News and event information for Williams Lake, BC - as it happens.

By Michael Toay

The Central Cariboo Arts & Cultural Society is a service organization which manages the Central Cariboo Arts Centre and assists and promotes over 70 art and culture groups within the Central Cariboo region.

Recently, their Coordinator, Leah Selk, acquired an intriguing historical photograph from the old Billy Miner Saloon, which is now the Boston Pizza bar. The Great Cariboo Steak Company was in what is now the Boston Pizza restaurant, where Selk worked her first job when she was 15. Later when she was old enough, she worked in The Billy Miner Saloon as well.

(Photo:  Historical photograph from the original Billy Miner Pub in Williams Lake, BC.)

Selk moved away to Victoria in 2002 to study in the Visual Arts program at Camosun College. Both Billy’s and the Steak Company closed shortly after, but Selk never forgot the old photos that populated the old saloon. “Of all the old photographs from that building, I remember this photo the most, and have often spoke (sic) of wanting to find her again. Something about her gumption with her pose and the cigarette just strikes me, plus I'm a sucker for nostalgia and anything vintage.”

Years later, after returning to Williams Lake, she wandered into Annie's Attic and was, as she puts it, “greeted by the ol' gal. It was a very exciting day, indeed!” Selk isn’t sure how the picture ended up at Annie's Attic. “I assume it was all auctioned off when the pub/resto closed. I've been conversing with some of the old staff and management, and we're pretty certain that the photograph I purchased used to be located in the restaurant near the hostess station. Some of us are trying to look through our old photos now to see if she's in any.”

But Selk doesn’t just collect vintage photographs. She works in a variety of artistic media. Her time at Camosun College afforded her “the opportunity to try many different art forms ranging from drawing and painting, sculpture, performance, to animation. I signed up with an interest primarily in drawing, painting and print media, though photography was where I found my niche.”

After she graduated from Camosun in 2004, Selk was accepted to the Concordia University Photography program in Montreal, where she worked as a photography technician for the department, completed two professional internship studies as a Digital Photography course teacher's assistant, completed two independent studies with Raymonde April, and curated for the 2008 Art Matters Festival. In an interesting turn of the wheel, the Art Matters Festival was originally launched in part by Julie Fowler, who is now the Executive Director for Island Mountain Arts in Wells, and Beth Holden, who is now the Station House Gallery Coordinator and President of the Williams Lake Community Arts Council. Says Selk, “Small world, heh?!”

Selk graduated from Concordia with distinction in 2008 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Photography, though she says she did “continue to take some drawing and print media courses while at Concordia.”

What did she do next? “During the summers of 2006 and 2007, I returned to Williams Lake to work at the Station House Gallery as their summer student. In the summer of 2007, I also fell in love with a guy I graduated from high school with (yeah, I had to move across the country to fall in love with someone from my hometown!).” Selk returned to Montreal for her final year of studies and she maintained a long distance relationship which “provided a lot of incentive to move home.” When she returned for good in 2008 the Station House Gallery had a timely opening for the Gallery Coordinator position. In 2010 she assumed her current position with the Central Cariboo Arts & Cultural Society.

Though she majored in photography, Selk doesn’t feel bound by or to any particular medium. “Drawing and painting has always been a staple in my life.” She also likes to “dabble in fibre arts (felting, lately), print media, graphic design, sculpture, or whatever medium I get my hands on and moves me to create with it.”

And what drives her work? What motivates her artistic vision? “Nostalgia, identity, environment, and the notion of home form the backbone for my artistic practice. My work is also about now and then, here and there, bitter and sweet, and inquires on relationships and love by way of landscapes and staged performance based images. Photography allows me to explore my own relationships - physical and emotional - with the world around me, capturing fragments that form a larger concept between various images.”

Interestingly, in a world that’s growing ever more digital, Selk still shoots on film. “The process is... a large part of my work. I prefer to use medium-format film cameras for positive (slide) and negative films”. She admits, though, the availability of film and proximity to film processing are becoming much more limited these days.

And where would she like to see the CCACS in five years? “I envision the CCACS to be a role model for other communities who wish to enhance and promote health and well-being through active and vibrant arts and culture.”

For more information on the CCACS, visit their website at centralcaribooarts.com.

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