The big art date is coming. You can pretendium it away.
Pretendium is a one-day-only special event art show. It will have wine from the cash bar, music from Britt AM (Britt Meierhofer), and the creative bursts from the region's oddest corners of the artistic mind.
This exhibit has more than 50 artists and many of them have more than one piece on display. It caught the imagination of the area's creators because curator Christina Watts asked for their kookiest.
It's an exhibit "featuring art with a twist, a flare for the unexpected, bold ideas, the funny, the quirky and the magical. Each piece is accompanied by a fascinating back-story of 100 words or less," said Watts, who is a celebrated artist herself, with a streak of visual wit sometimes in her own paintings.
Watts is also the proprietor of Ridge Side Art, the resident art shop within Groop Gallery on Third Avenue near George Street. Also within those walls is Philomena Hughes's commercial photo studio.
All three entities are involved in organizing and displaying the Pretendium repertoire.
"The word Pretendium came up as I was leading a class for the Artists' Workshop and the task was to use wordplay to inspire art play," said Watts.
"We were fusing parts of words together, and I got Pretendium. I liked it a lot. I said it a lot. I decided to keep it."
The word conjured impossibilities, the surreal, the extraordinary so Watts asked artists to show her their visual versions of that. She anticipated bashfulness and sensitivity around serious artists' innermost expressions of quirk. Instead she got a flood. The artists of the city spotted the fun. For abstract and surrealist artists, this was a chance to shine, and for realist artists it was a chance to let their wild side show.
"It's playful, some of it is dark, it all seems to come out as expressions of a deeper place in the mind we all go to sometimes, but don't often talk about," said Watts. "We see a lot of realism in art. It's the main thing you'll find in galleries, but we all have that part of us that wants to dream, let the mind wander, think odd thoughts."
This is also a combined effort with the Ridge Side Art/Groop Gallery neighbour across the alley.
When Pretendiuim happens on Saturday from 6-9 p.m., there will also be a music and visual arts event at the Neighbourhood Time Exchange space (the arts initiative of Emily Carr University and Downtown Prince George) starting at 7 p.m. Artist Frances Gobbi will be in their spotlight.
"There will be a lot of fun and a lot of art in our two places," said Watts.
To get into Pretendium, tickets are $5 on sale in advance at the Ridge Side Art front desk, at Studio 2880, or online at their website, www.ridgesideart.com.
