Thanks to Scott Hayes of the St. Albert Gazette for a fantastic article that was in Wednesday, October 21st, 2015 edition!! (See below)
Memory Roth is on the verge of her big début at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. The same place where you could see bands and ballet on the stage you can soon see one of St. Albert’s favourite painters with work on the walls up on the first balcony in a brand new exhibition space called the Alcove Gallery.
“It’s very, very exciting for me!” she exclaimed. “This is my first juried solo show.”
Local visual art enthusiasts will note that the performing arts centre has the Kaasa Gallery in its lower level. It’s a big space, she noted, so when she was approached a few years ago to gauge her interest in showing her work there, she balked at the scope.
“I just couldn’t do it. It was too overwhelming to me. I didn’t paint in series. I painted whatever I felt like painting.”
It was only when the facility decided to open its own Alcove Gallery to match the one at its southern counterpart that Roth figured the time was right. It’s still big, but it’s a smaller space, she continued.
“I can manage that. I just had to come up with a series.”
That she did, as she produced some very large and very beautiful flowers on canvas, hence the title of her exhibit: Flower Power. Perhaps she should have called it Desert Rose, considering her inspiration first blossomed in dusty Las Vegas.
Soon after she started her painting career, she and her husband had travelled to the gambling city and visited an art gallery.
“I saw this really large rose. I just fell in love with it. It was all in whites and creams. I thought to myself, ‘I want to paint one of those.’ From that day till 2014, I had been looking for my rose. Everywhere I went, I took pictures of roses. Pictures and pictures … but nothing really appealed to me.”
So she started painting other flowers. One day, with a canvas already primed and poised on her easel, she decided that one more visit to the St. Albert Botanic Park would set the right mood.
And that’s when she saw it: a magnificent rose off in the distance.
“There it was, this beautiful pink and yellow and orange rose. It had dewdrops and it was just gorgeous. I came home and thought, ‘That’s it. That is the rose.’”
That piece first got its moment in the public eye during the Night of Artists event back in March. It was so well received that she immediately set to work on completing the series.
Located in the public mingling space outside of the theatre proper, the exhibit is free and open to all.
Flower Power runs from Oct. 23 to Jan. 4. An opening reception takes place on Friday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The artist will be in attendance.
The exhibit will then travel down the QEII Highway to take up the Alcove Gallery in the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. That will be on display from March 15 to April 30.
The Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium is located at 11455 87 Ave. in Edmonton.
Written by Scott Hayes, St. Albert Gazette
http://www.stalbertgazette.com/article/Jubes-Alcove-full-of-Memorys-flowers-20151021
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