 |
| A taste of some of the unique and interesting artwork by this artist on display for the month of January at the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre. |
Valerie Jean Palmer is featured as the January Artist 2016. With the new boreal forest exhibit showing in
the Main Gallery, her collection of mushroom spore prints is particularly
relevant. Val ventures out into the local boreal forest and surrounding fields
to source mushrooms for her spore prints. This is time sensitive process as the
spores drop their spores on to her paper anywhere from ten minutes to 36 hours
later. Val arranges the various mushrooms she has collected that day or night,
gills down, on to the paper to create her compositions. By gently laying a mushroom
face down the spores eventually leave an impression of the mushroom itself. Val works with the individualistic colours
that each mushroom lends to the paper and sometimes incorporates other natural
elements in the work, such as, grasses, leaves and flowers.
Her appreciation for natural world around her is obvious in
these and other works of art. When you drop by to view her featured works this
month, include a visit to the Main Gallery to view one of her drawings and a
poem about the boreal forest, as a part of the When a Tree Falls in the Forest
exhibit.
Born in England, Val emigrated to Canada in the late 1950s
and has made her home with her husband Don in the hills overlooking the Peace
River since 1977.
