Looking Back:
Expressions of History
This community exhibit aims to showcase the artistic interpretation of personal or historical moments in connection to Coquitlam by its community as part of our 40th anniversary celebration. This multidisciplinary exhibit explores themes of nostalgia, memory, personal history and local connections.
Orian Alexis
ABOUT
“I began drawing and painting in my childhood. My mom says I was always drawing when I was little, it helped keep me from getting bored. As I went through highschool I took art classes and maintained a sketchbook until I started university. Things got busy and I moved away to study and stopped making art for several years. Eventually I was bitten by the photo bug and bought myself a camera to take travelling. I would take my cameras with me everywhere, always looking for a great shot. After some time I fell in love with night photography, and would spend hours prowling the industrial areas, and downtown urban areas of Vancouver until the early hours of the morning.”
Mackin House
Pegah Ahmadi
Inspiration Garden
A Stroll Around Lafarge Lake
Lights at Lafarge
Jonathan Desmond
ABOUT
“I’m Jonathan Desmond of Jonathan Desmond Photography and I specialize in a unique documentary approach to my photographic work. I have been working on Vancouver’s Chinatown but have various other projects in the go and take on the occasional commission for specialized documentary weddings and family sessions as well. I’m a Certified Transport Canada Advanced Drone pilot but you’ll usually find me buzzing around with my little FPV drones usually. I am located in and around Vancouver, BC in Canada.”
Burke Mountain Snaking Road
Burke Mountain View
Cheryl Fortier-Campbell
ABOUT
The force behind Cheryl Fortier’s work comes from the raw yet gentle energy of the land and sea: at once peaceful and threatening, familiar and exotic. In the spaces between the experiences of the wild and the din of a city studio, a tension is manifest. In her studio Cheryl works to compress and magnify these tensions creating acrylic on canvas paintings that resonate with the power of nature. Cheryl’s paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and in France and she is represented in private collections in North America, France and the U.K. Deeply committed to making art a part of people’s lives, Cheryl teaches, acts as juror, mentor and has been involved in diverse community mural projects in hospitals, restaurants and public spaces. Cheryl spends summers in Southwest France where she is currently the Resident Director for The Virginia Center for Creative Arts at their facility in Auvillar. Her studio is in the Mergatroid Building in East Vancouver.
Unnamed Church Piece
Unnamed Train Station
Haley Perry
ABOUT
Haley Perry is a settler artist living on the traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people. They graduated from Emily Carr University of Art + Design with a bachelor’s degree in illustration, and are currently working as an art teacher in Burnaby. After graduation their artistic pursuits have included an array of gallery shows, editorial illustration work for magazine publications, art festivals and markets, private commissions, and a dedication to personal work. You can find Haley’s work across social media at: @carnivorousart and through their website at
Riverview Hospital - Time, Memory, and Objects
NADINE FLAGEL
ABOUT
Nadine Flagel is a self-taught fibre artist whose mission is making art out of “making do.” Her artistic practice centers on the reuse of worn clothing, most often in quilts and hooked rugs. At their core, rug hooking and quilting are labour-intensive acts pulling together elements that were not originally designed to be side by side into new juxtapositions of texture, colour, and form, generating new meanings. Flagel recently held her first two solo exhibitions in the Pacific Northwest. She publishes articles on art, teaches fibre art at Maiwa School of Textiles and community centres, has received grants to make art with youth, and has collaborated on a public art commission in Richmond, BC. She is a member of CARFAC and Craft Council of BC. A Vancouver settler, Flagel gratefully acknowledges that her life and work are made possible by the stewardship by the Skwxwú7mesh, səlilwətaɁɬ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm peoples of this unceded land.
The Family Requests Objects in Lieu of Memories, Please
ROSE KAPP
ABOUT
Rose Kapp, (aka Roszay), is an illustrator, cartoonist, and local art advocate residing in Coquitlam and active in the Tri-Cities of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. She is known for her whimsical and wonky watercolour paintings of homes and businesses which have led to projects of illustrated maps including festival site maps and municipal areas. Her goofy bird cartoons are posted on social media as Wednesday Smile Cartoons and have graced bookmarks, greeting cards and a cartoon booklet. Rose is a seasoned artist and is versed in different techniques and styles. She welcomes commissions and client projects. Rose is the founder of Creative People Talking, an artist’s salon and network on FaceBook for anyone in the local creative arts. She is also involved with Art Shuffle Port Moody, ArtsConnect (Tri-City arts umbrella society) and “Everybody Start Something” a Tri-City professional artists’ group.
CARL BAIRD
ABOUT
Carl Baird makes paintings, drawings, music performances and media art. By using popular themes such as sexuality, violence and urbanity. Baird focuses on the idea of 'public space' and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at a given moment: the non-privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting. His paintings often refer to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created. By emphasizing aesthetics, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exists to punctuate the human drama I order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.
His work sometimes radiates cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness , along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. In search of new methods to 'read the city' he touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognized, such as the relationship with popular culture and media, working with provocation and investigation of the process of expectation.
His works are often about contact with architecture and basic living elements, space and landscape are examined and sometimes developed on reclaimed boards from the urban environment. Carl Baird currently lives and works in Vancouver BC Canada.
Coquitlam Train Station by Carl Baird
LEE HARDING
Original Copy of Aerial Photograph of Colony Farm circa 1965 by Lee Harding
Kathleen Gros
On a Walk by Kathleen Gros
Na Zhou
Boys and Girls Working by Na Zhou
Wayne Wong
Marie Tan
Grand Opening Shop in Coquitlam by Marie Tan
Winston Wong
The Train by Winston Wong
Keith Lehman
Robyn Ratner
Heart of Coquitlam! by Robyn Ratner
Randy McCormick
John Wayne Fishing by Randy McCormick
Silhouette by Randy McCormick
Natalia Nova
John Wayne Fishing by Natalia Nova
Pamela Kellet
I Had No Idea by Pamela Kellet
Backstops and Big Dreams by Pamela Kellet
Como Lake Reeds by Pamela Kellet
Shamina Senaratne
Our Stories, So Many to Tell You That We Are Connected Also by Shamina Senaratne