MyNaramata: World Travels in Gallery Exhibit!

Thanks yet again to MyNaramata & Craig Henderson for their article on my upcoming exhibit,

Wanderlust! At the Penticton Art Gallery.

You can see the article in its original form here:

MyNaramata: World Travels in Gallery Exhibit!

Here is the article below.

Thanks, Craig! The show opens next week! See you there.

xxMelanie

10th September 2011

World Travels in Gallery Exhibit

Editor

A Naramata artist is celebrating her first exhibit at a public art gallery.

Melanie Mehrer’s Wanderlust exhibit opens Friday evening September 16th ( 7 – 9 PM) and an artist’s talk has been scheduled for Saturday, September 17 at 1 PM at the Penticton Art Gallery.Currently, Melanie divides her time between Naramata and Vancouver, where she is completing an education degree at UBC. Upon graduation she hopes to find placement as a high school art teacher.
In the past, Melanie attended Okanagan College as a visual arts student and later transferred to the University of Victoria where she completed an honours degree in art history with a focus on Islamic art history.

Before and after her formal education, she has been a consummate traveller and artist.Melanie describes the upcoming exhibit:“This will be an overview of the work I have done over the past fourteen years. You will see LinoCut collages from Taiwan, Blankets from Shanghai, My travel journals from the Middle East, Thailand, Cambodia, Cuba, Dominican Republic and a few from India, mosques from the United Arab Emirates and my paintings from Turkey and Canada.”Read more about her background and upcoming exhibit:

Melanie Mehrer: Wanderlust

In recent years, her art has been featured frequently at Café Nevermatters, and at the Naramata Christmas Craft Fair. MyNaramata.com has featured several past articles on her Naramata scenes:

Naramata Peacock fowl make Faire Debut

Bears inspire artist

Chasing Geese captures Naramata moment

Cafe Nevermatters Art Exhibition, July 2011

Recently, Melanie wrote on her blog about her curiousity of ancient paint mediums, perhaps inspired by some of the First Nations pictographs found in Naramata:

In the beginning there was Ochre

Art Exhibit at Cafe NeverMatters now Open!

For the month of July, My paintings from the Okanagan and Turkey will be hanging in Cafe Nevermatters Cafe and Bistro at 340 Robinson Road Naramata.

Stop in for a coffee or a glass of wine and tell Angelo I said Hi!

(And while you are at it, check out the nicely decorated walls and bathrooms!)

Prints of "A Day at Elephant Island Winery" are also available through the Elephant Island Orchard Wines Tasting Room and Gift Shop.

A big thanks to MyNaramata for writing a small write up about my show at Cafe never Matters and how it related to Elephant Island as well. The article is below, but if you'd like to read the article at its original source, please click here.

Thanks again, Craig!

Link to Cafe NeverMatters

Link To Elephant Island Orchard Wines

1st July 2011

Café Art Show

Editor

Angelo Albano of Café Nevermatters helps artist Melanie Mehrer hang one of her series from Naramata life.

Melanie’s art will fill the café for the month of July. She’ll have many of her funky and whimsical pieces of local life and lore on the walls, as well as some of her work depicting life in Turkey, where she lived in 2009.

Angelo and Melanie are holding a recently finished piece title ‘A Day at Elephant Island.’

Melanie says she is inspired by the way the local winery supports many community and charitable programs and events. This acrylic ink drawing depicts Elephant Island’s crew in the process of making the winery's latest champagne, Pink Elephant.

Also, shown below is a piece featuring Angelo behind the café counter. Angelo says he loves featuring an eclectic mix of local artists on the walls of Cafe Nevermatters.

Here are the previous articles on the work of Naramata’s Melanie Mehrer:
http://www.mynaramata.com/cgi-bin/show_articles.cgi?ID=1346&TOPIC=0
http://www.mynaramata.com/cgi-bin/show_articles.cgi?ID=910&TOPIC=0
http://www.mynaramata.com/cgi-bin/show_articles.cgi?ID=470&TOPIC=0
http://www.mynaramata.com/cgi-bin/show_articles.cgi?ID=512&TOPIC=0

Kids in a Cherry Tree!

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Kids in an Okanagan Cherry Tree, April 2011. 11x14 " Ink on Paper

In preparation for the Cafe Nevermatters exhibition in Naramata this summer, I'm putting the Turkey sketches aside for a little while and focussing on Canadian/Okanagan themes. The next two paintings have to do with my childhood and growing up in Naramata (And arguably every childhood which has ever had the privilege of spending a little time in our idyllic little town.)

Since the painting is fairly orderly, I decided to add a little chaos with the birds- different colours, different angles, unlike the way I usually paint birds, orderly and in unison.

Summer for us really started when the summertime neighbours showed up. Grandchildren of Gramps who lived across the street, We'd spend the summers running around the beaches, jumping off the old train docks (which are sadly gone now) and stealing cherries and whatever fruit was in season for a quick free snack when we got hungry. We also stole fruit from the boxes at the packing house, which sadly met it's demise last week after being a landmark in Naramata since the 30's. But that's another story (and perhaps another painting!)

Reaching for that perfect cherry.One think I like about working with the transparency of the ink is that I was able to work that overlapping technique in the leaves successfully.

Strangely enough, I started out painting generic children, but as I progressed, the kids began to actually look like me, my sister, Tiffany Andrew and Billy- My sister actually pointed it out. It's funny how my subconcious can sneak into a painting from time to time! Undeniable!

Since the weather can still be chilly in cherry season (The first fruit of the year) The kids are in varying degrees of clothing. (The ones in shorts could be pushing the season!)

Though I will miss cherry season again this year (last year I was in the Emirates, this year I'll be in Vancouver, I think) I have enjoyed the frozen cherries my mom saved for me last year. There really is nothing like a fat juicy Okanagan cherry!

One thing we used to do is lay our beach towels on the ground and gently drop the cherries on it so we could take some to the beach. But often the cherries would burst upon hitting the towel, staining our lovely towels much to my mother's chagrin. (Come to think of it, it was probably the first form of natural dying for me!)

It comes as no surprise with the demise of the packing house that fruit is quickly being replaced with grapes for wine production, which is booming here in the Okanagan at the moment. But it's sad to see the fruit trees go; the Naramata Bench which is now famous for it's wineries were once a twenty minute drive of fresh spring blossoms, the first sign that spring had arrived. I think now there are really only two or three orchards that are in full blossom at the moment along the Naramata Road. The rest have been converted into vineyards already.

We also used to eat the cherries and spit the pits at each other. Kids will be kids!

The one downside of switching to vineyards is that we can't live off wine but we could live off fruit. But I can't blame a farmer in the Okanagan for wanting to make more money out of their crops. Being an Okanagan farmer can be a hard row to hoe, pun intended!

My sister says this little girl looks like me when I was young. But you couldn't catch me dead in a dress!

But I did have a bike similar to this (only blue).

Luckily there are wineries around such as Naramata owned and operated Elephant Island who make really delicious fruit wines. I was lucky enough to be invited by owner and operator Miranda Halliday to watch a discorging of Cassis and Apple sparkling wine/champagne yesterday. Mess, stained hands, wine puddles, machinery and rain gear. Melanie's painting subject heaven! Stay tuned for some fun drawing from my visit there in the coming weeks! It was super fun and I almost wished I worked in a winery for the sheer fun of it. Hell yeah, I could work a corking machine! And I've had the wine and it's extremely good.

And the ever loyal dog waiting for us to be finished and on our way for more kidly adventures in the Okanagan!

Now back to painting!

xxMelanie

THe Ice Wine Harvest Mentioned in MyNaramata!

Is Ice wine season already here? It appears so!

"The Ice Wine Harvesters", 2010

Thanks to Craig Henderson and My Naramata for using my painting "The Ice Wine Harvesters" to illustrate the latest MyNaramata article on Ice wine.

The ice wine harvest is a fairly new cultural aspect to life in the Okanagan, as the boom in the Okanagan wine industry brings new chores. The grapes must be picked the first time they are naturally frozen by falling outside temperatures, and they must be processed while still frozen in order to squeeze out the waterless golden nectar which is ice wine. I tried some at Inniskilin this summer (at the long-distance urging of my fantastic friend John Atwell) And all I can say is that I am happy it's so expensive otherwise I may have a problem! It's that good!

The original of the "The IceWine Harvesters" and some prints (from Naramata and Istanbul) will be available at my booth in the Naramata Artisan Faire held in the Heritage Inn on December 5th. (Rumour has it I'll be down stairs somewhere across from the winebar. Woo Hoo!) I'll have some other works of mine and a special hand pulled print of the old Naramata Train Docks created by my sister Rene as well!

Rene's nostalgic print, "The TrainDocks", November, 2010.

See you at the Heritage Inn, December 5th!

For the MyNaramata Article click here.

For Rene's post on her traindock print, click here.

And to see the original blog on the icewine harvesters, click here.

xxMelanie

The Bear in the Orchard

The Bear in the Orchard, Gouache 11X14

Years ago my father told me a story about a bear wandering into Hardman's Orchard here in Naramata. It was a particularly hot summer which meant the animals were coming out of the drought stricken mountains to head towards the lake for a drink. Who can hardly blame them! The wooded areas of the mountains behind our house naturally flow into the wooded areas of the orchards, and so often the wildlife see no issue with heading into the orchards to shelter their walk down to the lake.

The flying apples and flying hair in all directions illustrate the moment of panic and movement in the painting.

There was even a time where a tiny lone bear cub made it's way down the creek to my mother's front lawn, and when it brushed up against her leg, she pet it thinking it was a big big dog coming for a visit. But that's a different story!

The bear was painted without a back end to give the feeling like he just appeared out of nowhere, which I think is the way it is with bears. He's not interested in people though. He just wants some water and a few apples to nibble on.

Growing up here I always thought I was missing out on culture. Coming back here eighteen years later has shown me Naramata is nothing but culture depending on your outlook on the place.

I'd like to do some wine production paintings next, but need to get myself into a winery to take some photos. Hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction!

This guy hasn't noticed a thing yet!

XXX Melanie