The art of living well: Whistler celebrates arts & culture
As a result of the Legacy Now program, Whistler is reaping the benefits of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Whistler Winter Festival (formally Celebration 2010) is an annual festival of arts and culture which takes place in Whistler each February. The event has been held since Canada's successful bid for the 2010 Winter Games in 2003. Throughout the month of February, local and visiting artists from every discipline perform, exhibit and generally celebrate the arts in Whistler.
Integrating arts into the fabric of the community - Whistler Arts Council
Perhaps it's a combination of its relaxed lifestyle and inspirational natural surroundings, but Whistler attracts more than its share of highly creative artists and artisans, writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers and fashion designers. The resort is home to a vibrant and thriving arts and culture scene with numerous art galleries, studios and eclectic events that celebrate Whistler's unique local talents. In fact, Whistler was designated a Cultural Capital of Canada in 2009. The Whistler Arts Council is the umbrella organization that oversees the strategies and events that integrate arts into the fabric of the community, including the Children's Arts Festival, ARTrageous, annual performance series, art walks, theatre and street entertainment. www.whistlerartscouncil.com
Whistler's Roots
Whistler pioneers Alex and Myrtle Philip learned of lakes overflowing with fish, high mountains, and clear streams in the Whistler Valley, and took the three-day journey from Vancouver to Whistler by boat and pack horse to discover their dream. They purchased 10 acres of land, and in 1914 Rainbow Lodge opened for business on the shores of Alta Lake. In the same year the Pacific Great Eastern Railway opened, allowing easy travel to Rainbow Lodge. This quickly made it the most popular resort destination west of Banff and Jasper - and a successful summer resort destination for 50 years before Whistler was considered a winter one. Today, Whistler valley is still a draw for the mountains, rivers and lakes and extensive activities including paddling, hiking, mountain biking, golfing, swimming, and enjoying the lively village atmosphere. The fishing is still extensive and Whistler's most popular park, Rainbow Park, is the site of the original lodge.
Whistler photographers expose Whistler extremes to the world
Whistler is a photographer's epic playground and dazzling canvas. It is also the home of famous and infamous sport, portrait, wedding, landscape and nightlife photographers. Every day in Whistler offers opportunities for the thousands of shots you see in travel, ski, snowboard, and mountain culture magazines, in newspapers, and on web sites around the world. Photographers like Jordan Manley, Brian Hockenstein, Eric Berger and Blake Jorgenson often get extreme, spending their winter days following freeskiers and snowboarders throughout Whistler and to mountain settings around the world, including Alaska, the Alps and the Andes. In summer, they follow professional mountain bikers and rock climbers through Whistler's forests, canyons and crevasses around the world. One extreme picture is worth a thousand words, but these Whistler photographers are full of stories about how they get their best shots.
Public art scattered throughout the Whistler Valley
Beyond the natural beauty of our surroundings, Whistler also boasts an array of public art pieces scattered throughout the Whistler Valley. The Resort Municipality of Whistler's Public Art Committee - founded in 1996 - regularly commissions pieces by local, regional and national artists with the help of other resort partners to be constructed and built into the Whistler environment. So far, over 20 pieces have been installed including everything from metal sculptures and wood carvings to murals and collaborative ceramics. These art pieces include:
- Three Ravens installed by Crabapple Creek created by James Smith in 2009 using recycled materials including bike tires
- the red cedar sculpture, Running with Spirit, installed in the Olympic and Paralympic Village Whistler, created by Johnnie Abraham and Jonathan Joe of the Lil'wat Nation and commissioned by VANOC
- the Storyteller's Chair inscribed with "Once Upon a Time" in numerous languages by Carlos Basanta installed in Village Park West
- the metal sculpture, Whisky Jack Balance, created by Douglas Taylor in Whistler Creek and commissioned by Intrawest.
A full list of pieces and the intimate stories behind all of the art can be found here.
Whistler's own Group of Seven artists lead triple lives
Whistler is a creative community full of creative minds, but almost every artist in Whistler leads a double - or even triple - life beyond painting, photography, film-making, writing or crafting.
Stephen Vogler’s naked history of Whistler too raunchy for public places
Whistler's Stephen Vogler spent 34 years researching his new book, Only in Whistler, an exhilarating trip through Whistler's hippie history that was deemed too naughty upon its release in October 2009 to be stocked by BC Ferries, owing to the actual ski bums on the cover. Vogler's insights into ski-bum culture from the 1970s through to present-day Whistler make him the ideal guide for a tour of Whistler's ‘clothing-optional' culture.
Former prison manager now heart of Whistler’s literary community
Eight years ago, social worker, prison manager and management consultant Stella Harvey was a fish out of water. Now, she's the heart of Whistler's literary community. When she first arrived in Whistler, hoping to make good on a life-long goal to write a novel, Harvey's remedy for isolation was to create community of likeminded wordsmithing souls. Harvey's willingness to throw open her living room to all creative creatures could be defined as the "inciting incident" that got Whistler's literary story rolling. Eight years later, the Whistler Writer's Group has a mailing list of 200 members, has instigated four critique groups of writers who meet regularly, seen several members publish their work, brought dozens of leading Canadian authors to town for readings and workshops, and hosted the Whistler Writers Festival and a writer-in-residence program.
Sea to Sky Highway construction inspires children's picture book - Mountain Machines
The six-year, $600 million Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project didn't just inspire the thousands of travelers who make the trip each day between Squamish and Whistler. It also inspired the fascination of children and a brand new children's picture book. Whistler author Sara Leach boned up on her heavy machinery vocabulary during the construction years, turning her son Ben into a two-year-old who knew the difference between a front-end-loader, a grader, and a dump truck. The elementary school teacher and author who grew up skiing Whistler has since turned that knowledge into a rhyming counting picture book for children, called Mountain Machines. Released in October 2009, the book, illustrated by California artist Steven Corvelo, is full of rhyming text about groomers, pipe dragons, gondolas and other ski hill machinery.
Poets partner with Resort Municipality of Whistler to embed poetry into public art
Whistler earned itself an unofficial poet laureate when the municipality, in conjunction with sculptor Joan Baron, embarked on a novel public art project that would embed poetry into sculpture. Pam Barnsley, a local mystery novelist and one-time screenwriter for The Beachcombers, has had two of her poems become part of Whistler's landscape. The poetry sculpture is called Poet's Pause and it's located by the Alta Lake Station House, on Alta Lake. These are interactive sculptures - one of two huge armchairs, and one of a series of chimes - and people can sit in the chairs or ring the chimes. Fellow poet Mary MacDonald also contributed a poem. Each year, Kevin McFarland, a bureacrat with poetic sympathies, issues a call for entries for new poems to be incorporated into the sculpture, receiving submissions from around the world.