Stacey & Steve Huculiak are pleased to announce the opening of Warehouse Gallery @ 1292 Ellis Street in Kelowna B.C. As Kelownas’ newest gallery Steve & Stacey aspire to have a pivotal role in supporting emerging, mid-career, and established Okanagan artists by sharing their work with you, the viewers and collectors.

Warehouse Gallery has created a progressive business model that allows the artist’s represented in the gallery to have a greater role in how the gallery operates. The whole group and not just the owners make the decisions such as; events, marketing and which new artists join the gallery. The result is a very fluid business and moves in step with the greater arts context and community.

Warehouse Gallery will have monthy shows and openings featuring local talent. Stacey who previously owned and operated Tweaked and Yummy Vintage Apparel (at the same location) established a strong place in the local arts and cultural district of Kelowna and garnered favour through hosting memorable and varied shows. Building on that momentum, please join us January 17, 2013 @ 6pm – 8pm for the next opening for artists Wendy Porter and Liz Dumontet.

Liz Dumontet was born in Penticton British Columbia and was raised in Kelowna British Columbia. She graduated from Kelowna Secondary School in 2008 with a french immersion dogwood, and graduated in 2012 with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Liz Dumontet and Dylan Ranney co-own Tandem Studios, an artist studio dedicated to their collaborative art practice. It is through Tandem Studios that they paint murals in the Okanagan. From Tandem Studios, they hope to also produce animation, sculpture, books, illustration, and computer design work. From 2011-2012, Tandem Studios has produced seven large-scale murals, six of which are outdoors. From her solo body of work, Liz has worked in portrait painting, abstract painting, animation, video, installation, and illustration. In 2010-2011, Liz Dumontet worked in 3D game design, and in 2012, was teaching beginner art lessons for children and adults alike. Liz is currently working on her sixth painting series and illustrating a children’s book. With a few solo projects on the horizon and many prospective projects for Tandem Studios, she is quickly building up a repertoire of work and has a portfolio to show for it. For cv and visuals of Liz Dumontet’s work, visit her website: lizdumontet.com Tandem Studios Website: tandemstudios.weebly.com

Wendy Porter, an established Okanagan artist, has also just joined Warehouse Gallery. Wendy has been painting for over thirty years and is known for her colourful beach and winter scenes within British Columbia. She was on the Board of Emily Carr College of Art & Design in Vancouver, BC for seven years, has taught art classes through the Kelowna Art Gallery, and been on the Acquisition Committee for the Gallery. Wendy is a storyteller, recording “our time”, through paint on canvas. Wendy has been involved in many individual and group exhibitions within public and private galleries, and her work is part of many local and international public & private collections. She is renowned for a summer painting series for the Hotel Eldorado, a winter series for Silver Star Mountain Ski Resort, and a Swiftsure Sailing Race series in Victoria.  Wendy’s work is presently exhibiting through the Whistler Arts Council’s Millenium Place Scotia Creek Gallery in Whistler, BC. This January, the Warehouse Gallery in Kelowna will feature her latest winter series inspired while Whistler was preparing to host the Winter Olympics. The work expresses our Canadian engagement with winter and all its beauty. More information on Wendy can be found on her website, www.wendyporterartist.com.

We would also like to remind you of our other artists: Natasha Harvey, Rena Warren, Wanda Lock, Oceana Phoenex, and Steve Huculiak.

Natasha Harvey is an artist and art educator. S he graduated from UBC Okanagan with a Bachelorʼs Degree in Fine Arts and from UBC Vancouver with a Bachelorʼs Degree in Education. Pushing paint with a brush, knife or hand is an experience that has always filled her life and always will. When Natasha was 5, her very English Grandmother handed her a paint brush. It was the best way to start a long love of painting. They would have tea and painting sessions in her garden where they explored realistic landscapes in oil and watercolour paint. From her, Natasha learned to represent the world around her realistically. Currently she is working with acrylic paint and collage. Her paintings are purely abstract, while her collage pieces use an existing image as a starting point. Both mediums breathe depending on how she’s feeling at the time. As she studies the visceral world of paint and surface in her education and life, she has discovered that the process of painting is as important as the completed work of art. The paint is given a voice. The energy of the medium expressed in drips and puddles, springs to life without the intervention of a brush or knife. As a result, her work is neither, controlled or contrived. In her mixed media works, collage is a key element. Natasha feels that the use of an existing image allows her to build upon and change itʼs meaning or context completely. The image can dictate the feel or theme of the painting; however, she also searches for images that will complete the visual and contextual puzzle. Her love of “retro irony” is evident through out her work. By this, she means her innate love of the 1960ʼs combined with a contemporary aesthetic and context. The inspiration flows from, daily life, nature, popular culture, fantasy, billboards and a variety of current interests and experiences.

Wanda Lock is an Okanagan artist who, according to her significant others, watches too many coming of age movies. She is also known to play Pearl Jam and some Stone Temple Pilots while working in her studio. She is not sure what her fondness of grunge music and teenage angst movies have in common with her current body of work but she is convinced that all will become clear in good time.
Wanda’s new work has taken on a documentary role, using the people and events in her community as subject. An interaction at the cafe, a conversation at the soccer field, a quick hello in a parking lot are taken back to the studio and used as a premise for a new work.
“My drawings are not about me, my drawings are about you. I draw every day, almost obsessively. And chances are, if you and I meet, however briefly, I will make a drawing about it”.

Wanda’s work can be found in numerous public and private collections across Canada and is represented by Elevation Gallery in Canmore, Alberta, The Front Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta and locally through Headbones Gallery in Vernon, www.headbonesgallery.com and online through the Gallery Project www.gallery-project.com.

Steve is a mid career Canadian contemporary artist living in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Steve Huculiak’s artistic development has followed a different path — evolving as a painter over a thirty-year career as an architectural designer. As a designer, Huculiak’s work focuses on visualizing architectural environments for others to construct. As a painter, Steve takes an uncompromising command of both the vision and the physical realization of his work. His numerous oil and water colour paintings have sold in galleries throughout the Okanagan. This recent series of paintings are the largest in size and collection and best reflects Steve’s current artistic direction. The works belong to the latest series entitled Where people want be – exotic & rustic. The SoundWave Fire paintings are created from images collected of fires built by the artist. Steve’s modern technique — achieved through disciplined composition and colour — foregrounds the overlooked traces of human activity in subtle symmetry with movement present in nature. A type of poetic realism supports his stylized representational work with visible brush strokes. Steve previously served as board president of Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna.