The first exhibit of the 2008 season, Wings, opens tomorrow (May 10) in the Flagstop Gallery in Fort Langley. It will be a multimedia show featuring artists’ interpretations of anything from aircraft to birdlife, insects to wing-tip shoes.

What precisely the group’s 16 participating artists will choose to display remains to be seen, but for Murrayville’s Kathleen Gaitt, one of FLAG’s newest members, this one is all about the birds and the bees.

For her first FLAG exhibit, Gaitt is hoping to create some buzz around a rather unique set of monotype prints, and to set viewers a-flutter with a series of photographs offering new ways of looking at life’s everyday objects.“I tend to work in whatever (material) seems to be available at the time for what I need,” said Gaitt, as she put the finishing touches on some of her pieces a few days ahead of the show’s opening. After learning the theme of FLAG’s first show of 2008 would be Wings, the artist was struck by a rather unique idea. It came to her as she listened to a piece of classical music — she would interpret the notes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.“I thought it was interesting, so I got the sheet music, and I looked and listened. “It was a big experiment at first.” Gaitt held the paper facing against the window, “to see where the bees would go,” the artist explained. As she listened to the music, she frantically sketched over top of the notes, drawing on the back of the paper. “I tried to be like a bee, moving very lightly,” she said. Then, placing the sheet gently, face down on an inked glass plate Gaitt went over the images she had sketched, pressing the lines onto the sheet, to create “a sea of flowers” over the music. From there, the artist decided to add a bit of colour to the mix. At first, she tried using watercolour paints, but he effect was lost when both the paint and ink ran. Lesson learned, she started over. This time, the artist pulled out her pencil crayons and completed her vision for the set of images. Along with her bumblebee prints, Gaitt planned to submit some photographic pieces for consideration by her FLAG peers. “I wanted to draw attention to things that are quite often overlooked,” she said. Inside her kitchen cabinets were stacks of coffee mugs and tea cups, she’d purchased over the years to commemorate various occasions, both silly and nostalgic. She noticed that a lot of them happened, for whatever reason, to be decorated with birds. Perfect. So she stacked them and snapped a few pics. Gaitt titled the piece, In a Flap? Have a Cuppa! This isn’t the artist’s first group exhibit, but she was a little nervous nonetheless when it came to approaching the members about joining FLAG. Gaitt had been going down to the gallery and looking at the group’s work for a number of years. Taking that final step “was just a question of bravery,” she said.

It was a step artist Carmel Clare took a year earlier. For the first show of her second season, Clare decided to submit acrylic images of dragonflies.Having grown comfortable with her traditional watercolours, the Langley painter decided to challenge herself by breaking out her acrylic paints.“I never appreciated acrylics until I saw some paintings I really loved. They inspired me to go for it,” she said. Painting a creature as delicate and translucent as a dragonfly in thick acrylics presented a challenge in its own right for the artist.“I concentrated on the wings, trying to capture that transparent light.” The trick, she said, was to keep the painting soft looking through blending. “It was so exciting when I finally would find a technique that would work.“I was happy with the end product, but it took a long time.” For Clare, the collective approach to art that membership offered was a big draw in joining FLAG.“We all come from different walks of life. Being in a group challenges you to look in different directions,” she said. One of the benefits of being part of an artist’s group, albeit a sometimes an ego-bruising one, is having her work critiqued. It’s sometimes painful, she said, but it’s good to get feedback, as opposed to sitting alone in a studio.“It’s so exciting to sit with a bunch of artists and talk about things that have happened and are happening in our community. “It’s exciting to be with people who are excited about art.”

FLAG will mount a series of shows throughout the summer, with its final exhibit of the season wrapping up on the Labour Day weekend*.

*This year FLAG is open until October 11, 2008.