Anything of quality has a story, be it a set of old luggage, recipes or a film camera. And what the next generation does with these heirlooms says a lot about the value system that's passed down.
Lori Motokado has many keepsakes, and several she's photographed and captured in watercolour as part of her new series, titled Possessions, now on display at Coquitlam's Place des Arts.
Her 10 pieces in the Mezzanine Gallery serve as a reminder about objects bought today versus items built years ago that were meant to last. "You just don't see a lot of quality anymore," she said. "Things are replaced so fast. There's so much consumerism. It's like, 'He who has the most toys, wins.'
"We have become a disposable society," she said.
In her art, she examines a 1940s fire truck she found in a museum in Rock Creek, a former gold and silver boomtown in southern B.C.
"It was shiny and red and beautiful," Motokado remembered. "You just know the firefighters back then spent hours polishing it. They must of loved it and I'm glad it was passed for the scrap heap."
There's also her Singer sewing machine "that still runs like the day it came off the floor 70 years ago. It's a bit dusty but the oval tube light works."
The SFU history major, who has been painting since she was nine, yearns for the meaning behind the valuables she paints, saying, "I believe things are handed down for a reason."
By contrast, Daryl Spencer doesn't search out the story with the landscapes he photographs. Rather, he aims for visual appeal, seeking juxtaposition and beauty in the details that nature offers.
Take, for example, one of his 31 pictures he's showing in Place des Arts' Leonore Peyton Salon, titled Looking for Water. He was on vacation in Arizona, photographing slot canyons for most of the day with his Canon EOS 5D Mark II when, while leaving, he found a plant sprouting from a dry patch; it was surrounded by interesting patterns.
"I just couldn't resist," the avid outdoorsman said. "Sometimes, it's worth slowing down to take a look and see things that most people would walk right by."
In his black-and-white series, titled The Essential Landscape, Spencer also studies natural scenery from as far afield as the Arctic and Antarctica. There are also images of Utah, Whistler and Port Moody.
Typically, the electronics engineer researches weather and tide patterns before documenting digitally.
For his photo of pilings at the old mill site, near Old Orchard Park, "the pilings and the calmness of the water have a zen-like quality," he said. "Everything is in perfect balance."
But while Spencer sees through his lens on a micro scale, Mong Yen interprets his art on a macro level. This month, in the Atrium Gallery, he has 20 landscape paintings from his Quiet Path series done in watercolour and egg tempera - a difficult media that blends egg yolk and coloured pigment.
His piece called Crabbing took more than three months to complete; it has 20 layers. "People just don't have the time to do egg tempera," he said, "because it's a lot of work. They want to slap some paint on the canvas and get on to the next one.
"But I like the quality of egg tempera because it never fades. The idols in churches? That's egg tempera. The colours are same today as when they were painted centuries ago."
Yen, a Cambodian refugee who fled the Khmer Rouge in 1975, is self-taught and uses the work of American artist (and egg tempera painter) Andrew Wyeth for inspiration. Started in 2002, his Quiet Path series features many Metro Vancouver scenes, like Pitt Meadows, Ladner and Vancouver.
"I grew up in the countryside so I love nature," he said.
Being a full-time caregiver to his sons, aged eight and 12, however, gives him little time to ply his trade. Usually, he paints during the summer, when his boys are outside and the light is good. Then, he said, "painting is my meditation."
The three Place des Arts' exhibits run from Feb. 10 to March 5, with the opening reception tomorrow (Thursday) from 7 to 9 p.m.
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