The five artists featured in A Meeting Place—Kay Aubanel, Elisabeth Galante, Eva Lapka, Cynthia van Frank, Pat Walsh—have had a long and deep connection to the Visual arts Centre both as artists and teachers. Each has been instrumental in shaping the Centre into the bilingual, multi-disciplinary studio art school it is today. Curated by artist, writer and former VAC executive director Victoria LeBlanc, this exhibition marks that contribution and celebrates their unique artistic voices.
While each artist explores personal themes and styles, a common theme evident in all their work is that of human vulnerability. Kay Aubanel and Cynthia van Frank guide us through issues of fragility and resilience: Aubanel with her vigorous rendering of uprooted tree trunks, and van Frank in portraits of her aging mother and objects that speak to the rituals of caregiving. Eva Lapka’s ceramic pieces express vulnerable, often liminal states of being through fragmentation and the overlapping of human and natural worlds. Elisabeth Galante’s intimate watercolours resemble visual haiku; their minimal gestures and subtle tonality seem to provoke open-ended conversations. Pat Walsh’s plein air paintings document her fascination with water’s paradox—its strength and yet transitory nature. All these works attest to an aesthetic richness and mastery of materials honed over a lifetime of artmaking.
Victoria LeBlanc is an artist, writer, curator and teacher. Studies include BA & MA, Concordia University (creative writing); art studies Concordia, Toronto School of Art and London School of Art; post-graduate studies in visual literacy, McGill University. She was the Executive Director of the Visual Arts Centre and McClure Gallery from 1996 – 2017 and Curator of the Victoria Hall Gallery in Westmount from 1998 – 2022. As a visual artist, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada; her work can be found in both corporate and private collections. She has contributed to over 50 publications on Canadian artists and is the author of Clay Roots: the Potters’ Club and its legacy at the Visual Arts Centre (2021) and two collections of poetry, Hold (2019) and River / Riven (2024).
Born in Calgary Alberta, Kay Aubanel has lived in Quebec for over 60 years. She studied advanced painting and drawing at Sir George Williams (Concordia) University and etching at the École des Beaux Arts de Montréal, as well as two summer sessions at the Vermont Studio Centre. In 1990 she received a Bourse de Perfectionnement from CALQ and in 1996 a bursary from the Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Culture for a three-month artist-in-residency in Lübeck Germany. Her work is in private and public collections including the Prêt-d’œuvres-d’art du Musée de Québec, the Canada Council Art Bank and Loto Québec. She was an active member of Powerhouse for a decade and taught drawing and painting at the Visual Arts Centre for twenty-seven years. She has drawn and painted en plein-air throughout Canada and the USA, as well as in France and Germany. Continual contact with nature and the urge to celebrate it are the greatest stimulants to the artist’s work.
Born in New York in 1953, Elisabeth Galante studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, École du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and Concordia University (fine arts), Oberlin College and Indiana University (musical performance). She has taught drawing and painting at the Visual Arts Centre since 1982 and was director of Fine and Applied Arts from 1985-2020. Her drawings and watercolours are widely exhibited and are represented in numerous private and corporate collections. Professional experience also includes teaching classical flute studies and chamber music at Concordia University, 1974-1988. Additionally, Elisabeth’s 30-year study and practice of the art of tea is echoed in the concentrated awareness of her painting process and has contributed a contemplative spirit to this recent body of small works.
Eva Lapka was born in Czechoslovakia and since 1968 has been living in Montreal where she began her career as a ceramic artist. She started teaching in 1988 at L’Institut des métiers d’art and la Commission de formation professionnelle, and in 1990 at the Visual Arts Centre, where she was the Director of the Ceramics Department from 1999 to 2013. She has participated in over a hundred solo and group exhibitions and her works can be found in numerous collections across Canada, the U.S. and Europe as well as in 8 museum collections. She is the recipient of several awards and grants including from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, SODEC, the Quebec Ministry of International Relations, the Conseil des métiers d’arts du Québec, the Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs (today the Ministry of Culture and Communications), as well as the Ministry of Culture for the Czech Republic. In 2012 she was elected a member of the Canadian Royal Academy of Arts.
Cynthia van Frank is a Montreal-based artist and educator whose work explores memory, care, and loss through deeply personal narratives. Working in painting, oil pastel, and clay, she transforms intimate family experiences into universal reflections on resilience and mortality. Lest We Forget, her ongoing series, examines her 93-year-old mother’s journey through dementia, intertwining personal history with inherited trauma. Her work has been featured in exhibitions, documentary films, video interviews, and published articles. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a degree in Art Education from Concordia University, Cynthia also studied at the New York Studio School. She taught adults at the Visual Arts Centre for over 30 years and has spent more than 15 years inspiring young artists at The Study School. Exhibiting at the McClure Gallery holds deep significance, as many of her former students continue their artistic journeys there.
Pat Walsh is a founding member of Powerhouse Gallery in Montreal, one of Canada’s oldest artist-run centres, now called La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse. A multi-disciplinary artist, Walsh has exhibited widely in Montreal and eastern Canada. She graduated from Mount Allison University with a BFA and completed her MFA in Studio Art at Concordia University, with a double major in multimedia and photography. She has also worked in experimental poetry, theatre and television. She has a long history of teaching in the arts in both CEGEP and universities, and currently holds classes both at HAECC in Huntingdon and in Montreal at the Visual Arts Centre. She has been teaching at the Visual Arts Centre for 50 years.
