The Pollinators

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Salmon Arm Art Gallery, "The Pollinators," 2022

Salmon Arm Art Gallery is pleased to present The Pollinators, an exhibition featuring 15 Shuswap artists and one community collaborative felted fibre sculpture. Everyone is welcome to the meet & greet from 11am to 1pm on April 30 to celebrate this beautiful exhibition and all of the contributing artists. 

Mini-conference on Thursday, June 16 from 11am to 4pm called People and Pollinators with a variety of speakers on this topic.

At 12pm, learn about pollinator highways, a combination of public art and landscaping that helps pollinators navigate their way through cities. At 1pm learn about pollinator-friendly flowers and shrubs that you can plant in your yard to attract, feed and offer nesting places for pollinators. At 2pm, the artists who created the “Pollinators in Action” community collaborative felted fibre sculpture will be speaking about that project. At 3pm, learn about Secwepemc knowledge around pollinators and their role in this region.

Coffee and biscotti will be served throughout the day, and everyone is welcome to come in and enjoy conversation about taking action to save the pollinators.

Pollinators play a key role in regulating ecosystem services supporting food production, habitats and natural resources. The volume of pollinator-dependent food crops has increased threefold over the last 50 years, making humans more dependent on pollination. Socially, pollinators are embedded in local cultures and traditions, giving inspiration to art, music, literature, technology and education. In recent decades, climate change and human activities have altered the range, abundance and seasonal activities of some wild pollinator species – bees, birds, bats and butterflies. Simultaneously, environmental pollution has degraded the natural habitats. Awareness and mitigation are the first steps toward addressing this issue, and the arts can provide a vehicle for this important message.

Director/Curator Tracey Kutschker has presented a number of exhibitions over the past few years that focus on the effects of climate change. From the declining songbird population to the photographic evidence of climate catastrophe, these exhibitions ask artists to answer a research question with their artwork. The result is a wide variety of responses, creating many ways for visitors to the gallery to understand the issues. 

Gallery-goers will be delighted to know that the much-loved Coffee Break and Artist Talk will return for this exhibition, featuring house-baker Miki Mann’s art-cookies on Thursday, May 19 at 2pm. The Artist Talk will be in the walkabout format with many of the exhibiting artists speaking about their work. There will also be pollinator-friendly flowers to give away. 

Watch for special Pollinator pop-up events throughout the exhibition. The Art Gallery is grateful to Tech-Crete Processors Ltd. for their generous sponsorship of this exhibition.