Fearless Faces @ the InterUrban - Aug. 14 - 24

Pastels by Felicity Don
Photos by participants in the
Constant Arts Society's
Through Our Eyes, Streetfront and BritLit projects.

This year, the festival is delighted to be expanding into the visual realm by presenting this important exhibit by two of Vancouver's most influencial artists and mentors.
Felicity Don has been facilitating life drawing sessions at Carnegie for years and has sketched a vast number of the local community. She also has the distinction of being a respected courtroom sketch artist, who's work has made it to the covers most of the nation's main newspapers, most notably for her renderings of mass murderer Robert Pickton, the Coquitlam serial killer who confessed to kill 49 women, many of them from the Downtown Eastside.

The irony that she has had the unique opportunity to see this community from two very different perspectives is not lost on us.

The portraits here are filled with both heartache and hope.



We purposely hung many of her works in the windows facing Pigeon Park and along Hastings Street so that the work would be visible even when the gallery wasn't open. Almost immediately, we had people wanting to come in and look around.



Christine Germano, founder and Executive Director of the Constant Arts Society, has found a need in many First Nations communities, including ones here in East Vancouver, for First Nations kids at risk to express themselves while empowering them with the skills to show their community what they see and think is important.
Through projects like Brit Lit, Through Our Eyes and the StreetFront program, Germano gets kids to take photos, write stories or poetry and then she teaches them how to effectively create and display print documents of their work.
The pictures are powerful and inclusive.