Artwork by Angelique Gillespie featured in Federation Gallery titled “Neighbourhood Watch”. The piece has a description from the artist feature on the site, saying “Collaging provided the substrate for me to glaze luminous transparent washes on the crows against a muted imaginative background.” Federation Gallery Photo.
Nicholas L. M. Allen
Sept 6, 2023
The art gallery will be host to an ‘artist in residence’.
The local art gallery will be hosting an ‘artist in residence’ this fall.
This fall, Crowsnest Pass Public Art Gallery will be hosting mixed media artist and retired educator, Angelique Gillespie, as part of the Artist in Residence (AiR) program. The program will run from September 16 to October 14.
Gillespie will join the gallery for her solo exhibition called: One Artist’s Footprint. Her display consists of different themes presented over her 35 years as educator, which have encouraged others to deepen their understanding of how art informs everything people do. Each theme will be supported by sketchbook pages or the whole sketchbook.
Her display will have an interactive element for gallery visitors and during her residency, she will also facilitate the gallery’s “Young At Art”, after school programming for children between the ages of nine and 15, from 2 to 4 p.m. starting on September 22. She will collaborate with the local high school art teacher Barbara Ann Hession and her students.
In a statement from Gillespie, “Over the past 35 years, I feel my work as an artist has grown, from controlled technical draftsmanship to a sensitive abstraction. I am now beginning to express myself through the essence of what I feel for the subject, over what the subject looks like. This change came about unconsciously, through enjoyable challenges such as working with children in the Calgary CBE schools. That experience pushed me to move beyond my art college training into a new realm, where we took art and enmeshed it with the children’s other school subjects, like math, science, and social studies. The results were truly magnificent.”
She described her creative process as a “lifetime of devotion” and found her work as a teacher pushed her creative work.
“The results of the experimenting and taking risks in my own creative journey helped me develop further as a teacher. This opened new doors for me to teach beginner watercolor students or Children’s cartooning classes and later Acrylic Painting. Through engaging in the creative process with other art enthusiasts, I grew as both an instructor, and as an artist in my own right. I feel fortunate to have collaborated with so many amazing artists throughout my lifetime as I have learned so much from sharing our passion and our ideas together,” said Gillespie.
Since she retired in 2014, she explained how she had been pursuing new ways of expressing herself. She did this both visually and narratively, through the tactile medium of clay and the expressive written word. She also joined a monthly online international abstract group, as well.
“I am taking small steps, one at a time, discovering my own inner voice as I express the joy and wonder I now feel in my work. I hope you will enjoy following the footprints of my growth as an artist who has shared her passion with so many others. Thank you for coming to share this creative journey and leaving your own footprint in this sacred space,” said Gillespie about her upcoming artist in residence.
The opening reception and artist talk will be on September 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. The studio days will be Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, between September 20 and October 12, a total of 10 afternoons, 12 to 4 p.m. The closing reception will be from 4 to 6 p.m. on October 13.