This past weekend, we celebrated the opening of What We Carry / Carries Us at Hearth Gallery on Bowen Island, and we’re still reflecting on what a special evening it was.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate this new body of work. Sharing these pieces and the conversations they inspired made for an unforgettable evening.

To the incredible artists, Eileen Kiyonaga and Rebecca Santry, who shared the gallery, thank you for your generosity, creativity, and for making the exhibition such a thoughtful and inspiring experience.

Our sincere gratitude to the entire team at Hearth Gallery for creating such a beautiful space to gather, and especially to our curator for bringing this exhibition together with such care and vision. Your thoughtful guidance and dedication made this show what it is.

Most importantly, thank you to everyone who made the trip to Bowen Island to celebrate with us. Your support, curiosity, and conversations are what give these works life beyond the studio.

What We Carry / Carries Us is a reflection on the stories held within the materials around us—and the connections we carry with us long after we leave a place. We’re grateful to have shared those stories with all of you.

Thank you for being part of it.

 

Photos by: @josephsantryphoto

@eileenkiyonaga @rebeccasantryart @hearth_artsonbowen

‘What We Carry / What Carries Us’

Artists: Rebecca Santry, Brent Comber, Eileen Kiyonaga
Show Date: July 29th – Aug 17th

What We Carry / What Carries Us brings together the work of Rebecca Santry, Eileen Kiyonaga, and Brent Comber in an exhibition shaped by movement, material, and the relationship between structure and flow.
Working across painting and sculpture, the exhibition explores how experiences of being in nature become translated and carried through making. Inspired by moments of immersion outdoors and the restorative energy held within those experiences, each artist responds through their own medium – creating forms that hold memory, sensation, and connection.

Inspired by moments of being in nature, Rebecca Santry’s recent paintings and mixed media works build on ideas explored in her last series Soft Fascination. Fluid fields of colour and movement are interrupted by harder sculptural lines and openings of exposed raw canvas, creating a dialogue between gesture and structure. These spaces suggest moments beyond the visible, reflecting on what remains after an experience in nature, not the landscape itself, but fragments of memory, sensory impressions, and traces gathered outdoors, leaving imprints that settle and continue to shape the work. @rebeccasantryart

Eileen Kiyonaga’s multidisciplinary practice explores subtle structures and rhythms beneath the visible surface of the natural world. Through layered materials, quiet forms, and restrained gestures, her work draws attention to the elements of connection that often go unnoticed; revealing subtle shifts, patterns, and the quiet forces that shape our experience of nature. @eileenkiyonaga

Brent Comber’s vessels ground the exhibition through material presence and form. Guided by a respect for the inherent character of wood, his practice reveals rather than conceals grain, variation, and the marks left by time, allowing the material to carry its own history. @brentcomberoriginals

Together, the works consider how organic forms can capture and transmit restorative energy found in nature. Through line, grain, gesture, and form, What We Carry / What Carries Us invites viewers to reflect on what shapes us, what sustains us, and what remains long after the moment has passed.

Join us at the Hearth Gallery on Bowen Island on August 1, 2026 for the Artist Pary: 6 – 8 pm

430 Bowen Island Trunk Road

Now Represented by the Tofino Gallery of Contemporary Art

We are pleased to announce our new representation with the Tofino Gallery of Contemporary Art. This exciting partnership brings Brent Comber Originals to one of British Columbia’s premier destinations for contemporary art on the West Coast. Visitors to the gallery can now experience a curated selection of Brent’s work, including the Legacy Vessels and Faceted Bowls, each reflecting his ongoing exploration of material, place, and craftsmanship.

We look forward to this new chapter and are honoured to be represented alongside an exceptional roster of artists.

Discover more HERE

April, 2026

 

A New Series Takes Shape
Carved from the language of place, our new spheres are inspired by the quiet poetry of landscape as viewed from above.

Like gazing from an airplane window, watching the earth unfold beneath you…ridgelines, valleys, and contours are revealed in soft repetition.

Each piece holds that perspective: a memory of landscape translated into form. 

Photos by: @mandysheen.photography

March, 2026

Lath Bench
Passing Through – The bench began as a tree on the wet coast of British Columbia, where fog drifts in from the Pacific and settles quietly into the forest. It was Nootka Cypress, a tree shaped by rain, wind, and salt air – growing slowly, patiently, gathering the character of the landscape around it.

The bench emerged as a series of flowing laths – thin, graceful lengths of wood that curve and sweep like a current. Each line bends gently, not rigidly, as if remembering the way the tree once moved in the forest canopy. There is rhythm in the spacing, a quiet cadence that repeats along the form.

It is a bench, yes – but it is also a passage.

Light moves through it first. In the morning, the sun slips between the laths and scatters delicate lines across the ground. By afternoon, shadows stretch and braid themselves beneath it. The bench never casts a single shape; it breathes with the day.

Wind follows. It passes easily through the open structure, carrying the scent of cedar forests and ocean air. Rain arrives next – beading on the smooth grain before slipping quietly through the spaces below, returning to the earth.

Nothing is held. Nothing is trapped. It is a place to sit – and a place where the world continues to pass through.

March, 2026