Gathering at Sunset
Commissioned by the Municipality of Val-David, Quebec, as part of its public art collection, this mural celebrates nature, the community and creativity in Val-David.
This mural was inspired by the spectacle of nature that we see in the Laurentians. It also queries our typical reaction to this spectacle: reaching for our digital cameras and capturing a moment of its ephemerality in digital images.
In response to these beautiful digital images, colours enhanced by algorithms and the light of our device’s screens, I created a pixelated, high-keyed image from a photo of a sunset with mountains and a lake in Val-David. I brought together community members to help me labouriously paint the 13,864 pixels of the image, recreating in human terms what our digital technologies do. The pixels are animated by the human touch of a group of people working together creating a variety of paint textures and colour variations.
An Augmented Reality video, available with the Artivive app, integrates silhouettes of the creatures and humans who inhabit this Laurentian landscape and create its community.
This project, themed around networking and community, is facilitated by the Municipality of the Village of Val-David in collaboration with Atelier de l’île and the community, within the framework of the Cultural Development Agreement with the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications.
Community Collaboration
AR Animation
Artist Biography
Elizabeth Whalley is a Canadian artist whose work examines phenomena at the intersection of the man-made and natural worlds demonstrating their often problematic but, also, beautiful interplay. While her visual language is based in drawing, painting and printmaking she also uses experimental media, installation and interactive performance.
She has created participatory and public art projects and exhibited her work in Morin-Heights, Québec. She was awarded a Canada Council travel grant, a McNair Scholars research grant, and a Pratt faculty grant. She has attended artist residencies in Newfoundland, California, and Montreal. She received her MFA and an Advanced Certificate in Performance and Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College, City University of New York after studies at Concordia University, Montreal. She has taught at Adelphi University, Haverford College, Pratt Institute, Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art, and Brooklyn College. She was the manager of the Inverness County Centre for the Arts, Inverness, NS. from 2015 to 2019.