It’s brown season, or as Megan Vicente puts it “decomposing elk poop season.”
The snow has melted, the grass is dead, the poop is water-logged and the streets are littered with gravel. It’s not Jasper’s most beautiful of seasons, but soon enough things will turn around as the warmth of the spring sun does its job.
In the meantime, Vicente, her partner Elliot Engles and their best friend Tristan Overy are hosting a colourful, spring-inspired art exhibit, opening at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives April 10.
“This is the opposite of decomposing elk poop,” joked Engles.
The show is titled “Mountains and Stuff with Canvass and Fluff” and will include works from Vicente and Engles, the creative minds behind Jasper’s well-known dopey-eyed Mountains and Monsters pillows, as well as from Overy, the community’s long-standing graffiti artist behind Caveman and Scientist.
Overy and Engles have been friends for years—so long, in fact, that Engles is able to translate and explain Overy’s internal workings nearly as well as—if not better—than the graffiti artist himself.
Describing their friendship, Overy said, “There’s a difference between being friends and fellow artists and living across town and seeing each other once and awhile, we’re basically an extended family.”
The two have been working together on Overy’s art for a number of years, with Engles helping out, hanging shows and giving feedback on Overy’s latest works, as well as working his booth at the farmer’s market or the Christmas craft fair.
It wasn’t until Engles met Vicente that he began working on his own art.
Reflecting on it, Overy credited Vicente for cultivating that creativity in Engles. “You guys together are the best of both worlds,” he said.
The creative duo is a dream team. Engles is full of ideas and enthusiasm and Vicente has the know-how, as well as the perfectionism, to bring those creations to life.
For this show—Vicente and Engles’ first and Overy’s fifth at the museum—the trio have collaborated, taking inspiration from each other’s work.
For instance, Overy created a design that was inspired by Vicente and Engles’ mountains and that design was later turned into a fabric and sewn into pillows by Vicente and Engles.
“I feel like that fabric is like the marrying of the two sides,” said Vicente. “It’s Tristan’s depiction and our character and then we’re sewing it into other things.”
As well as pillows, Vicente and Engles will also share some of their plush monsters. The creatures are all made of colourful fabrics in a variety of different shapes, some with pointy ears, others with big bushy hair, some with one eye and others with four.
Alongside their work, Overy will have a number of canvasses, wooden cutouts and some furniture, all with his signature characters on them—although, he said those characters have evolved since his last exhibit in 2013.
“You’re definitely going to know it’s me when you see them, but I always try to move on from the last show and do something with a twist.”
One of those twists is the introduction of furniture, a brand new medium for Overy. He said he’s been getting bored of making t-shirts and has always dreamed of becoming a furniture designer, so it just made sense to put his art on a set of drawers.
“It’s all about where I can put my images and that’s where I’d like to take it, to be a bit more permanent,” he said. “I obviously like living around my things and this adds another dimension to what I can do.”
To see how the trio has interpreted each other’s designs and built on them, check out Mountains and Stuff with Canvass and Fluff on April 10. There will be a wine and cheese gala from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Jasper Yellowhead-Museum and Archives.
The show will remain on the walls at the museum until April 27.
Nicole Veerman
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