Greater Vancouver Chapter to the City of Burnaby. Installation and unveiling in Burnaby to be announced. The ultimate goal of this project is to leave a long-lasting legacy; to recognize and honour the many victims of impaired driving and to raise awareness within the public of the dangers of driving impaired.

The artist has given careful consideration to the subject matter of the monument since the art work in its entirety should be an inspiration and motivation for the community in which it will be placed. Victims viewing the monument will feel like their loved one is not forgotten and the issue of impaired driving is visible for all to see.

The stainless steel circle which is the artwork in its entirety represents a giant wheel which is at the heart of MADD Canada's mission to stop drinking and driving. There are four shapes of people's faces (negatives) cut out of this circle. These represent the four people on average killed in Canada every day by impaired driving. These people are the innocent victims of this violent crime. They are missing from the artwork and leave a void in the lives of family and friends. When the monument is viewed from the back, the missing people are there amongst the living. This is meant as a metaphor that although the bodies of the people are gone, they continue to live on in the hearts and memories of friends and families. The four "positives" are the people left behind after the crash. These are the lives that are changed forever, never to return to the way things were before the crash.

The bronze relief at the bottom of the front of the artwork creates artistic interest at the heart of the piece. The circular nature of the relief again represents a wheel, a steering wheel or the wheels of a vehicle. The circle motif also represents the support and friendship victims can find through organizations like MADD. The circle is like being enveloped in a giant hug after victims and their families have suffered such devastation and loss. There are several images of people in the bronze relief. This represents the many people who are impacted by a single crash. There are friends, family members, support groups, and professionals who deal with the victims and their families after a crash. In between all these people are hollow spots or cut out figures. These are the people who are missing, but never forgotten.

The MADD Legacy Project is about remembering those affected by impaired driving and about creating public awareness around this issue.

Last Fall two of Geert Maas bronze sculptures were unveiled at Okanagan College in Vernon and the Tachibana University in Kyoto, Japan commissioned on the occasion of these educational institutions celebrating 20 years of their student exchange programs. The unveiling in Kyoto was attended by the President of Okanagan College, Jim Hamilton, and the artist and his wife Elly Maas.

On March 4 Geert Maas was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Arts Award from the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan.

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09 Apr 2010

 Tickets to the hottest Jazz concert in town are now on sale.

GET JAZZED is a benefit concert for NOW Canada featuring Kelowna's Robert Fine and Jackee Guillou.  

On Tuesday, April 27th the collaboration of this dynamic duo will take audiences on a musical journey, infusing jazzy rhythms and silky vocals that will feature classic favourites from the Great American Songbook.

Fine's crooner style has wowed audiences with his interpretations of the legendary Frank Sinatra. Guillou, a recipient of the CBC Galaxie Rising Star Award at the 2009 Vancouver International Jazz Festival returns to her Kelowna roots and brings her vintage vocals and fresh style.

GET JAZZED is a benefit concert for NOW Canada in an effort to raise funds for the Alexandra Gardner Safe House.

Get your tickets and GET JAZZED today! Tickets are now on sale and available through Select Your Tickets by calling 250.762.5050 or visit www.selectyourtickts.com.

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06 Apr 2010

The Princeton Traditional Music Festival will take place August 20-22, 2010.  We present traditional music from southern BC and other traditional musics.  If you know of any makers of traditional music in your area we would really like to hear from them.  The festival is free, and is entirely volunteer-run: no one is paid, including performers (though we can cover some travel expenses). In 2009 year we presented over 100 performers and we hope to do the same this year.

What is traditional music?  A really good example is Celtic music.  Or it could be songs made by loggers, miners, sailors, settlers, or songs made for fun about local characters and communities.

If you know of any performers in your area who make this kind of music could you please send us their contact information or have them get in touch with us directly?

Rika Ruebsaat
President, Princeton Traditional Music Society
Past President, Princeton & District Arts Council
250-295-6010
Princetonfestival@telus.net
Box 2451, Princeton, BC V0X 1W0
Website - www.princetonfestival.wordpress.com

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06 Apr 2010

Allan Mow, who in the 1980s achieved national prominence as the author of an indigenous ghost story that captivated the reading public in the province of British Columbia, where many continue to believe the story was not fiction, died on Thursday, March 18 in the capital city of Victoria, where he had lived since 1985. He was 64.

A spokesperson for the Victoria Police Department said Mr. Mow's body had been recovered from the Victoria Harbour, and that the Regional Coroner's office had ruled it a suicide. Mr. Mow's sister, Regina Diane Marias, of Victoria, said her brother had suffered from depression and paranoia for most of his life, as a result of the 1980 events from which he first earned his reputation. Mr. Mow had been missing since March 17, when he attended a gala promoted as "The St. Patrick's All Night Long Boat Party" aboard the Victoria Princess Cruise Ship.

It is presumed that Mr. Mow jumped overboard, as officials for Victoria Princess did not notice or report any altercation, nor indeed note Mr. Mow's disappearance until contacted by Victoria Police. A flyer for the cruise, as well as the circled question, "Do You Need a Girlfriend?" in an advertisement for Seductresses Unlimited, a local escort agency, were found by Ms. Marias in Mr. Mow's downtown bachelor suite, who searched the apartment when her brother failed to return her phone calls for several days. Citing the agency's policy of client confidentiality, a spokesperson for Seductresses Unlimited said she could not confirm police allegations that Mr. Mow was accompanied on the cruise by a woman known to operate under the alias "Candi". Before disconnecting she added, unprovoked, "Can I just say, though? - poor Allan! He'd been with us from the beginning."

A semi-reclusive author who developed a national cult following shortly after working as a news reporter for The Daily Clarion, then a daily, now a weekly, in Valley Southside, British Columbia, Mr. Mow is credited as the inspiration for what emerged as a national anti-property development movement, which raised awareness of the importance of preserving the architectural heritage of small towns across Canada. In The Frollett Homestead, a five-part series published in 1980, Mr. Mow claimed to have met, and interviewed, an octogenarian "witch doctor", named Tobias Elliott, who Mow believed to be the last living descendant of a now-extinct, migratory aboriginal tribe called the Chippeweyans.

In Mr. Mow's story, the tribe had unique psychokinetic powers which they employed for many uses, including the resistance of real estate development. Soundly debunked by historians across the country, many of whom pointed out that Mow had simply borrowed, and loosely modified, the name of his fictional tribe from the Chipewyan, a tribe of Dene, who presently number approximately 11,000. The Frollett Homestead circulated for years amongst conspiracy theorists and fans of the paranormal, not as a work of fiction, but as a historical document. Many of his detractors have long maintained that it was Mr. Mow himself, who began photocopying and distributing the story to such groups, a claim the author denied repeatedly.

The more dedicated amongst Mow's followers called themselves "Homesteaders" and organized, particularly during the movement's apex from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, national conventions, where they speculated on the actual, physical location of the Homestead, and sold a range of Frollett Homestead-inspired paraphernalia, including a now-legendary T-shirt that bears Mow's likeness and the legend "Mow Knows"; in 2007, one such shirt, from the original 1984 screen printing, sold for a record $1,650, on the Internet auction site eBay to an unknown buyer in Fort Nelson, BC.

Mow was surprised by the popularity of his story, and maintained a critical distance from it. Although he never disavowed its authenticity, neither did he formally offer his support of the Homesteaders movement, which lobbied the City of Valley Southside, unsuccessfully, to name May 15 "Allan Mow Day". That date has achieved a special place in Homesteaders lore as the date of publication of the last of the five installments, and the last day, in 1980, of Mow's employment at The Daily Clarion. For "professional misconduct" Mr. Mow's employment was terminated by the newspaper, which has maintained official silence about Mow's tenure there, and the newspaper's subsequent vilification by Homesteaders, who have accused The Daily Clarion of destroying, or concealing, evidence that would verify the claims made by Mr. Mow in The Frollett Homestead. The Daily Clarion did not respond to interview requests.

In contrast to his public reputation, as a man possessed of many of the same mystical skills attributed to Tobias Elliott, and a man believed by his followers to be able to alter destiny psychokinetically, Allan Mow was described by friends as difficult and uncommunicative, a long-haired barfly who spent the majority of his time altering the patterns of his own mind, usually through gin. Beloved by bartenders throughout Victoria, and also in Vancouver, where he travelled occasionally to speak at Homesteaders conventions, Mr. Mow did not again obtain regular employment as a journalist following his termination from The Daily Clarion. From 1981 until 1987 he worked irregularly as a roofer in Victoria, until freelance writing, usually related to The Frollett Homestead, and speaking fees from conventions, both the result of the persistence and growth of the Homesteaders movement, supplied Mr. Mow with enough income to quit this line of work. In an interview with the Victoria Times Colonist in 1992, on the tenth year anniversary of the publication of The Frollett Homestead, Mr. Mow said, "F--- it, I was too old to roof anymore anyway. Have you ever tried it? S--- gets scary up there."

Born in Victoria in 1946, Allan Mow attended the University of Victoria for a year in 1965 before moving to Regina, Saskatchewan where he obtained an undergraduate degree in journalism from The University of Regina, in 1968. He worked on small- to mid-sized weekly, and, later, daily, newspapers without distinction, save for the Frollett affair, for the duration of his short-lived journalistic career. According to Ms. Marias, most of his writing jobs were terminated by the employer for insubordination, earning him a reputation that forced him to the otherwise unremarkable Valley Southside where a combination of sunshine, and, briefly, a girlfriend, gave Mr. Mow the most fruitful, if short-lived, period of his career.

"Allan, may he rest in peace, didn't even know himself anymore what was true or not," Ms. Marias said. "Let's be honest: my brother drowned himself to death about twenty years before he drowned himself to death. Witch doctor? Please. What would I say to all of those people who think he was? Pull your head out, I guess? Pull your head out, and get a job. Oh, and stop phoning me." She went on to explain that she had had to change her telephone number more times than she would "care to count," as a result of overzealous Homesteaders seeking biographical information, or updated contact information, about her brother.

In addition to Ms. Marias, Mr. Mow is survived by three grandchildren.

A long-rumoured book based on the original stories, written by Okanagan College professor Colin Snowsell, will be published in mid-April.

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01 Apr 2010

The Kelowna Art Gallery is pleased to present the work of local artist Joice M. Hall in a solo show entitled Surreal.Real.Ideal: The Art of Joice M. Hall.
This retrospective exhibition is on display in both gallery spaces at the Kelowna Art Gallery.



Realist painter Joice M. Hall spent most of her career based in Calgary, before moving to Kelowna to live in 1998. This exhibition is a full-scale survey show that has been organized for the Kelowna Art Gallery by independent curator Patricia Ainslie, who also moved to Kelowna (three years ago) after a long career at Calgaryís Glenbow Museum.

The show will comprise about forty works, some of which contain multiple units. It will culminate with Hallís recent realist landscapes done in the Okanagan, including her works depicting the Okanagan Mountain fire of 2003. A full-length catalogue will be published with all works reproduced in colour. The show will give local residents and visitors the opportunity to consider the full career of this important and insightful artist who lives in our midst.

This exhibition runs from March 20 to May 23, 2010. The Kelowna Art Gallery, located at 1315 Water Street is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, Thursday until 9 pm, Sundays from 1 pm to 4 pm, closed Mondays. Admission to the gallery is $5 for individuals, $4 for students and seniors or $10 for a family. FREE admission on Thursdays from 3 - 9 pm.

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27 Mar 2010