The Mennonite Heritage Center gallery is back at it with another fantastic show on from June 27 -September 14.

The show, the Annual Open Juried competition and exhibition (OJCE) run by the Manitoba Society of Artist  (MSA) is in its 87th year and going strong.

A juried exhibition is a different kind of gallery show, one where the artist must submit their work for approval to jurors who ultimately choose what goes in the show and what the focus of the show will be.

This year the jurors were Melanie Rocan and Janice Mason Steeves, these women were looking for specific things when deciding which pieces would be in the show.

Rocan says, "I think as a juror what I am looking for is work that is able to either communicate a thought, a story, evoke a feeling, something that is different, unique, original and stands out," that seems like a tall order but the pieces in the show do just that. Another important aspect that juror, Steeves was looking for was vulnerability, "Vulnerability is an aspect of the work that I find very important. It's having the courage to show your inner self no matter the outcome, with all its cracks and wrinkles."

This show is run through the MSA every year and each year the organization attracts incredible artist and amazing works.

The president of MSA, Bonnie Taylor explains the history of the organization as well as what stood out to her most in this year's show.

"We're old!" says Taylor, "we have been around a long time." Taylor explained that the MSA was established in 1902 "because there was nothing to connect artists together. . .  it is a lonely work so they wanted to connect with each other." 

Over the years the society has grown and changed and added events like the OJCE which was started in 1926 and has since become quite a diverse and inclusive organization.

However, the show still has its roots in the Manitoban soil as several of the artists have explored, "typically Manitoban themes and history or the result of being Manitoban," says Taylor.

One of the artists that stood out most to Taylor was Naomi Gerrard, an artist who works with grains from the prairie plants and fields.

Gerrard uses these grains from the prairies to create both figures and more abstract works. The artist is passionate about her medium and explains, "It's those grains that are creating the prairie environment from season to season and year to year, which I find really exciting."

Gerrard says she was thinking about the patterns seen in nature when creating her OJEC piece Summer Energy Maturing. These patterns could include shapes repeated in fruit or grains when cutting through or larger patterns in landscapes and areas of a field or dry patch of ground.

The gallery is full of unique pieces like Gerrards, one that really stood out to the jurors was a piece of beadwork done by Cynthia Boehm.

Boehm won first place for her piece, My Journey Home - Honouring our Grandmothers, this piece also used beads - a material not often seen in galleries.

Boehm's goal in entering this piece into the show was to promote beadwork as an art form.

The artist was born and raised along the Nelson River at a central trade point for the Hudsons Bay Trading Company where there is a lot

of history including the tradition of beadwork.

Through working at the museum, teaching people to bead and make moccasins, Boehm got the opportunity to go down into the museum archives to study the incredible beadwork done by her great grandmother who had several pieces in the archives.

This spurred an interest in more traditional ways of beading for Boehm,  which is shown in her piece currently at the gallery.

"When I picked up beadwork something inside reconnected with my culture, my ancestors," says Boehm.

Ray Dirks the director at the Gallery said, "My perception is there is more diversity in this kind of exhibit than there used to be years ago which is a good thing."

The amount of diversity amongst Manitobans is incredible to see in the works as they all have a strong tie to this province but are all so distinct and different - much like the people now living in Manitoba.

Both Naomi Gerrard and Cynthia Boehm have strong ties to Manitoba and work with materials that have been woven into the history and traditions of our province.

See these and the 60+ other art pieces in this years OJCE show at the MHC gallery between June 27 -September 14, 2019.