What does home mean to you? Is it a place? A person? Perhaps a piece of music?
For the artists of the hArte Trail Artist Group, the answer is all of the above, and each one of their views of home is reflected in their latest exhibit, No Place Like Home – Beyond the Walls, which is currently on display at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery at Canadian Mennonite University on Shaftesbury Boulevard.
Gallery curator Sarah Hodges-Kolisnyk has really enjoyed watching the exhibit being constructed by the sixteen artists in the hArte Trail Artist Group. “Some of the artists in the group actually meet here every Thursday morning to paint,” she explained to Morning Light’s Nolan Kehler, “so that’s how the connection started. They’re here every week working hard. They’re all just so passionate about it. There are different media that they work with and that passion comes out because it’s so playful.”
The different artists and media are out in full force in No Place Like Home. Over a hundred works are subcategorized into six different themes of what home can be. This includes sections highlighting traditional understandings of home, memories of homes that have been, transition and relocation of homes, and various cultural understandings of home.
“One of the first things people notice beyond how much work and diversity is in the show is that there’s so many layers to the show,” observes Hodges-Kolisnyk. “I think that is a really interesting symbol or mirror for how we all experience them.”
One of the members of the hArte Trail Artist Group that uses the most layers in her work for No Place Like Home is Arlene Cherepak. The multidisciplinary artist works in both canvas art and in pottery, where she uses textures to examine the impacts that climate change has on our natural home.
“I was looking at the world situation, not just your home where you live every day,” says Cherepak, whose collaboration with her granddaughter on some of her works also drove home the urgency of addressing the climate crisis for future inhabitants of Earth. “The environmental issues are very strong in my thinking, and unless we really pay attention to them, we’re not going to be around for long. That certainly comes through in a number of my works.”
These works illustrate another striking layer in the No Place Like Home exhibit: the balance between pieces that give a warm, comfortable and secure portrait of what home can be and pieces that remind us that home can also be a finite construct that cannot be taken for granted. It’s a balance that Cherepak tries to examine in her own works. “Sometimes you just want to feel good by looking at a pleasant painting, something that brings you to another sense of home,” she explains, “and other times, you can shake people up.”
Fellow hArte Trail Artist Group member Margery Koop resonates with the idea that the idea of home can change. “I come from a farm that was home,” she ruminates as she looks at her own works, “but my real home was when I met my husband.” She looks up at the ceiling, holding back tears remembering her husband, who passed away a short time ago. “That was home for me.”
One constant home for Koop has always been music. Before turning to visual art, Koop was a seasoned performer and music educator, and she still uses music as inspiration in her visual compositions. “My home is music. My career, my passion, my lifelong dream to be a musician – it's home. Coming home is music.”
No Place Like Home – Beyond the Walls is on display at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery at Canadian Mennonite University until December 21. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Admission is free, and pieces from the exhibit are available for purchase. To learn more, you can visit the Mennonite Heritage Gallery’s website.