Come to the Amelia Douglas Art Gallery during the weekend of Saturday, August 10 and Sunday, August 11 when it takes part in the New Westminster Cultural Crawl! The Gallery will be open both days from 11:00 am – 5:00 pm, with an opening reception taking place on Saturday, August 10 from 1:00-3:00 pm. There will be live music, refreshments, and a craft table!

City Squares
Drawings, Textiles & Paintings
John Steil, Judy Villett and Martha Jablonski-Jones

City Squares, which runs at the Amelia Douglas Gallery from August 1 – September 14, is a group presentation by three Canadian artists on one related topic: an examination of contemporary urban layout and its content. Modern North American cities have, for the most part, attempted to contain and regulate the irregular by superimposing a grid-like matrix over anything intrinsic or accidental, whether it be texture, colour, or organic form. The result is the overwhelming rectilinearity of our urban surroundings. Yet within these rigid formats, the necessary messiness of human occupation continues to affect the contents: eroding, decaying, growing, or evolving in unbidden ways. Their presentation mirrors this contradiction. As in an actual city, the uniformly square grid runs counter to their innate content.

John Steil is a Vancouver-based visual artist who works in water, colour, acrylics, collages, ink and more. New Westminster’s Judy Villett grew up in Alberta surrounded by generations of quilters and has been combining traditional techniques and contemporary design in her textile work for many years. Martha Jablonski-Jones has lived in cities for most of her life, including Vancouver, taking inspiration from the sights and sounds of these surroundings.

An artists’ talk will be held on Tuesday, September 10, at 6:30 pm. ​