Antonio Miguel Opening.

Opening Reception, January 21, 2012, 7:00 pm - 9:00 Pm Bowman Art Centre's Oak Showcases.

Antonio Miguel was born in Nogales, Sonora, near the Mexican/US border. He was raised in Mexico City and was exposed to art from an early age; his middle class family had an appreciation of music and literature. As a child, Antonio Miguel sought the company of his older cousin, a very talented musician, writer, and painter, who would become a renowned journalist later in his life.

Given the traditions of that time, Antonio Miguel followed the formal education that would allow him to obtain a professional title and a job. He was thus diverted from the arts, his true passion and talent. He joined the science faculty and chose to study physics, one of the few topics that he didn’t mind that was also accepted by his family. Life, however, always ironic and sometimes incomprehensible, took him on a different road.

It was 1963, that fate led him to take a role as an actor in a university play. Soon after, he saw himself involved in the classical plays of Shakespeare and Voltaire. The early success of these performances took him away from the study of physics and math.

He tired had to divide his time and attention into both careers. Before he could finish his university career, however, something happened that would change his life forever. He was called to play a role in a famous soap opera (“Mama Campanita”) produced by Televisa, the largest television network in Mexico. This would be the first TV novella of more than 40 that he would participate in during his career. He also performed in numerous other TV and radio shows, movies, and theatre productions.

More recently, Antonio Miguel has gone back to some of his early passions: painting and ‘pirografia’ (pyrography) – the ancestral art of engraving wood using fire. This ‘therapeutic work,’ as he calls it, has led him to several gatherings among friends in which he has shown the results of his ‘therapies.’

Now living with his lovely wife in the beautiful colonial city of Morelia (Mexico), he makes frequent trips to Canada to visit his two daughters, who have made Lethbridge their home. As a semi-retired actor, he enjoys a fulfilling life, writing short stories, painting, and using pyrography to illustrate the fruit of his reflections.

"Oldman River Coulee" by Julie Duschenes.

January 21 through February 25, 2012, Bowman Arts Centre Main Gallery.
Julie Duschenes' work is inspired by the Oldman River coulees and surrounding landscape.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 21, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm.

The work in this exhibition is from an extended body of work made in response to the overpowering impression made on me by the coulees at first sight and continuing to this day.

I first visited Lethbridge in 1988 to present two slide lectures at the University of Lethbridge and, after that visit, kept coming back to work. The earliest coulee work in this exhibition was painted in 1993, shortly before I moved to Lethbridge from Vancouver and, over more than two decades, I have continued my attempts to re-embody the coulee.

I find that my most powerful and enduring experiences of the coulee are apprehended in seeing and hearing, and the images I have made are attempts to transcribe this non-verbal knowledge. To this end, I have made images in drawing and printing media, watercolour, acrylic and oil painting and present some of these to you, here.

"Covers" by Chad Patterson

Don't miss Chad Patterson's "Covers," re-interpretations of well known album covers.
January 21 - February 25, 2012.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 21, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm, Bowman Arts Centre Music Room Gallery.

Covers consists of oil paintings that I have produced depicting album cover art. I paint a representation of each album cover while listening to the album. Sometimes the painting is done first, sometimes the album is done first, but when the album is done the painting is done, that's the rule. The resulting paintings are painterly and expressive; thick impasto stabs of tactility and impression left as emotional responses to music and memory. The resulting catalogue unfolds like the snapshots of a photo album, emotional keepsakes that instantly transport us to a specific time and place, not unlike a song, an album, or that album's cover.