Kelly, Carl Stevenson look back at Blyth Festival Art Gallery season, look ahead to 2025

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Now that the final professional show has closed for the season and unsold art has all been returned to its creators, with sold art finding new homes on new walls, Carl and Kelly Stevenson took a morning to reflect on what was another successful season for the Blyth Festival Art Gallery.

 

Carl is the president of the gallery committee and Kelly leads the exhibition committee, while also serving as the curator of the season’s final show, “Anything But Hysterical”, in addition to being one of its artists. They both felt the 2024 installment - including Greg Sherwood’s “Over my Head and Under my Feet”, Tony Miller’s “Descendants” and the aforementioned “Anything But Hysterical”, which featured art from nearly 20 female-identifying artists - was strong and that each show told a story and that, in a way, the three shows told a story when viewed as a trio within the storied gallery.

 

And that’s by design. Both Stevensons say that finding art that tells a story is what they’re after when selecting shows for the Blyth Festival Art Gallery. After all, it only makes sense for a gallery that shares Memorial Hall with the Blyth Festival, one of the foremost purveyors of Canadian stories in the country. 

 

Sherwood’s landscapes told the story of Huron County’s land and its skies, the bedrock of agriculture and the natural beauty with which Huron County is blessed. Miller’s pieces told the story of growing up Black in rural Ontario, grappling with that identity and understanding those who came before him, and yet, viewing those stories, many of which were tragic, through a positive lens; Miller chose to focus on the strength and courage of those who faced adversary, rather than the adversary itself.
Then, with “Anything But Hysterical”, Kelly said she was openly challenging audiences to engage with art created by women in a different way and aiming to start a somewhat difficult conversation about some of the more challenging aspects of being a woman in Huron County and beyond. 

 

So, in a way, the beauty of Sherwood’s landscapes was the perfect jumping-off point, seeing it get stripped away, to a certain degree, show by show as the season progressed. Of course, Kelly says, that doesn’t mean that one type of art is better or more important than another, but that art should often aspire to more than just looking good on a wall, which returns her to the aspect of storytelling through art.

 

Kelly also saw it as a path from the familiar to the unfamiliar. With Sherwood’s show, there were the Huron County landscapes with which many people are familiar - they see them every day, they are comfortable and they are at home at Memorial Hall, where Sherwood has a mural welcoming patrons to shows in the upper hall. That’s not to say that his art doesn’t tell a story, of course, Carl says. There is a tale in every one of Sherwood’s paintings.

 

From there, Miller’s art told the story of being Black in rural Ontario at a time when there weren’t many Black families in the area. Furthermore, Kelly says, the area still isn’t as diverse as other areas of the province, so the comfort of the first show began to be disrupted to an extent with Miller’s show.

 

Then, with “Anything But Hysterical”, gallery-goers were challenged with notions that aren’t often discussed openly in many circles in Huron County. And, further to that point, even the show itself pushed artists out of their comfort zones, with many using the show as an opportunity to apply their artistic prowess to a new medium, trying something new for the sake of moving away from the comfortable.

 

The step from one show to the other is also a source of pride for both Kelly and Carl, as they both reflected upon the diversity of the artists featured this season and the vastly different works of art they brought to the gallery, all while finding a way to make it fit into the space and make sense in a community like Blyth.

 

In addition to the shows themselves, which includes the annual Student and Community Shows that began the season, both are proud of their continued efforts to branch out further into the community and reiterate that the art gallery is a space for everyone and that no age, race, gender or level of scholarship is needed for a member of the community to find a place in the gallery or for them to find themselves reflected in the work presented in the gallery. The “Poetry in the Gallery” series marked its second year in 2024, representing expansion from visual art to more of a performing art, while the “Chalk Around the Block” event brought together some of the community’s youngest artists to make their mark on the streets of Blyth.

 

Events like “Chalk Around the Block” specifically, Kelly says, may seem inconsequential on the surface, but they are essential to engaging with the young people of the area and introducing them to the gallery as a fun, safe place in which they are free to be themselves. Art as a stuffy, privileged exercise in which only those highly educated in art theory can participate is not what the gallery wants to be, Kelly says, nor is it what it has been in recent years.

 

It’s on that note that Kelly, Carl and the committee hope to continue to expand the offerings of the gallery, perhaps including outdoor art sessions, guided tours with artists and curators and more performance art (while being careful not to cross paths with what the Festival is doing in its seasons), raising the profile of the gallery with artists and community members alike.
As for the main business of the gallery in the season that lies ahead, the Stevensons said that no formal announcement could yet be made, but that the exhibition committee was close to confirming its three professional shows and that news about them would come in due time.