Roots and Wings at Zack Gallery features a wide range of artwork, including the painting “Princess Love” by Grace Tang. (photo by Olga Livshin)
Roots and Wings, the seventh annual exhibition of JCC inclusion services, opened at Zack Gallery on Jan. 30. The show marks February as Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month. Most participating artists are either members of Art Hive, JCC inclusion services’ art branch, or members of similar programs in other localities. Such programs offer people with developmental disabilities art classes and workshops, and help emerging artists with instructions and materials.
The show’s theme is Roots and Wings. On the one hand, roots represent a deep connection to our origins: biological, ethnic and geographic. On the other hand, wings denote our striving to fly towards new beginnings and new understandings.
Many artists responded to the challenging theme. The exhibition includes paintings, ceramics and 3D installations. The images vary from detailed beaded jewelry by Mikaela Zitron to the flowery landscape “Walking through the Meadow Land” by Theresa Kinahan. Small raku ceramics of birds and hamsa (hands) by different Art Hive potters stand beside the colourful and whimsical acrylic “Paisley Cat” by Calvin Ho.
Trees and roots also served as the inspiration for a few pieces. Among them, the most unusual is “Shoes” by Jasmine Winkler Stobbe. Roots painted in a quiet blue palette enhance the standard black fabric shoes’ tops, inviting everybody to try them on.
But most artists went with the subject of birds, so fitting to the theme of wings. Small, everyday birds decorate Jerry Zhou’s charming totes. Strange, fantastic birds look haughtily at the viewer from Hadeeb Hamidi’s painting “Mystical Birds.” A regal peacock with its gorgeous tail struts across a simple landscape in Grace Tang’s “Princess Love.” And, while owls in several paintings are instantly recognizable, the driftwood bird sculpture “Fusion of Nature” by Melody Edgars feels like an embodiment of a proud sea bird with a powerful beak and a curious nature.
Many artists depicted chickens: small and large, yellow and multicoloured, familiar and exotic. Matthew Tom-Wing’s humorous “Nobody Here but Chicken” seems to represent this flock of chicken fairly well.
Some artists have participated in these annual shows before. For others, this is their first time at the Zack. One of the newcomers is Shiri Barak Gonen, the new inclusion services coordinator.
“My career went in a kind of crooked line,” said Gonen in an email interview. “I started working in the Israeli tech industry when I was 23, freshly discharged from military service. I worked with computers in both technical and managerial roles while I completed my bachelor’s degree in psychology, followed by a music therapy program, on evenings and weekends. Afterwards, I worked for a few years as a music therapist with kids of all ages and with a range of challenges. Some years later, I found my way back to the tech industry, until we decided to relocate to Vancouver. We arrived in Canada in 2024.”
Newly hired, Gonen has given lots of thought to her new position. “The inclusion coordinator role is composed of two aspects,” she explained. “First, the managerial tasks such as staff and budget management and strategic planning. The other aspect is the direct and intensive interactions with the inclusion population, which requires sensitivity and a constant awareness of the needs of others. Both aspects are reflected in my personality and in my previous jobs.”
She added: “My current position is very different from my past jobs. In my last role, I was writing software code … and managing teams. Before, when I worked as a music therapist, I had a chance to work with my students and their families, but being a therapist puts you at a different angle than a program instructor. My focus will always be therapeutic, but I find much more pleasure in sharing hot chocolate and a chat with a group rather than analyzing their behaviour as a therapist. The essence of my new job is to establish meaningful relationships and mutual trust. We are building such a connection now.”
Another newbie at the Zack Gallery is an experienced Vancouver artist – Pierre Leichner.
“I have always been artistic,” Leichner said in a telephone interview. “Photography, ceramics, other creative outlets. But, when I graduated from high school, my family and I decided that, for better employment opportunities, I should go into science. I didn’t mind. I liked science too.”
He became a psychiatrist and worked in the profession for more than 30 years.
“In 2002, I decided I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “The medical system turned too entrepreneurial, too corporate and dehumanizing.” So, he revisited his first love – art. He enrolled at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and received his bachelor’s in fine arts in 2007. In 2011, he completed his master’s in fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal.
“Mostly I do visual arts,” he said. “Sculpture, photography, videos and paintings. I also do some performing arts, and I dabble in theatre,” he said. “I have my own YouTube channel, which deals with environmental issues.”
A multidisciplinary artist with widespread interests, Leichner considers community involvement of utmost importance. In 2017, he founded the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival, which provides opportunities to marginalized visual and performing artists. He still serves as its artistic director. He is also a member of the Connection Salon collective and sits on the board of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver.
“I like to explore the possibilities on the cusp of art and science,” he said. “There are similarities between the two, and both examine the foundations of human existence.”
The GrassRoots Project he presented for the current Zack show fuses science and arts and illustrates Leichner’s interdisciplinary approach.
“I saw the call for this show, and it fit my GrassRoots Project perfectly,” he said. “The project started in 2011, when Britannia Community Centre received a grant to celebrate people with the deepest grassroots contributions: teachers, artists, musicians.”
Over the years, Leichner has made about a dozen sculptural masks of those people, plus some of his friends and colleagues, employing a traditional Mediterranean technique. “I use wheatgrass,” he explained. “I make a mold of their face masks and plant wheatgrass within. The roots take the shape of the face, while the grass grows out like hair. It takes about three weeks to grow each portrait. The grass becomes part of the sculpture, the means of my artistic expression.”
Each mask is a symbol, echoing the synergy of humans and nature. “In this way,” the artist said, “nature imitated us in celebrating our community at this time of great ecological concern. We all need roots. We have them within our bodies. We also have them with our family and our community.”
Roots and Wings is on until March 2.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].