Local artist, Tim Heimdal painting his mural 'Much Ado About Nothing' for The Curve festival at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie. Photo Credit: Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.

By Shane Clausing

art gallery of grande prairie

Art Gallery of Grande Prairie encouraging local artists to show-off work at Curve Festival

Jul 19, 2020 | 5:30 AM

The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is encouraging local artists to show off their artwork at the galleries ‘The Curve’ show this month.

The Curve is an art show being held at the art gallery until September 28. It encourages artists of any kind to submit their artwork so it can be displayed throughout the gallery for the duration of the show.

This year’s theme is meant to show how artists are expressing themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s our response to the pandemic situation and it’s a story told through art”, said Jeff Erbach with the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie. “We are taking community submissions, which are music, painting, drawing, photography and all types of things.”

Erbach says dropping off artwork to be displayed is a simple task for local artists.

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“They physically bring them in and we install them.”

If your project is digital, such as music or online photography, you can email your work to kartina@aggp.ca. There is a limit of three items per artists.

Erbach says that they’ve already received 150 plus submissions of various artwork.

The gallery is also working on a major project during ‘The Curve’ festival. The gallery has commissioned well-known local artist Tim Heimdal, to create an on-site mural, from July 14 to August 7.

Heimdal is an award-winning Canadian artist, who has designed and painted over 100 murals, most notably the 7-story mural of Kakwa Falls.

Erbach says it was important to get an artist commissioned during this event.

“We wanted to contribute to artists who have also suffered through this timeframe, they’ve lost a lot of work and rely on those kind of special projects for their income. So, we wanted to commission local artists to create work that was in response to what is happening.”

“In doing so we are also meeting our mandate as an art museum, so these commissioned pieces become a part of our permanent collection and generations from now, when that story needs to be re-told and people want to reflect on what happened over this extraordinary time, art is one way they can engage in that.”

Heimdal’s piece is going to be based on the play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ by Shakespeare, which was initially supposed to be preformed by the Grande Prairie Live Theatre earlier this year, but the production was moved online to Zoom because of COVID-19. Heimdal was the set director for the production.

Erbach explained what the piece will look like.

“He wanted to take the pieces he was creating in the Much Ado About Nothing show and then he’s painting a lot of square ‘Zoom’ images on it, so he’s taking the Zoom production and he’s overlaying it into the set design. It’s becoming a painting of a play that once existed.”

While the painting is taking place, the public is allowed inside the art gallery and is invited to check out the exhibit.

Admission for the gallery is free and people can see Heimdal painting the mural while they are visiting.