Eastside Culture Crawl Artist Spotlight: Sherri Rogers

The Straight gets to know some of the artists participating in this year’s upcoming Eastside Culture Crawl.

Who are you? Sherri Rogers, an artist based in Vancouver B.C., and most of my artwork mostly focuses on the urban environment. My style is playful and narrative, using humour and colour as a way to reflect on the community we live in. I like to tell a story with my artwork, and to communicate a message with imagery that is beautiful and vibrant.

By day, my job as a Texture Artist for Visual FX is to take reference photos from film sets or locations and project them onto digital backgrounds in 3D. This work has taught me to compose visually interesting environments, and I spend a lot of time looking at bricks and stones. 

Where is your studio?  I paint in my East side art studio at 1310 Williams & Clark (E8), also known as William Clark Studios. It's unbearably hot in the summer and nippy in the winter, and time just disappears when I'm inside.

How many years have you participated in the East Side Culture Crawl? This will be my third year in William Clark Studios. I was previously in Parker Street for one Crawl in 2009.

What’s your medium? I paint in acrylic on wood, and sometimes I spritz paint on the canvas using handheld atomizers.

What are some new pieces we can find at your studio during this year’s Crawl? This year I have been focusing on my Urban Frontiers series—landscapes paintings of street art in the urban environment.  

My landscape paintings capture urban graffiti in its environment, showing the decoration and colour that artists have contributed to their surroundings. These landscapes bring up questions about ownership of public space and who gets represented in the public sphere. In painting this graffiti, I turn a collage of many artists’ temporary and often changing murals into a precious piece of one artist's work, capturing a moment in time.

Explore the 2016 Eastside Culture Crawl's various locations and venues

The 20^th annual Eastside Culture Crawl is a four-day visual arts, design and crafts festival that takes place from November 17 to 20, 2016. For more information, click here.