Cube gallery is currently exhibiting a series called ‘Ottawa Alleyways’. The gallery describes the subject as: “quaint or grotty, neat as pin or sketchy and scary. These are Ottawa's back alleys - those surprising service lanes and discretely annexed arteries that harkens back to an era when kids, delivery boys and repair men were politely but firmly instructed to use the rear entrance, please. A place for a quiet puff, a purview of the back yards and back doors of the nation's capital.”
The gallery is showing the works of eight different Ottawa artists, all of whom have their own interpretations and portrayals of Ottawa’s back alleys.
The front windows of the gallery always have pictures or sculptures displayed and this latest Alleyways exhibit has often made me stop and look awhile. Not only is it neat to see places I recognize transformed into art, but there is something about the subject matter that attracts me. Perhaps it’s because many pictures depict paths –drawing me in and inviting my imagination to walk in through the frame, down the alley and on beyond where the canvas stops.
I’ve also long been a fan of roads less traveled, overgrown alleys, and secret pathways. It can be fun to walk along a busy street, observing the other pedestrians – and in this neighbourhood the countless dogs and strollers – but it’s a more personal and intimate experience to walk along quiet sideways, to take a short-cut perhaps only a few locals know about, or to discover a narrow footpath through a thicket of trees.
Some of the art in this current exhibit reflect this intimacy for me – revealing hidden parts of the city I have not yet discovered or demonstrating that, of those I have, someone else is in on the secret and values them as much as I.
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