Photo Courtesy Art Gallery of Grande Prairie Website

By Tanner Smith

Art Gallery of Grande Prairie

The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie opening exhibit focused on history of jazz

Jul 18, 2022 | 4:13 PM

The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is opening a new exhibit Thursday.

Jazz Influences: Rhythm, Movement, and Improv features artists from across Canada that show jazz in a new light; using abstract art, sculptures, and painting seen through animation, mixed media, and improv elements.

Aretha Laverne, one of the only local artists involved with the exhibition says she’s honored to be working with the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, having many different exhibitions that are more than traditional canvases on a wall and giving her and her son Shei Onu the chance to show residents of the area some different art again.

“I’m doing a mixed-media piece, I will have three paintings that show the influence of art on music, and different influences of jazz music just in the black community in general. My son will be doing a digital rendering of one of my art pieces.”

Laverne says the art gallery does a good job of being “diverse without hitting you over the head and being connecting while welcoming,” and is thankful to them for providing her with a platform to share her passion for jazz and creating art, that she has had since she was a little girl with the people of Grande Prairie.

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“My family is a family of creators, my sister was an actress and stuff like that, so she would put together little skits to the music albums that my mother used to play and we would dress up and have fun. I would do my sketches and she would do her acting and my brother was a singer so he would sing along and it was a good time.”

More recently Laverne found another outlet for her passion for art, becoming a program director working in early childhood education with kids to give them another way to get out emotions and feelings.

“My job was to help prepare them for school, having outbursts or having types of behavior that was disruptive or just not conductive to a learning environment, it was my job to help them to be calm and express what they were thinking and feeling and what they needed.”

Laverne says art played a big factor in the program but more precisely the process of creating, which she believes is very therapeutic and helps kids and adults alike work through a lot of emotions and feelings.

The art exhibit will focus on providing space for visitors to learn, engage and create an open dialogue about what they’re experiencing.

The Jazz Influence Exhibit will be at the Art Gallery until November 6, 2022.

Entry to the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is free.