Now a little history. The Galleria is a consignment gallery and we have been in business for more than 30 years now. We are extremely proud to represent all the talented Canadian artists that we do. Over the years there have been hundreds of artisans that have sold their work in the store, in fact there are still a few that started out with us 30 years ago. They still bring their work in for sale. One of those, is a potter called Dave Settles. He now runs Fairview Studios, where he teaches pottery classes to dozens of new students every year. The pots that he makes in his studio classes for demonstration pieces are the ones that he brings into the store for sale. All of them are quite unique as he demonstrates different techniques in the construction of his pottery, all the way from his throwing methods and ways to decorate the clay, to glazing and colour. We don't get a whole lot from Dave, but when we do, we are always amazed at how he can make pottery pieces so different.

We are back at Monday again and almost at the end of April. It seems we are all keenly waiting for the trees to leaf and the flowers to grow, at least we are in Calgary. We just want a little colour in our lives, after the long, cold winter.

Luckily we happen to have a little colour. The newest addition to the Galleria are 2 ladies from BC. They hand dye their pure silk scarves. These new scarves came in this morning. You can see that the colours are just magnificent. The pictures don't do them justice.

This is the great thing about Galleria, there is always something new to see. Last week we added 4 new artisans. These artisans include a new jeweller and another watercolour artist, Jim Ellis. We will be having a showing of Jim's work in June. We now have more than 20 artists that paint in either watercolours or oils. The diversity of their images is amazing.

Good Easter Monday,

Walter Kushniryk is just one of our 28 potters. He has been contributing his work to the Galleria for about 4 years. He worked under the tutelage of David Settles for a number of years. His work is unique and meticulous in it simplicity. It follows the "Arts & Crafts" style that became popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. Walter spends many hours on each piece, carving out flowers, leaves and sometimes a face in the clay body. The glazes that he uses are subtle and they beautifully enhance his work. You can see more of his work at the Galleria web site; http://www.calgarycraftedgifts.com/, but here are a few images of his work.

Well here it is Saturday already and Easter is here. Finally the weather in Calgary has taken a turn for the better and Spring is in the air. The Galleria has recently opened a new "Dragonfly Gallery." We have so much space that we were able to open this new area for the displaying of our monthly shows. Right now Dermot O'Kane, a Calgarian photographer, has his work up for viewing.

Hello and welcome!
I hope to help promote Canadian Arts & Crafts worldwide. I own a store called the Galleria Inglewood. We are located in the glorious city of Calgary, in Alberta Canada. I represent more than 350 Canadian artisans. The store itself has been in business since 1978. I started working here in 1982 and became the proud owner of Galleria in 2005. There have been a few upheavals in the past year or so, the biggest of which entailed moving the store from the location that it had been in for close to 25 years. I like to call it the move from hell. Actually, now that I look back on it, I can't believe that we did it in less than a month. The old location was about 7500 square feet and the new one is well over 9500 square feet. So you can well imagine that it was not a small endeavour. Luckily there were a large number of people that pitched in to help. The most important of which were my staff and a few dozen of the artisans, oh yes and my husband Dean (who is lucky to still be alive, after the "help" that he was.) If you are interested I can go into details.
Anyway, I look forward to the chance to let you know about as many of the artisans that I can. I welcome your comments and trust that we will be around for a good long time.