Lucky Flin Flon, Creighton and Denare Beach residents have wonderful arts and culture experiences to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.
Do you remember when we essentially pulled down the blinds on such events after the musical wrapped and we didn’t get up and running again till October? It doesn’t seem all that long ago and yet it feels like a hundred years!
We don’t have that problem any more.
On June 1, the NorVA Centre is presenting “NorVA Art at Night” from 7 to 11 p.m. They will offer drinks and hors d’oeuvres alongside demonstrations by local experts of a wide variety of arts techniques in many media. They promise painting demos, of course, and live chainsaw wood carving. Sounds loud and scary, but so interesting. You can talk to the artists, try an art form you have admired or, in the tried and true format of the great Peter Sellers, just watch.
The current exhibit showing a duo of Manitoba artists will still be available for your viewing pleasure. Displacement by Karen Cornelius & Peter Tittenberger features two media, sculpture and printmaking. There are 15 works. The Manitoba Arts Network describes the exhibit like this:
“This exhibition provides two reflections on childhood histories of displacement and the plights of displaced peoples. It is based on becoming unwanted due to political, economic, social, cultural or religious change. The exhibition also probes what migrants physically carry when forced to leave home. The emotional and spiritual baggage refugees bring with them in body such as memory, familiarity, cultural identity, grief, sadness and loss.”
It sounds like a truly extraordinary evening and we wish we could enjoy, but we will be in Winnipeg helping choose the acts performing in the Manitoba Arts Network Conference and Showcase in October. The conference will be in Morden and has the same 15-act format of entertainers on display for the arts councils of the province to choose from for their 2020-2021 seasons. There are applicants from all over the country, so wish us luck and good choices.
Also on June 1, Black Swan, a new band with familiar performers, will tear the roof off (figuratively, I think) the Wooley Bully Pub in Denare Beach. For one night and one night only, Jenn McLean will front Mark Kolt on keyboards, Dean Martin on drums, Mark Matejka on bass and Marc Provencher on lead guitar. McLean’s vocal style is bluesy and raw, and she always manages to choose tunes that surprise. The musicians are brilliant, so this will be a good evening for the rock and rollers among us with a few nods to the emo crowd and perhaps some straight ahead blues thrown in. No cover charge is indicated, but you can be sure drinks will be available. Drive responsibly.
On June 2, Flin Flon flutist Mikylo Odut, who has come home for the summer from his university studies in Ottawa, will present a concert entitled “Etudes on the Lake” at the beautiful Bakers Narrows Lodge clubhouse. Odut states, “Etudes, or studies, are pieces of music meant to help master a specific skill or challenge for the instrument. Many etudes featured showcase fast technique, rapid register changes, extreme articulations, and rhythmic complexity.”
It will truly be a day of “flute acrobatics.” The concert will be presented twice, at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets are available at Northern Rainbow’s End for $20 for adults, $10 for youth and $5 for children. If you wait to purchase at the door, the prices go up to $25, $12 and $6.
You know what to do.
