The weather outside is frightful, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with your family for Family Day, Feb. 15.


Casa has just the ticket on their Youtube channel  as they will be offering the opportunity to create a 3-D family portrait out of air-dry clay.


“ It’s not regular clay, The Allied Arts Council is still closed, and people would be running back and forth. It gets a little crazy,” said Allied Arts Council Communications co-ordinator Kelaine Devine.
At noon on Feb. 15, Casa artists  Aaron Hagan and Claire Reid will be providing step-by step instructions to create air dry clay portraits and sculptures of family members and even pets on their Youtube channel http://bit.ly/CasaFamily or https://www.youtube.com/CASAlethbridge/.

“ They will be giving lessons about how to create figures and hair and other features,” Devine described.


Once the pieces are dry, finish them with watercolour or tissue paper decoupage. your finished pieces can be included in Casa’s virtual family gallery by tagging them @casalethbridge or email an image to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for a chance to win a free children’s course (ages 6-12).


Even though you can’t go inside the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, there are a lot of activities happening at the SAAG that you can check out online.
“ We usually have something once a week,” said Southern Alberta Public Engagement and Event Co-ordinator Courtney Faulkner.

 The next big event is an Art Talk curatorial tour Sunday, Jan. 31 from 2-3 p.m. featuring Vancouver based artist Anne Low who will be speaking about her “Figure Like Hearse” exhibit via Zoom.  She will be talking about her work and answering  questions about it. Sign in and log on through https://www.saag.ca/public-engagement-adults/curatorial-tour-anne-low

“ It’s like if you were at an exhibition opening  and you could ask the artist questions about their work,” Faulkner continued, noting SAAG Exhibitions usually run for two months, but Lowe’s exhibit will run for four months as in-person events aren’t allowed yet.

“She (Anne Low) is a sculptor, but she is also interested in textiles. She is interested in learning and maintaining old fabric techniques like creating something while sitting with a loom,” Faulkner said, adding Lowe is inspired by items  found around households like chairs and tables.

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery opens three new exhibits this week, with an added twist if patrons  want to err on the side of caution in a post Covid world.
“I’m doing a virtual tour on Instagram,” said SAAG public engagement and event co-ordinator Courtney Faulkner, noting she will be touring all three new exhibitions “Figure Like Hearse,” by Anne Low, Sarah Ferguson’s “Penumbra” and Angeline Simon’s “ A Phantom Speaks.”

The tour will be live on Instagram on Dec. 5 from 2-3 p.m. and will be posted on SAAG’s Facebook page as well as on the SAAG website.

“ We usually like to gather in person for the opening, but we aren’t doing that this year,” she continued, noting the SAAG is still open to the public during regular hours.
 Anne Low’s work explores in between states, exploring form, storage and transportation.

“Many of the works will travel packed inside another, where the container for the artworks is also hand-made while carefully considered as an equivalent form, stuffed with hay and handwoven fabric salvage. In this way, there is no separation from the skilled handcrafting by bodies from the structures which carry, support, and unveil an artwork in readiness for its intended public life. The physical structures which connect and protect are conditional and have an equivalent set of conditions in the creation of their form, from design to production, for the supported interior body of work to be able to live and perform,” according to the SAAG website.