Kelowna Art Gallery
(Catalogue cover and exhibition piece)

NEXUS Histories and Communities: An exhibition of works from the permanent collection of the Kelowna Art Gallery in celebration of the Gallery’s 30th anniversary. The history of Kelowna is inextricably linked to the orchard industry that formed the backbone of the Okanagan valley’s agriculturally-based economy for many decades. The works of art in this section all portray the fruit orchards, using varying approaches and media.

In the section OUT IN THE ORCHARDS, local artists Mary Smith McCulloch, Mary Bull, Jan Crawford and Jamie Evrard all interpret their long-term relationship with the Okanagan culture and the orchard landscape. Jan Crawford is the first artist in this section to depart from a purely pictoral approach in her series of Monoprints (the Packing House Series) from 2001 that have both visual quotations of beautiful vintage fruit crate labels, and her own drawn and painted images interpreted from old photographs of the fruit workers on the job: picking loading wrapping, and packing fruit.