The featured exhibit runs September 1 – 30, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: September 5 at 5:30 pm

Artist: Alison Fleming

Artist Statement:

These paintings depict places in Edmonton and other cities that have struck me for one reason or another: colour, lighting, shadow, or particularly beautiful kind of decrepitude. Keeping my eyes peeled for something interesting makes every walk in every city an adventure.

Alison Fleming grew up in Winnipeg and now lives in Edmonton. Her paintings are in private collections across Canada, as well as with the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Toronto Public Library, and Wedge Curatorial Projects.

The featured exhibit runs August 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: August 3 at 2:00 pm

Artist: Neil McClelland

Artist Statement:

These paintings take as their starting point my childhood home. This place where I grew up becomes an imagined world, acting as a metaphor for the belonging that we seek within nature and the cosmos. My process involves layering fragments of visual experience, memory and imagination to create in-between places that are not so much about representing a real place but rather distilling it in a search for meaning. As in much of my work, there is recognition of the tensions between the uncertainties of our times and the possibilities for re-enchantment with the world and a planetary consciousness. I seek to capture a sense of uneasiness and precariousness but also a sense of awe and wonder at the interconnectedness of everything: land and sky, earth and cosmos, night and day, and past/present/future. Painting processes that emphasize ambiguity, motion, and transformation work to convey a visceral and unmoored sense of place and time and to suggest what is simultaneously familiar but strange. In this dream-like world, time bends and blurs, land shifts and moves, the uncanny and the everyday collide, and anything might happen. Night skies, or skies in which time is indeterminate, imbue this imagined place with a sense of magnitude, an opening of the cosmos, a space to contemplate. I understand the places in my paintings as filled with possibilities, defamiliarized but somewhere where we might find something of ourselves and our world.

Originally from Quebec, Neil McClelland divides his time between his home and studio in Edmonton, Alberta and Victoria, BC. He received his MFA from the University of Victoria in 2014, and he currently teaches visual arts for Thompson Rivers University. Neil has had solo and group exhibitions in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, and he is a 2016 and 2020 grantee of the internationally prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. His paintings are in collections including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Colart Collection.

The featured exhibit runs July 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: July 8 at 5:00 pm

Artist: Sid Trajkovski

Artist Statement:

This series of collages explores the disorientation felt when confronting one’s unmasked personality during the onset of the COVID lockdown. Using dynamically scanned images of faces in motion, the work prompts reflection on the outcomes of shedding societal facades. It ultimately poses the uncomfortable question: who do we become when no one is observing us?”

Sid Trajkovski is an interdisciplinary artist and creator based in amiskwacîwâskahika, a.k.a Edmonton. Over the past seven years, Sid has delved into the world of collage, utilizing art as a vehicle for introspection and comprehension. Sid’s pieces encourage viewers to contemplate alternate realities where traditional limitations fade. Through psychedelic expression, Sid prompts others to embark on a journey of self-reflection and exploration, utilizing creativity to surpass the boundaries of everyday reality.

The featured exhibit runs June 1 – 30, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: June 1 at 2:00 pm

Artist: Laurel Westlund

Artist Statement:

FALCONET is an installation of silkscreens that playfully depict a landscape of recurring nightmares. Arising from an unconscious mind confronted with uncertainties and nebulous fears, these skeletal ‘memento mori’ figures forge their way through the battles unphased. In this dreamlike realm they remind us to confront the fear of our inevitable mortality and find the beauty in the present moment. Drawing from Medieval imagery, the prints are created using hand-cut stencils screened onto wood, cut out and layered together. A collage of bold linework, saturated colours, and hints of lurid fluorescent hues- hidden layers emerge into glowing night scenes that only appear in the dark.

Laurel Westlund is an Edmonton-based visual artist with a background in Printmaking and Classics from the University of Alberta. With a love of history, and a touch of the absurd, her work uses themes of crisis to explore the nature of fear in our lives.

The featured exhibit runs May 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: May 2 at 5:00 pm

Artist: Heather Noel

Artist Statement:
It started out of necessity, the need to use up some free 4×5 film without access to a large format camera. Fashioned from a dollar store cardboard box, a pop can, and some black tape, the pinhole camera captures images unmediated by lenses and digital sensors. Technological control is traded for playful acceptance, the security of precision is exchanged for the thrill of chance. Long exposure times invite motion blur and mystery artifacts, destabilizing the illusion of permanence. The single-photo nature of the camera provides welcome relief from the crippling infinity of contemporary image generation. Final images are digitally refined through cropping, retouching, dodging and burning, while still preserving pleasant imperfections.

Heather Noel was raised by herding dogs, children’s literature, and early 90s television on the farthest edge of Atlantic Canada. She graduated from NAIT in 2006 with a diploma in Photographic Technology, just as celluloid film was falling out of popularity, and cellphone cameras were on the rise. In the decades since, she has been slowly accumulating a collection of film cameras and maintaining a personal artistic practice. She has worked with super 8mm and 16mm motion picture film to make her own short films, and contributed to various local independent film projects. She is also obsessively dedicated to her full-time job as Metro Cinema’s programming manager.

The featured exhibit runs March 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: Music Set by SinData – March 23 at 2:30 pm.

Artist: Will N-R

Artist Statement:
Will Northlich-Redmond’s aesthetic stems from an intensive focus on synaesthetic interdisciplinarity: creative works involving the confluence of visuality and sound. As a composer-performer and multi-instrumentalist primarily, Will’s musical endeavors portray significant elements of impactful visual expression – e.g. graphic scoring, mixed media performances, choreographed movement, videography, and interpretive conducting. Will’s visual artistic practice, currently within a digital medium, draws upon improvisation, escapism, immersion, and sonic freneticism to produce organized chaos; images of distorted reality, fantasy, and chromatic spontaneity, qualities which are ubiquitous in Will’s music. Each unique painting is printed as a series of five images.

Will Northlich-Redmond (aka Will N-R aka BlipVert) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. His musical work has been featured all over the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Work has been supported by the National Gugak Center (Seoul, South Korea), the NYU Vilar Global Fellows, Amsterdam’s STEIM Center, the Wesleyan University Laptop Ensemble and Balinese Gamelan Ensemble, the Portland Flute Society, the Ojai Art Center, the NYU New Music Ensemble, and New Music Edmonton. Will performs electronic music under the pseudonym BlipVert, which features some of his most personal and extreme compositions.

The featured exhibit runs February 1 – 29, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: February 3 at 2PM.⁠

Artist: Lindsey Campbell

Lindsey Campbell (she/her) is an Edmonton-based cinephile, artist, and author. She is a professional film watcher, a regular contributor on CJSR’s Moving Radio, and a member of Metro’s programming committee. Over the years, Lindsey has worked for the Telluride Film Festival, MountainFilm, Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF and CUFF Docs), and NorthwestFest. Her long-term ‘photo of the day’ project is now in its 14th year. She is proud to present The Booth, a series of photographs taken from her time in various projection booths and movie theatres over the years.

The featured exhibit runs January 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

Artist Reception: January 4 at 5:30PM.⁠

Artist: Shelley Paley

Artist Statement:

Definition Benevolent: Kindness and open-heartedness curiosity in Allowing: opportunity to wholistic embody self-acceptance and self-awareness in each of one’s experiences This art exhibit depicts one human’s personal creative development of benevolent allowing of self to reframe and heal family of origin relationships. The artist is using the spiritual medicine of nature in our urban river valley for grounding and self-regulation and as a safe therapeutic space for temporary eco-art installations. Using art in therapy as a vehicle to explore things relational dynamics that are alive in the present moment through spontaneous artmaking and specifically offered art therapy experientials to explore one’s subconscious knowing that surfaces within the relationship with a professional art therapist. These art images are visual processes exploring the use of temporary eco-art installations in our Edmonton River valley for redevelopment of embodied self-compassion and self-appreciation.

Shelley Paley (she/they) is an Edmontonian who has worked as a teacher and art specialist with K-12 children for the past fifteen years. She is passionate about the varied ways we as humans use art to make and reform meaning throughout our lives. Shelley is drawn to creative collaboration with others including in the classroom, and in group art therapy invitations. She is responsive to each of her art therapy client’s current needs. Shelley has personally leaned into art processes, and she has experienced healing through art therapy. Within her worldview of everything is sacred or nothing is sacred, Shelley continues to develop her professional art therapy practice as a second-year art therapy student at Kutenai Art Therapy Institute.