"PEAK YEAR," October 1 to 31, 2011 SAGA Public Art Gallery, Salmon Arm

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"Salmon Spawning"

Lisa Figueroa, "Salmon Spawning," acrylic on canvas, 2011.

PEAK YEAR October 1 to 31, SAGA Public Art Gallery, Salmon Arm

BY: Janet Nicol

Steve Mennie will not be celebrating the unusually high volume of Adams River sockeye salmon that occurred in the autumn run of 2010. Instead, the Salmon Arm-based artist brings a warning to an installation he’s created in collaboration with artist Jen Dyck, part of the Peak Year exhibition at SAGA Public Art Gallery. “I’ve been painting the sockeye for years,” Mennie says. “I’ve lost faith in the power of images to move people.” He says this new work will feature frozen water, and involve the exaggerated sounds of melting ice and a visual of water dripping. “We want to depict the relentlessness of global warming,” Mennie says. “It’s changing everything. People are either blind to this or they’re incapable of dealing with it. The work is to remind us that nothing has changed, even though we have had this great salmon run.” Six other artists from the Shuswap/Thompson area, including Otto Pfannschmidt, Lisa Figueroa, Eric Kutschker, Lynn Erin, and Patrick Hughes will also bring unique interpretations of the salmon run to the exhibition, sponsored in part by the Adams River Salmon Society.