Dahlia S L Hosts Inaugural Summer Symposium: The Arts in Evolution

Dahlia S L hosted its first summer symposium at their Prince Edward County home gallery, on July 19. The Arts in Evolution symposium centred around explorations of artistic practices and community, focusing on location-specific discussions, particularly the arts and arts community in Prince Edward County. It was an amazing afternoon to host three fantastic speakers who guided our discussions of artistic practices and community as it is impacted by the fabric of Prince Edward County.

Dahlia Labatte, Co-Founder and Curator of the gallery opened the Symposium with a keynote talk on rurality and metrocentricity. Her discussion of art in a rural environment as having inherent value provided for a useful context for artists who explore creativity in both an urban and rural environment, or move between the two. She highlighted the importance of seeing the rural as having potential as a unique centre of culture and artistic innovation. The notions of craft and fine art in language and use, and its semantic origins was discussed; how past traditions are frequently categorized as art or craft from a place of language and habit, tradition and domestication. Additionally, whether or not these categories have value.

Setting the stage for conversation over coffee and tea, three speakers explored this concept in their own unique way. Delane Cooper, goldsmith, jeweller and storyteller presented a comparison of her work in the city versus in the country, drawing on ambient/background sound, breathing, and structure as key differentiators that impacted her process and practice. She then further explored her journey as an artist here in the country, set and setting, and how it allowed her to straddle grief and trauma in different ways, and demonstrating this passage and journey in various works of art and jewellery design providing for trauma to have an outlet and creative result.

In conversation with Noella Noel discussed the evolution of her work in Prince Edward County and the particularities of studio practice. Noella explained the value of shutting down thinking in order to paint abstraction, the benefits of moving intuitively and spontaneously. She discussed the benefits of a physical environment of isolation that allows for her to best produce works, while straddling its inconveniences for the business side of an independent studio. She elaborated on her practice as constantly experimenting with colour, ideas, energy and song, and materials. Noella discussed her practice and moving presently towards meditative paintings that also rely more on breathwork.

Concluding the event, Jamie Janx Johnston, photographer, painter, muralist, and educator, discussed public art and the scope and scale of collaboration that it entails, particularly in its potentialities and futures. He highlighted the importance of failure, evolution, and ambition for growth in an artistic practice. The talk fully represented ideas of what community is, the function of public art, and how it can and should shift and change in the county.

The Symposium provided for a personal and collective discovery of how personal ideas meld into setting and location, and community building, even in more isolated environments where access and proximity challenge the artists.

 The gallery would like to thank everyone for attending the event and engaging conversation at the gallery. Dahlia S L aims to create personal and new connections to art, and artful expression by bringing the experience of art to people in unique places with unique and provocative concepts.