The Arts Council of New Westminster presents:
“The Glory of the Garden”
Pop-up Exhibition
by New Westminster arts group: Garden Gals
March 30th – April 3, 2016
Wednesday 1 – 8pm, Thursday – Sunday 1 – 5pm
Opening Reception: Wednesday March 30th, 6-8pm
Artist Statement
The objective of the Garden Gals is to promote an appreciation of nature and urban green space by sharing our visions through paintings. This exhibition is to celebrate our ten year anniversary as a group. This exhibition features floral paintings inspired by New Westminster gardens.
Artist Bio
The Garden Gals are an active art group of sketchers and painters, unique in that we all have a passion for art in nature, as we are keen New Westminster Gardeners. We are a subgroup of the long standing New Westminster Horticultural Society (NWHS) established in 1934. Membership of NWHS is a requirement to belong to our sketch group; the NWHS sketch group, which later developed the show name of ‘Garden Gals.’ Ten years ago NWHS members held a drawing session in a member’s garden, there was sufficient interest to start a subgroup.
The poem that inspired the name of the exhibit and commemorates the Garden Gals 10 Year Anniversary:
THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN
OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You’ll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-” Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !
-Rudyard Kipling (1923)
Exhibition Preview
