Press Release
“ Mythopoetics”
April 5-30, 2005
Lyghtesome Gallery
Antigonish, N.S.

Throughout the month of April, Lyghtesome Gallery is hosting an interdisciplinary art show entitled “Mythopoetics” featuring the varied work of four accomplished artists exploring story and archetype in painting, monoprint, pochoir, and assemblage. Participating artists are David Brewer from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Patricia Gaines from East Tracadie, Nova Scotia, Ron Milton from London, Ontario and Felicity Redgrave of Antigonish. The show runs from April 5 - 30, 2005 with a public reception at the gallery on Saturday, April 23, from 4-6pm, All are welcome.
David Brewer, an artist and United Church minister, began exhibiting with Lyghtesome ten years ago, while serving a parish in Margaree, Cape Breton and traveling to Antigonish as an active member of the Society of Antigonish Printmakers. David works primarily with archetypal symbols and designs from early Celtic culture and their Christian derivatives, in pen and ink, watercolour, woodcut and pochoir, the early paper stencil precursor to the serigraph print. Even the image of the crow, which figures prominently in Brewer's most recent work, has roots in Celtic mythology, and as the artist suggests, serves as a powerful contemporary symbol of wilderness, both environmental and spiritual. David Brewer exhibits throughout the Maritime Provinces and is currently teaching part time in the Fine Arts faculty at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
Patricia Ellisor Gaines is a maker of assemblages and a painter/sculptor. She is Southern by birth and Canadian by preference, making East Tracadie, N.S. her home. She has exhibited widely in the United States, in Canada and will be exhibiting in Argentina in January and February of 2006 at the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires. Best known for her clever and articulate “box” assemblages that combine found objects with paint, drawing and sculptural elements, Gaines addresses fundamental issues of the human condition, both psychological and cultural. In the four works submitted to the show, she examines the nature of idea and mythmaking and the relation of mind to the transcendent.
Ron Milton is a sculptor, painter, printmaker and teacher who lives and works in London, Ontario. He received a BFA from Mount Allison University and a B.ED. from the University of Western Ontario. He exhibits and lectures in galleries across Ontario and the Maritimes and teaches etching at the H.B. Beal Secondary School in Ontario. Animals, birds and fish, historical, religious and folktale references make their way into Milton's unusual layered and languaged works on paper, many of which are mixed media monoprints combining intaglio with drawing, script, stamps, gold leaf, and pages from books and manuscripts.
Felicity Redgrave, a native of Wales, is a distinguished member of the Nova Scotia arts community, with an extensive career as an artist and teacher, highlighted by major solo exhibitions in Halifax, Annapolis Royal, Charlottetown and Antigonish . Her “Images of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland” opened at Harbourfront in Toronto in 1977 and at the Art Gallery of N.S. in 1978. Her “Night/Spaces” exhibit opened at St. Mary's Univ. Art Gallery in 1984, with funding from one of two Canada Council grants she has been awarded. She is past Chair of Visual Arts Nova Scotia, past regional rep for CARFAC, past member of the Board of Directors, AGNS, and currently serves on the Board of the St.F.X. Univ. Art Gallery and is an active member of the regional arts council, GAPACC. She exhibited and taught art in Victoria, B.C. for several years, returning to settle in Antigonish and teach foundation drawing at St. Francis Xavier University from 1997-2004. Redgrave's work, over the years, has been continually informed and grounded by personal iconographic images, beginning with rock formations at Peggy's Cove, cycles of the moon in the night vision series, a sequence of goddess and temple narratives in silkscreen, acrylic and video, with a return to rock and earth memory paintings of Crystal Cliffs and recent female studies that refigure the goddess motif. Work in the show touches in on all of these investigations in a variety of mediums.
Myths are the personal and collective stories through which we try to understand the workings of the world and our experience. The word “mythopoeic” means of or pertaining to the making of myths, as well as causing, producing, or giving rise to a myth or myths. Mythopoetics is thus the playing out of the universal influence of the mythopoeic, prevalent in both the visual and the literary arts.

A literary feature of the “Mythopoetics” show is the introduction of limited edition handbound chapbooks by a small publisher in Saskatchewan known as JackPine Press. The mission of JackPine Press is ” to showcase literary and visual multidisciplinary collaborations in a published, chapter book format” and “ultimately to create hand made books that are as interesting as art objects as they are engaging works of literature.” Since their founding in December 2002, JackPine Press has published twelve chapbooks by Saskatchewan and Canadian writers and artists, including poet Anne Simpson from Antigonish, N.S.” The chapbook entitled “Mayfly” features poems by Anne Simpson and copies will be on display along with other titles by such well-known Canadian writers as Don McKay, Jan Zwicky and Tim Lilburn.
As a special event in conjunction with the Mythopoetics show, Anne Simpson will be holding a poetry workshop at Lyghtesome Gallery, on Saturday, April 23, from 2-4pm, to be followed by the reception for the show. Some exercises will involve interacting with the work in the show. Space is limited to 10 people interested in the writing of poetry and there will be a $10.00 fee, all of which is a donation to the Yancy Meyer Creative Writing Fund. Please pre-register by calling the gallery at 863-5804.
Anne Simpson is a well-known Antigonish poet, novelist and teacher. Winner of the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize, she has written two books of poetry (Light Falls Through you and Loop) and a novel (Canterbury Beach). Former Coordinator of the ST.F.X. Univ. Writing Center, Writer-in Residence at UNB (2002-3) and Artist-in-Residence at the Dalhousie Univ. Medical Humanities Program (2004), Anne Simpson lives with her family in Antigonish, where she is finishing a second novel.
April 2005 marks the 30th anniversary of Lyghtesome Gallery located at 166 Main Street, Antigonish, their home for the last 20 years. The gallery first opened on College St. in the old Knights of Columbus building adjacent to the original home of the Sunflower Natural Foods store, both businesses relocating when the buildings were torn down to make way for more downtown parking. The April show will be followed in May by the 18th Annual Invitational Flowers to Fruit Exhibit.