There are a couple art exhibit openings happening this weekend.
The University of Lethbridge New Media Club takes over the University of Lethbridge’s downtown Penny Building on fifth street across for the Penny Coffee House.

The New Media Advanced Studio Exhibition 2011 plus the works of  New Media MFA candidate Marta Blicharz’s “Breaking the Shell”  runs April 10-21 from 1-4 p.m..
 The opening reception is 7-9 p.m., April 9. As usual there will be snacks and a cash bar.

 There are also three big exhibitions opening at the Bowman Arts Centre.

The Students of Life, Lethbridge Figure Drawing Group will be displaying their latest works at the Bowman. There are plenty of nudes in a variety of mediums from pencil and paper, oil and paint.

“They’ve been working here for close to two decades,” said Bowman Arts Centre Curator Darcy Logan.

“These are going to be all recent works,” he continued adding there will be 22 pieces from 11 different artists.
 Logan is also excited to present local photographer Kim Siever’s first exhibition. “Facets and Facades” will be on display at the Yates Theatre Waterfield Gallery.

“I’m really pleased to present his first exhibition. He likes to photograph different textures of distressed items. It’s extraordinary,” said Logan of the 16 pieces in the exhibit.

 One of the most interesting exhibits is from local musician Peter Gilligan, who gets to show a different facet of his personality in “Under Christo’s Panel — The Recycled Imagination of Peter Gilligan,” which opens in the main gallery at the Bowman Arts Centre.

“This has been in the works for a long time. Salvage is my hobby,” said Gilligan, setting up a massive canvass over the door of the main gallery, actually part of Christo’s canvass, which was a massive 30 mile square canvass, of which he salvaged only a small part.

 “You enter through this circus tent into this magical world of imagination, of fountains and ballerinas,”  he continued adding he creates sculptures and fountains out of found items like discs, pipes, assorted pieces of metal, bearings and bolts which he has found and which fit naturally into each other.

“I’m not a welder, so I wanted to find items that fit into each other so then it is only a matter of fitting them together with a bolt,” he continued, demonstrating how two items fit together like perfect puzzle pieces.

 The centrepiece — a  fountain created with a variety of discs set on an old plastic pallet and capped off by the lamp that used to hang over the pool table at local watering hole, the Slice, will actually have running water. There are also a few items from his ‘hippie days,’ including some hand drawn gift certificates from when he used to run a leather store in California.

 There are also wooden cabinets he created and a few of his mother’s oil paintings of him.

“All of these things have been building up inside me. It feels so good to release them,” he said.
The opening reception for all three exhibits are 7-9 p.m. at the Bowman Arts Centre and Waterfield gallery.