Open Studio Workshops

Summer Residency
Chris Dufour

Open Studio Workshops: July 13, July 20, and August 10, 2024, from 1:00 – 4:00 PM *updated*
WKRAC Culture Tour: August 10 + 11, 2024, from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Closing Event: August 17, 2024, at 1:00 PM
Admission is free. No registration required.

Artist-in-residence, Chris Dufour, is offering three contemporary art open studio events at Oxygen Art Centre on Saturday July 13, July 20, and August 10, 2024, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. All events are free to attend.

Participants can expect to engage with the artist and their material practice. Each event will explore a different medium, including: phytograms, cyanotypes, charcoal and ochre screen printing, and likely some gathering, snacking, and discussing! Flexible in structure, folks are encouraged to come to as many or as little as you’d like.

Chris Dufour shares this background concept to the overarching residency project:

Throughout the residency I’m focusing on the site of the cutblock to explore the quality of relationships that get built when we engage materially with altered ecological sites, especially those that are purposefully hidden out of sight. After spending 10 years in the forestry industry and on cutblocks where profits and lumber demands have driven extraction, the ecological impacts feel inadmissible and has left me a little lost in the global realities of climate crisis, class and labour, and indigenous land theft. While witnessing large forestry operations in the North in what seems like a post-apocalyptic landscape now, it is not lost on me that there has been endless work from community stewards and indigenous communities in forestry to change the industrial standards. My hope with the residency is to explore through practices of witnessing and material practices what it might mean to build relationships with these ecologies, explore the nuances, and gather experiences together within it. As I work through this, I want to invite folks into these explorations too through the open studios.

To close the events and residency period, the public are invited to join a final event on Saturday, August 17, 2024. More details to follow.

This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Regional District of Central Kootenay ReDi program, and Columbia Power. Learn about the artist and the project, here.