‘Tangible Stories’ will be at the Old School House until Oct. 28
Leslie Wiegand Love’s exhibition Tangible Stories is a tribute to her father, Ken, who passed away in 2020.
She created a multimedia exhibit by gathering materials as diverse as discarded wood from a construction site, old work jeans and a welding mask.
They all have at least one thing in common: memories of her dad.
Sunflowers are a major theme and are woven throughout the art show, currently displayed the Old School House (TOSH) Arts Centre in Qualicum Beach.
Love recalled the Stellar Jays collecting seeds on the sunflowers the day her dad had a stroke in October 2020.
“I didn’t realize he was having a stroke at the time — I knew something was wrong and I rushed down to help him into a chair on the deck,” she said.
“That was sort of our last conversation and so it’s etched into my mind, that moment I spent with him.”
The pieces all work together to create an overall experience, but Love said she particularly likes the painting based on a photo of her dad crouching down on the carpet with her as an infant.
Love used a touch of grease from the shop on her dad’s jeans. She also made the base of his jeans with copper oxide paint created with copper from his shop.
“It would have been when we first moved in to that house,” Love said. “The house that my parents lived in and my mom still lives in today. So it’s kind of a special thing. That carpet isn’t there anymore. It has a good warm, loving feeling from it that I love.”
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A special pair of works of art in Tangible Stories are “The Other Side (Dad’s Eye)” and “Seeing You Through (My Eye)”, which were both painted in acrylic on salvaged plywood.
Shortly before Love and her family moved back to Hilliers from Victoria, she noticed the discarded wooden circles outside a construction site and realized they could be useful in a future art project.
A few years later her son, Franki, spray-painted the background colour.
“When I was doing the show, I had an idea that the shapes were good for eyes and I wanted paint my dad’s eye and my eye on the wood,” said Love. “To tie it into the show I did a stencil of a sunflower sunburst.”
She didn’t have any close-up photos of her dad’s eyes and that made the painting difficult, but she zoomed in on a photo and managed to capture his essence, she said in her write up for “The Other Side (Dad’s Eye)”.
“He has a little smirk on his face and I just thought it was a special moment,” Love said.
“People have said it makes them feel like there’s a presence in the room when they were seeing the work.”
“Big Red” commemorates the gear truck Love’s dad used for his band and which also became a storage space before eventually it was towed out of the family yard.
“My dad loved his vehicles. This was one that we a kind of loved,” she said. “We used to play in the back, it was all wood inside and we went camping one time.”
The exhibit is a collaboration between Love, her dad, their memories and their friends and family, she said in her artist statement.
“A lot of the work in here is about connection and I’m hoping that people connect their own stories to the work as well as feel things that they need to move through grief,” she said. “There’s a lot of moving through grief and I think we’ve lost that sort of ritual of making things in order to process.”
Tangible Stories will be at TOSH (122 Fern Rd.) until Oct. 28.
Love completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honours in Visual Arts with distinction at the University of Victoria. Her multimedia work often combines nostalgic family imagery with found, thrifted, gifted and natural handmade materials.
She was born and raised in the Hilliers area, where she currently resides with her family.
