Opening in April 2025, this exhibit dives into the excitement of creating and experimenting! Featuring Beverley Smith's vibrant mixed media works that fuse woven beadwork, paints, markers, and a whole lot of energetic scribbling.
Exhibit Schedule
Opens: April 5, 2025.
Opening Celebrations: April 5 from 2-4pm. Enjoy refreshments, grab a chat with Beverley and take part in an interactive art display! No tickets or registration required.
Artist Talk: April 17 at 7pm. Take a deep dive into Beverley’s work and her experience creating art in Tuscany. This is a free event, but registration is required.
Closes: April 30 at 3pm.
About the Show
The exhibition highlights artwork primarily created over the past two years at La Macina Di San Cresci, an artist residency in the Tuscan hills. After each residency, Beverley carefully transported her pieces back to her studio, nestled in the hills south of Thornbury, where the artmaking continued.
In addition to enjoying some stunning artwork, viewers will be invited to replicate Beverley’s process by creating their own scribbles - right on the gallery walls!
About the Artist
Beverley Smith has been a professional artist since the early 70’s after graduating from Sheridan College (The School of Design) and a textile design college in Stockholm, Sweden. She moved from Toronto to the Beaver Valley in 1980. She has become well known locally not only for her textile art, but also for her murals, maps and whimsical illustrations of the area.
From 2002 to 2014, Beverley ran the successful bead business “Holy Crow Beads”, which was included in the book America’s Best Bead Shops.
From 2008 to 2018, Beverley worked for an Italian Aid Organization to teach 32 adults in Northern Uganda jewellery designs and beading techniques. In 2014 she was asked to teach the same skills to a large group of craftspeople in Myanmar.
Over a number of years, Beverley drew the maps and illustrations for five books on the South Georgian Bay area. Valley Girls Publishing self-published the first three books. A fourth was published by Boston Mills Press, and more recently, Backroads of Southern Georgian Bay was produced by Firefly Books.
In 2023 she was accepted as an artist in residence in Tuscany, Italy, for a month. She was invited to return for the following autumn (2024) and will be returning in September 2025.
Beverley has been on the board of Visual Arts Ontario, the past President of the Society of Canadian Artists and is presently the chair of the Arts and Culture Council at the Blue Mountains Public Library.
She has shown her work in numerous solo and group shows throughout the years, with five solo shows at the L.E. Shore Gallery since the library opened in 1995. This month will be her fifth solo exhibit.
