ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

FROM DRAIN PIPES
TO WATER COLOUR

Irene Horner returns to Terrace

An exhibit of Irene Horner’s
original paintings opened at the
Northern Light Studio Feb. 21.
Since her return to Terrace in
Dec. 1989, she has painted ex-
tensively, for the past year with
the assistance of 16-37 Commun-
ity Futures.

Long-time Terrace residents
will remember Irene (Barnet)
Horner from Winterland General
Store. After Winterland burned
down, Irene went to work for the
District of Terrace where she was
assigned to a crew that checked
sewer systems by climbing down
manholes and then walking or
crawling through the pipes. At
the same time, she was also
travelling to Kitimat with local
artist Sylvia Johnson-Sands for

establish the gallery as
a viable business after
the one-year grant
expired.

In Sept. 1979,
Horner went to the
Queen Charlotte
Islands for a brief stay
— and lived there for
10 years! She gardened
with a vengeance and
at the same time,
developed techniques
for painting flowers.
"There were so many
powerful images," she
recalls. She also began
to illustrate blankets
and masks. She experi-

painting and design courses. That
was where she got hooked on
water colours. One day as Irene
was asking herself what she was
doing in a sewer pipe, Lorna
Taft’s face appeared over the edge
of a manhole and asked if she’d
like to manage an art gallery.

As manager of the Gaolerie
(the old jail on the corner of
Lakelse and Kalum) local arts
and crafts gallery, Irene dealt
with local artists John Weber,
Dave Comfort, Jan McLeod, Don
Weir, Matt and Kay Ehses, and
Wally Humphrey, to name just a
few. Irene was inspired by the
more than 300 artists selling their
pottery, stained glass and paint-
ings in the Gaolerie. She painted
during the year she worked to

34 Terrace Review — February 28, 1992

mented with different
mediums including
silkscreening and oils, and differ-
ent subjects, from dancers to birds
to land formations. She creates
many of her paintings from photo-
graphs.

When Irene started to sell
her work at craft sales on the
Queen Charlottes, Terrace resi-
dents got their first glimpse of her
art. Kathleen Ireland and Lovina
Tyler from Northern Accents
bought a few of her pieces and
sold them in their shop on
Lakelse Ave.

While in Queen Charlotte
City, Irene worked at the post
office for five years while she
painted part-time. She says of her
contact with post office customers,
"It was almost like being the local
bartender."