Sask. artists show off talent at Art Gallery of Regina Members’ Show and Sale

The Art Gallery of Regina featured hundreds of works go on display at the annual show and sale.

Saturday was the kickoff to another year of the Art Gallery of Regina Members’ Show and Sale.

For the next three weeks, the gallery will be host to over 400 artworks from Saskatchewan artists. The artforms include ceramics, textiles, paintings, photography, sculpture, and jewellery.

For Catherine Parker, a second-year participant, it’s a new venture in her life. Since she retired, she’s taken up her time to create a variety of art forms out of vegetables.

“It’s very time consuming, so you have to enjoy the process,” she said. “The cutting and the steaming of the vegetables is the easy part. The long part is laying down the vegetables, making sure that they overlap properly, because otherwise you get gaps in them.”

Once that’s done, Parker said she has to press them, change the papers and change them every couple of hours on the first day, then once per day for the next week, until the vegetables are absolutely dry.

Around the sale space, she had a number of jugs scattered around, along with a few covered by a frame.

Parker said the art form is not very common, and only knows one friend who takes it seriously, over in Europe.

She said she works with rhubarb and turnips the most.

“I love that it’s [rhubarb] a prairie vegetable, it’s everywhere around the province,” she said.

Living in the Cathedral neighbourhood, she also said that her neighbours supply her with a good amount of rhubarb from their garden to feed her artistic endeavours.

“I also love rutabagas or turnips, as my family always called them, because my grandfather used to grow tons of turnips. As a kid, we used to help him in his big garden, so I feel some fascination with that.”

Other vegetables she works with are zucchini and cucumbers. She has also just started using dragon fruit.

In last year’s art show, she sold two pieces of art. This year, she sold 14, including six in the first few hours.

“I price them so that people can afford them, and it’s very exciting for me because I am retired, and here I am doing art, which I love. Every day is an adventure in my studio.”

Every purchase at the sale directly supports Saskatchewan artists and keeps the Art Gallery of Regina free, according to the gallery.