An upcoming art exhibition in Jasper showcases the beauty of the local mountains in an abstractly literal way: by using mineral taken from the mountains themselves.

Lisa Zbinden is a Valemount-based artist who will be showing her work at the Jasper Liquor Lodge this April 10. Some of her work will feature work produced with flakes of a mica, a sheet silica mineral that can be found in the mountains surrounding Valemount and Jasper.

“There’s something very interesting about it,” said Zbinden of mica. “I would see it on my walks, and I thought that I could find some way to use it, it’s beauty.”

Zbinden grew up in Switzerland where she trained as an artist before moving to Valemount in 2002.

“I have a passion for colours and art since I can remember. Starting in high school, I did all kinds of experimental creative work: pottery, dying fabrics and wool with natural colours, batik, felting, a lot of knitting, sewing, painting and sculpturing,” reads the bio on her website.

Zbinden runs the Twin Peaks resort in Valemount along with her husband (their three children have moved away.) She said her goal, one day, is to be able to support her lifestyle completely through her art; a tough goal, she admits.

“It’s my passion. I love to paint. I have to do it, more and more” she said.

Before living in the mountains of British Columbia, she spent many years living in a Swiss city. The mountains were close by, but had to be driven to.

“It was city life,” she said.

She believes that she would have never been able to produce the work she makes now had she stayed with her old life.

“I love to live in B.C. It’s totally different. Completely,” said Zbinden.

Now, she is essentially surrounded by the mountains. They motivate her, and make her want to convey the beauty of the natural world.

Using mica as a medium is one way of conveying that beauty.

Most people look at rocks and don’t think of art. Zbinden said she believes that all of nature is beautiful, and sometimes an artist needs to motivate people to really see the beauty in the world around them.

“I love the texture of the rock and I want to find a way to incorporate that into my work,” said Zbinden. “It’s a challenge to look at it in a different way, but understand it as well.”

Zbinden said that working with mica isn’t terribly difficult. The hardest part about it is probably the difficult hike up nearby Mica Mountain to gather the mineral from near the entryways to the old mines there.

Aside from that, Zbinden said that she just uses a simple pallet knife to separate millimetre thin, near-transparent layers of the mineral. There’s no heat needed or any other trick, just the right amount of pressure in the correct spot. Mica typically breaks apart easily. It’s malleable enough that it can even be bent without breaking.

Sometimes Zbinden will take those layers and affix them to a piece of stretched canvas, piecing the minerals next to one another in a jigsaw-like fashion. Each piece gets a different colour of acrylic paint; greens, browns, blues, blacks and white.

In some pieces of work, Zbinden uses only paint, but it is still shaped to represent the pieces of mineral.

Overall, it’s an interesting effect. Small pieces of a mountain are used to represent massively, mountainous terrain; through pieces of something small, something large is created.

The word “mica” is thought to be derived from the Latin word micare, meaning ‘to glitter’ in reference to the mineral’s brilliant appearance. Just like the mineral and the mountains that it helps to make, Zbinden is hoping that her show will glimmer in Jasper.