July 1st Gala

The Summer Lights show 2011 is AWESOME. Featuring Peter Pierobon, Brent Comber, Judson Beaumont, Michael Dennis, Ken Guenter and Ron Crawford, it is unlike any other show anywhere! Come and see.

The gallery is open daily throughout July and August: 10 am - 5 pm and the Night Gallery is open 5 nights a week - Thursday - Monday from 9 to 11 pm throughout July and August.

The Sentinels

These past days have seen local events of considerable magnitude (ie. game 7 and ensuing riots) but nothing has been as thrilling as the installation of Brent Comber’s new landscape art -- 'The Sentinels' -- at the Duthie Gallery on Salt Spring Island. It is, in the true sense of the word, awesome.

The 9 'Sentinels' stand 9’ high in a circle 18’ in diameter. Carved maple slabs, shaped and polished and tinted flesh tones for the soft inside and blue-veined on the burly outside, they are conceived as a circle of elders, guards, sentinels, circling protectively and leaning forward, to counsel, to warn, to tell their collective generational stories. Abstractly human, each individual distinct; they exhibit the marks and rings of their long growth and great age.

The colours, hues and shadings of 'The Sentinels' change constantly in the changing daylight. At night, at the Night Gallery, they are illuminated and become a brilliant visual and sensual experience in the dark; they loom more closely (and dramatically) inwards, the darkness looms outside of the circle, the colours glint and the shadows shift; they form a tighter circle, a perfect place to listen to the stories these old figures tell. The precisely ordered arrangement of the figures in the circle creates an audio phenomenon, an echo in the centre as in a dome. ‘The Sentinels’ conjures an exhilarating and profound experience of mystery and power. (Brent Comber: The Sentinels - $125,000)

Summer Lights 2011
at the Duthie Gallery

Opening Gala July 1 at 9 - midnight.

Come and experience Summer Lights in the summer nights:
Lighten up at the Night Gallery

The Night Gallery is open 9 - 11pm. Thursday to Monday
Gallery open daily 10 - 5

July & August

NIGHT GALLERY

Come to the gala opening - July 1st , after dark, 9 - 11pm

Summer Lights

The newly renamed DUTHIE GALLERY is preparing a show of special magnificence for this summer. Lighting up July 1st , after dark, the new Summer Lights show at the NIGHT GALLERY is dazzling and the rare experience of illuminated art in nature, in the DARK -- is delightful. This year the show features:
an elegant medley of Peter Pierobon lanterns (Illuminati), a monumental new landscape installation by Brent Comber (The Sentinels), and lots of fabulous and original light creations by Judson Beaumont (& his crew at Straight Line Design) and Camosun master craftsman, Ken Guenter.

The most noticeable change at the gallery is the expansion of the outdoor exhibits and the creation of the NIGHT GALLERY. Landscape art has become the consuming passion at the Duthie Gallery; inspired by sculpture parks from Storm King in New York, Fondation Maeght in St. Paul de Vence, France, Fundación Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo in Vejer de la Frontera, Spain, and by the numerous displays of public art from Regents Park Frieze show to Vancouver’s Biennale. In the past several years the outdoor exhibition has spread over approximately 7 acres including the 2 acres around the gallery where the Summer Lights show takes place and in the nearby Hastings House and Harbour House fields where Michael Dennis' monumental figures loom. Art in nature enhances nature and is itself enhanced by it.



The name change also signifies a shift in focus at the gallery from old style fine furniture to the dynamic and sophisticated Vancouver studio furniture movement which is distinguished by original design, distinctive styles and innovative use of materials. And, now freed from our former designation (Salt Spring Woodworks), we have expanded the collection to include work in other materials: beautiful bronzes by Michael Dennis, stately stone benches by Ron Crawford and Terry Bieman, stunning glass and wood designer furniture by Jess and Nicolas Meyers and Sabina Hill and woodblock prints by Richard Tetrault.

The first Summer Lights show in 2010 was a hit. Visitors came again and again, hung around for a long time, brought their friends, bought art. Brent Comber’s Shattered Spheres were hot. This year the Night Gallery will be open 5 nights a week, 9 - 11 PM --Thursday through Monday nights throughout July and August, for enhanced nighttime viewing of the Summer Lights 2011 show.