La Galleria showcasing local artists at Whoop-Up Days

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 24, 2022.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Bonnie Mayer looks at some of the work she is exhibiting in La Galleria, a curated art space that is part of Whoop-Up Days at Exhibition Park this week.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Bonnie Mayer took up the art of painting two years ago and now she’s getting her exhibition brush wet by displaying her work publicly for only the second time.

Mayer is one of several artists who are displaying and selling their work in La Galleria inside the pavilion at the Lethbridge Exhibition.

The curated exhibition space is a first for Whoop-Up Days as the Lethbridge and District Exhibition celebrates its 125th anniversary.

Whoop-Up Days opened Tuesday and within minutes of gates opening at Exhibition Park, a strong crowd had spilled onto the midway area.

Artists were invited to submit works for La Galleria, an open spacious area which also includes a buskers stage and other attractions.

Mayer, who made a submission to the exhibit after being told by a friend she should, feels La Galleria “is a spectacular idea.”

The Lethbridge artist said Tuesday the experience is “really intimidating. I’m a little nervous. There is a lot of really great art here, it’s very very beautiful,” said Mayer.

“It’s worked out pretty good so far. People are looking at it and liking it,” added Mayer.

Mayer started painting because “there was nothing else to do,” she laughed.

The artist uses acrylics and different things to build texture, she said of her art which she describes as abstract.

Elaine Henderson, who moved to Lethbridge four-and-a-half years ago from Dawson City in the Yukon, was getting her inaugural Whoop-Up Days experience on Tuesday.

She spent 25 years in the North raising three kids on her own. And now she’s finally getting the chance to focus on art.

“Up there, I was so busy as a contractor plus a full-time job and mother so I never had the time. So now I have the time and I’m really enjoying it.”

Henderson works with watercolours and oil but chose mainly watercolours to showcase at La Galleria because she has so many of them.

Like other artists, she thought the idea of La Galleria was a good one for Whoop-Up Days.

Calgary-based artist Maggie Warkentin, mom of Exhibition CEO Mike, said she was happy to hear about the gallery concept.

“This is fantastic. I was recently an artist at the Stampede but there’s not a lot in southern Alberta for this sort of thing so it’s great. I hope people are interested in it enough for it to be held again,” said Warkentin.

Roger Metz, a city artist who works with digital photoshop, said La Galleria is a good idea for people to see the work local artists are doing.

A lot of Metz’ work at the exhibition is recent, much of it done in the last year while he’s been involved shamanism training in Mexico.

“So a lot of the images are coming from the ceremonies” and visions he gets, Metz said.

He goes into a trance state and then draws his works. Sometimes he works with people psychically and picks up feelings “and I just start drawing. I don’t know what’s going to come up, he said.

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