For the first time in modern memory, downtown Prince George will have a night market.
This Saturday from 7 p.m. to midnight, the Black Donkey Cafe is initiating an outdoor bazaar for local merchants and artisans of all kinds.
According to Black Donkey proprietor Chris Blackier, the corner of Third Avenue and George Street is the place where more than 20 local vendors will set up their wares in the painted parking lot beside the cafe. Many of the vendors will be familiar business faces, but others - and that is the attraction of a night market - will be the rarely seen.
Boneyard Skullptures, for example, has only been seen at a few past public events, most notably Northern FanCon, so it's a rare chance for owner-artist Dayna Slater to introduce the public to her unique and captivating creations, all of them somehow utilizing bones and skulls from our fallen animal brothers and sisters.
She stresses that all of these items come to her in a state of death. She does not hunt animals nor does she commission anyone to hunt on her behalf. She is using the remains of the creatures who would otherwise disappear into the ashes and dust of time. Most artists name their original pieces, and so does she, but more like a pet owner picks a name for an animal friend. There's Billy and Oogo and Betty and Leviathan, and many more, and all of them represent months of hard work.
It's impossible work for the squeamish. She has to prepare the bone material for whatever painting and gluing is about to come. That requires removal of all the hair, flesh, tissue, brain matter, etc. It is a smelly, goopy, strong-minded science familiar to other art genres as well, like taxidermy, some leather-craft, and the makers of hand drums.
"I have a really wonderful landlady who lets me do my thing, and I have wonderful neighbours who are cool with it," she said, notwithstanding the skunk incident. "I'm so, so, sorry, I learned my lesson, I will never work with a skunk again."
The process involves all kinds of common chemicals like soda ash or peroxide, depending on the goal she has in mind. She turns birds feet and wings and patches of fur into adornments for the skulls and bones as they become wall hangings, sculptures, jewelry, treasure boxes, walking staffs, etc. She brings in wooden dowels, pingpong balls, beetle wings, all sorts of accessories to turn the overall creation into something stunning, striking, evocative.
It's too much for some people. She surmises that she might be the artist in Prince George who gets the most hate mail. Her work is sometimes met with open, outspoken hostility from people with the mistaken view that she is somewhere in between conjuring evil forces or abusing animals for personal gain.
Neither is true, she insisted. She never knew any of these animals before they came her way already deceased and she shakes her head in disbelief that anyone still believes in magical sorcery.
"I'm just paying tribute to animals, showing people what they represent on this earth, what beauty humans are capable of and the relationship humans have to the natural world," she said.
She still remembers being fascinated as a child by the animal remains she would come across out in the forest. She had a scientist's eye, but also an artist's heart.
She was always one to colour and draw and glue, and eventually the two concepts met in her mind.
"It was a moose skull with a crooked antler," she said of her first one. "I strapped it to the quad, it was awkward but I brought it home and painted it."
That first effort is now in someone's private art collection.
Her work also caught the eye of visiting celebrity Tia Carrere who bought an original piece from Slater during Northern FanCon.
"Some people run away from the whole idea. I think they suffer from existential dread, thinking about death, but some people look at it up close, learn from it, turn over ideas in their mind, examine life as they look at the idea of death, and I think people grow from that," Slater said.
To ponder these things, or just shrug and feel wowed by the artistry Slater achieves, come down Saturday night to the first night market hosted by the Black Donkey.
"Also, as if I need to point it out, we get better Pokemon when there's more people around, and I have a feeling there's going to be a lot at the bazaar, so let's have this place lit with lures," said Blackier.
