Going where no artist has gone
FRANK PEEBLES / PRINCE GEORGE CITIZEN
SEPTEMBER 1, 2016 09:49 AM
The Letter X by Kat Tecson Valcourt.
In the Bible there is a story about three servants who were entrusted, by their king, with amounts of money and told to use it wisely. One invested aggressively, one invested moderately and one simply held it in trust. The latter was admonished by the king upon his return for being wasteful with an opportunity, the moderate investor was soundly applauded and rewarded, and the aggressive investor was celebrated with gusto for making the most of the opportunity.
Kat Tecson Valcourt heard this parable in Catholic elementary school in her home country of The Philippines and today she is applying it to her art. She has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art-Interior Design and is an active painter, sculptor, and especially a mixed-media creator. She has always known art to be involved in her life, but these days, her goal is to concentrate on her artwork full time.
The Alphabet Project is the latest project she took on that drove home her own feelings of wanting art to become her full-time job.
Source: Brent Braaten
"I was 100 per cent all in, making the letter X," she said. Each artist involved in the Alphabet Project was given an honorarium to cover their art costs, but Tecson Valcourt spent beyond the budget and didn't think twice about it. "This was going to represent my city, and it was going to represent me as an artist. Why not go full throttle? I wanted to put all of myself into it, like that aggressive investor in the parable. And that's what I want to do with my art: all in, go for it fully, pour myself into the artwork."
Her choice would make her grandfather proud. He moved to Canada many years before Tecson Valcourt came here. Her grandfather pressured her to come and continue her art studies at Emily Carr University. Her father was also an artist, so it was deeply involved in her family atmosphere. She did not complete a masters degree, but she did move to Canada (the last of her grandfather's 25 grandchildren to do so, along with all the associated aunts and uncles) and did become a well known artist in Prince George, where she settled with her husband Ken and their blended family of three kids.
Tecson Valcourt moved to Prince George in 2010 after living in Vancouver since 1987. At Ken's urging, she joined the Artist's Co-op straight away, to meet other local artists and give her a vessel for her artistic urges.
It worked. Soon she was selling her works, displaying her stuff in high profile galleries, and taking part in coveted projects like the PGSO's painted violin fundraiser, the 6x6 Art Auction, the 2015 Canada Winter Games art market, one of the Art Battle contenders, her designs ended up on the silk and cashmere clothing made by the Vida Clothing Company, and her work featured on the online gallery Light Space And Time.
When the Community Arts Council and the Prince George Citizen partnered to present the Alphabet Project - a 26-week feature in which each letter of the alphabet is assigned at random to a notable local artist and splashed in The Citizen as a way to celebrate the paper's 100th year - she dove in with her usual flurry.
Unlike most of the other letters, hers was done in three dimensional form. She built a knee-high X made of wood, acrylic, and covered in layers of resin. Within those transparent layers she inlaid scenes of the city's history: images from the Exploration Place historic photo collections, wood chips from Lomak's service runs to the pulp mills, toy trains to symbolize that definitive local transportation mode, flakes of gold to represent the city's mining past, the X superstructure itself built to represent the meeting of the two major B.C. highways and two major rivers at this spot. In the crux of it all she sat a miniature of Mr. PG fishing for whatever might come next in the region's future.
"I've always considered myself an avant garde artist," she said. "I go where no artist has gone before. I like to find unrelated things and find a way for them to work together, to tell a story or show something bigger. When you give me a project, I obsess. I want my art to be innovative, unique, but also affordable. If someone can't afford one of my pieces, I encourage them and I will teach them how to do the same thing themselves. It gets them involved in art and thinking like an artist, and making something that interests them."
That public engagement has followed her art career since Grade 1 back in The Philippines when she would make money selling her complex art doodles and sketches to her classmates. Classes were assigned notepads for their schoolwork and she was constantly having to make excuses to her teachers to get resupplied with notepads, because her sales were so brisk.
She has a number of entrepreneurial ventures in Prince George, mostly in real estate. It allows her to focus on her art at night, when Ken is working his graveyard shifts.
"I'm like a hummingbird," Tecson Valcourt said. "My brain keeps jumping and jumping and jumping. Art is perfect for that. It gives my mind something to do through my hands."
Her work sells at locations like the Via Rail / Tourism Prince George gallery and the one at Studio 2880.
"I think I'm ready to do it full time," she said. "I believe this is my calling in life."
She also teaches art. She has conducted classes in scrapbook therapy to alcohol ink. The latter course she is about to teach again, along with a seminar on Brusho watercolour crystals.
To find out how to sign up for her classes, or to become more familiar with Tecson Valcourt's art, visit her Facebook page entitled Kats Eye Original Art, or her Koncept Art & Design Specialist (KADS) website.
