| RESIDENCY |
| Summer Residency 𝕋𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕪 𝕄𝕚𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕣Daniel Barrow, Glenn Gear, Paige Gratland July 3, 2026 – August 7, 2026 |
Oxygen Art Centre excitedly announces their summer residency program with artist collective, Three Way Mirror, from July 3, 2026, to August 7, 2026. Three Way Mirror is composed of artists Daniel Barrow (QC), Glenn Gear (QC), and Paige Gratland (BC). The artists visit Nelson from Montréal and Vancouver for a six-week residency where they will develop their textile practices individually and collectively in what they call a craft ‘triangle’. For artists who belong to a social group that has often been marginalized, it is unsurprising that they are drawn to similarly marginalized crafts, art forms that link the personal and the political. Traditionally, a craft circle is a non-competitive circle of production where artists can create work and act on their concern for social justice. Three Way Mirror embraces this concept through a craft triangle where the artists create an intersectional queer space for textiles production and dialogue. The public are invited to attend two informal open studio events during the residency period to engage with the artists and encounter works-in-progress. Open studio events are scheduled for Saturday, July 18, 2026, and Saturday, August 1, 2026, from 1:00pm to 3:00pm.Admission is free. Everyone welcome to attend. The residency will consider how traditional crafts can convey queer stories and community, and how queer signifiers and strategies can express intersectional identities through conceptual craft-based practices. For each artist this has been a natural progression, resulting in the production of woven ueer colourways (Gratland), glitter-bombs sealskins (Gear) and paper-doll poems (Barrow). The artist collective Three Way Mirror will be in residence at Oxygen Art Centre from July 3, 2026, to August 7, 2026. The gallery will be open to the public for two Open Studio events on Saturday, July 18, 2026, and Saturday, August 1, 2026, from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Admission is free. This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Vancouver Foundation, and the Regional District of Central Kootenay ReDi program. Special thanks to Dara van der Meulen for their support as Residency Coordinator (Canada Summer Jobs) and Kenton Doupe for their support as Gallery Preparator and Photographer. |
| ABOUT THE ARTISTS |
 Daniel Barrow is a genderfluid, Montreal-based storyteller/artist uses simple (often antiquated) technologies to present pictorial narratives by merging the methods of cinema, comics, animation, and magic lantern shows. They are best known for adapting comic book narratives to “manual” forms of animation by manipulating drawings on an overhead projector. In recent years, they have been developing a unique pictorial language which they referred to as “paper doll poems”. |
 Glenn Gear is an Indigiqueer filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Inuit heritage living in Montréal. He is originally from Corner Brook Newfoundland and has family throughout Labrador and Nunatsiavut. His research creation-practice is shaped by Inuit ways of learning and knowing, through a hands-on and tactile approach incorporating installation, animation, photography, bead work, and the use of traditional materials such as sealskin. |
 Paige Gratland is a visual artist and filmmaker producing projects and objects that engage with social history, design and craft practices. She learned to weave in 2019 at the Richmond Weavers and Spinners Guild and is currently completing the Master Weaver Program at Olds College. She is also 1/3 of the artist group Three Way Mirror with Daniel Barrow and Glenn Gear. |
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| NEW EMPLOYEE |
 Oxygen Art Centre welcomes Dara van der Meulen in the role of Residency Coordinator this summer through the Canada Summer Jobs program!Dara joins the artist-run centre to support the summer residency, conduct research and arts administration for upcoming programs, and complete a creative project over their 9-week contract. |
Dara van der Meulen (they/she) is an artist and student at the Kutenai Art Therapy Institute. As a queer, neurodivergent artist, Dara is a lover of and advocate for offbeat and unconventional art processes. This focus extends into her therapeutic practice, as well. Their goal with every arts-based position they take on is to provide a fun, safe, and accessible environment for those engaged in the vulnerability of play and creativity. Dara is excited to dive further into Nelson’s art community as the Residency Coordinator at Oxygen for the summer. Outside of work you can usually find her climbing rocks with friends, scribbling in a tiny journal, or with her nose in a road-side free pile. |
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| O2 EXHIBITION |
| Ecology of ClothWest Kootenay Fibreshed Artist Collective:Danielle Soucie + Tracy Fillion11 June – 22 August 2026Raw Linen, Hand processed, Locally grown |
| Artist Statement This story begins in the soils of Argenta. Flax seeds are pressed into the soil and wait. Through sun, rain, drought, and time, it grows into a slender plant. Months later, it is pulled from the earth by hand, bundled, retted, broken, scutched, and hackled using handmade tools. Slowly, the fibre hidden within the stalk is revealed. The transformation from plant to thread unfolds through hundreds of small actions. Over many months, Danielle Soucie guides the flax from seed to spun thread, revealing the fibre hidden within the stalk and drawing it into yarn by hand. The work is repetitive, physical, and often unforgiving. The flax passes through hands again and again. It catches on skin. It leaves traces of itself behind. Days become weeks. Weeks become months. Gradually, fibre becomes thread. From there, the material passes into Tracy Fillion’s hands, where the next chapter of its story begins. At the loom, the linen reveals a character unlike commercially processed fibre. It tangles. It mats. It resists. Rather than moving smoothly through the loom, it demands attention, adaptation, and care. The material meets the maker at every stage of the process. In that resistance, something becomes visible. Much of the cloth that surrounds us arrives disconnected from its origins. We encounter it only at the end of its journey, long after the labour, land, weather, and relationships that made it possible have been obscured. This linen carries those histories with it. The fibre retains the memory of the garden where it grew, the handmade tools that transformed it, the seasons that shaped it, and the hands that guided it from plant to cloth. The three woven panels that make up this installation are the result of that journey. Their layered transparency reflects the many stages of transformation that occur between seed and textile. Each layer reveals and conceals the others, much like the processes that are often hidden within contemporary cloth production. In a culture shaped by speed, convenience, and disposability, this work offers another way of understanding material. It asks us to slow down and consider the lives embedded within the things we use. It invites us to see cloth not as a product, but as an accumulation of relationships between soil, plant, weather, labour, knowledge, and time. More than an aesthetic object, the installation celebrates the resilience and beauty of natural materials grown and processed within our bioregion. It reflects the connections between art, land stewardship, and sustainable fibre systems, offering a moment of quiet reflection. Through linen, the work asks us to reconsider the role of natural fibres in contemporary life and to recognize cloth not as something separate from land, labour, or ecology, but as an expression of relationship. |
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| About the West Kootenay Fibreshed + ArtistsThe West Kootenay Fibreshed is a not-for-profit organization working to strengthen regional fibre systems from soil to soil. By connecting growers, processors, artists, makers, and community members, the Fibreshed supports local fibre production, natural dyeing, textile education, and the revival of place-based skills. Rooted in the belief that textiles can be grown, processed, created, used, and returned to the earth within a single bioregion, the West Kootenay Fibreshed fosters relationships between land, material, and community. Through workshops, mentorships, gatherings, and collaborative projects, it seeks to build a resilient regional fibre culture that honours both ecological stewardship and creative expression.For this exhibition, artists Tracy Fillion and Danielle Soucie represent the collective, showcasing this raw linen artwork.Learn more about the West Kootenay Fibreshed Danielle Soucie is a fibre artist, community organizer, and the Director of the West Kootenay Fibreshed. Their work explores the relationship between land, material, and community through fibre arts, regenerative textile systems, and place-based education. Working with wool, locally grown fibres, natural dyes, and slow textile processes, Danielle is interested in how making can deepen our relationship to place and reveal the ecological, cultural, and relational stories held within materials. Their practice is rooted in the soil-to-soil cycle of natural fibres and asks what it means to create in a way that is reciprocal, regionally grounded, and connected to the living systems that sustain us. Through both their artistic work and community organizing, Danielle supports opportunities for skill-sharing, material literacy, and rural creative networks across the West Kootenay bioregion. Tracy Fillion is a textile artist whose practice integrates weaving, plant dyeing, and garment construction. Working with natural fibres and dyes, she creates textiles through slow, hands-on processes that foreground care for material and place. Her work intends to reflect on the social, political, and environmental conditions shaping the present moment, using textiles as a language to consider labour, care, and resilience while honouring traditions of making that connect people, land, and community. In addition to her studio practice, Fillion teaches weaving at a local college and facilitates workshops in plant dyeing. An active community member, volunteering on the boards of the Slocan Valley Threads Guild and educator with the West Kootenay Fibreshed. Her work reflects an ongoing commitment to textiles as a site of resistance, ecological awareness, and thoughtful engagement with contemporary social and environmental realities. |
Located on the Stanley Avenue side of the Nelson Trading Company building (430 Baker Street) in downtown Nelson, B.C., O2 is a window-turned-gallery that serves as an extension of Oxygen Art Centre’s contemporary art programming. This program is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Vancouver Foundation, and the Regional District of Central Kootenay ReDi program. |
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| Support your artist-run centre by becoming an Oxygen Art Centre Member. Oxygen Memberships run from $2 (Senior/Student) to $5 (Single) to $10 (Families) and significantly help our organization. Become a member today! MEMBERSHIP BENEFITSEvents, Tours and Artist TalksVolunteer, Networking and Mentorship ExperienceRegular mailings and newslettersVoting Privileges at Oxygen Art Centre’s AGMDiscounted rental rate to document artwork at Oxygen’s studioAccess to current Exhibition Publications and CataloguesArtist-in-Residence and Exhibition ToursRegister ONLINE or by MAIL Already a Member? Consider making a Donation. |
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