Studio Gallery show a sampler of the city's best artists

There is a whole lot of love going on at the Studio Gallery location on Perron Street this month.

If you don’t feel it when you step inside then go out and try coming back in again. You’re walking into an exhibit filled with works from many of the city’s most extraordinary painters and it is a hall of wonder.

The Visual Arts Studio Association of St. Albert (VASA) is a vibrant collective of some great talents, both with established artists as well as some emerging stars rising on the horizon. This isn’t a show with a unified and cohesive theme so much as it a massive stamp on the scene. The stamp reads “We are VASA, hear us roar.”

Clearly VASA is a supportive and nurturing environment. When you wander around the gallery space, you will understand better that artists in our city don’t always trumpet their own praises but that’s only because they’ve got more important things to do. Their art is important for our culture, and what’s more it’s really amazing to look at. There is so much dedication to capturing beauty and recreating it that if you have any doubts about how grand St. Albert is, either in scenery or culture, this exhibit will quickly and easily allay your fears and alleviate your mind.

Diane Way, one of VASA’s members and one of the exhibiting artists for this show, knows the vast creative groundswell that resides just under the surface like bubbles in boiling water. Apart from being excited to have her own art in the show, she still gets a thrill to see what her compatriots have to offer also.

“We have some real emerging artists coming out like Cheryl [Moskaluk],” she said. “She’s just starting to show her work here. It’s really fantastic.”

With Way and Moskaluk, the list of resident artists who have contributed to this comprehensive show here is extensive and also includes heavyweights like Bruce Thompson, Frank van Veen, Miles Constable, Heather Howard, Pat Wagensveld, Douglas Fraser, Carol Johnson, Neil Louise Matthews, Bruce Allen, Victoria Armstrong, Carla Beerens and Julie Kaldenhoven. It reads like the roster for a dream team, even though there are many other people waiting in the background who didn’t get their turn this time around. While VASA has ‘St. Albert’ in its name, this is really a regional representation with some members coming from the greater community including Villeneuve, Legal and elsewhere.

Way just has one piece on display here since she has a duo show coming up later this summer with Monk. I really loved Kaldenhoven’s series of postcards from Paris and Frank van Veen, to me, is an encyclopaedic genius with a fantastic sense of humour. His self-portrait is classic Frank but it is far from being banal. These artists need your full support so you really just have to walk through the door and see it for yourself.