Imagination having run wild will be on display during the upcoming 24th Annual WAVE Interlake Artists’ Studio Tour.
Every summer and fall, WAVE member artists in communities such as Matlock, Winnipeg Beach, Gimli, and Arborg open their studio doors and art caves to the public and share their innermost artistic thoughts, inspirational ideas and techniques.
Mediums on display include paint, jewellery, sculpture, clay, wood, photography, metal and paper.
Visitors can conduct their own tour of different studios to discover and unique arts and cultural expressions inherent in the region, as well as purchase art.
One of the artists about to reveal his artistic secrets is Arborg-based Jerry Maryniuk.
“This year’s Wave’s theme is ‘Imagine,’” said Maryniuk, whose formal artistic training and work as a Winnipeg Police forensic artist (now retired) is borne out in painting, sculpting, cartoons and book-writing. “With this in mind, I created a number of pieces from old cattle bones, gourds, wood, rock and clay.”
Maryniuk pays tribute to nature in some of his art, and he’ll have on display an owl he sculpted from the vertebrae of beef cattle. He said there will “many more such surprises” at his studio, as well as at other artists’ studio.
Maryniuk is probably best known for his thunder gourds, which people love. He grows the gourds himself and turns them into art. He’ll have those on display at his studio. He’ll also showcase forensic art – skeletal remains reconstruction which Maryniuk did as a police officer and which “most people find very interesting.”
Visitors to his Arborg studio can also see the evolution of his work on a new cartoon called The Rusty Years.
“These new cartoons will appear in my next book, which is well on its way to being completed. It’s about old people laughing at getting old rather than crying about it,” said Maryniuk, who likes to instill humour in much of his art.
Visitors will have a chance to weigh in on future art pieces Maryniuk will be creating.
Maryniuk is a co-founder of the Winnipeg Police Service retired members’ PTSD peer support group – which in addition to police officers has fire, paramedics, miliary and corrections personnel and civilian staff in the group – and he’ll have art such as worry stones at his studio.
“Worry stones are a tool for people with anxiety and other PTSD-related symptoms. The worry stones were collected by me and my wife on the shores of Lake Winnipeg,” he said.
Maryniuk will be teaming up later this summer with artist Georgina Ball and the Arborg-based Creative Cocoon to host an art show in Arborg on Aug. 8 and 9.
The summer WAVE tour is scheduled for June 7 and 8.
For information about the 16 artists in the show and directions to their studios, visit www.watchthewave.ca
