Artist Michael Jorden talked about the Okanagan Art Gallery recently at a meeting of the Rotary Club of Osoyoos. Wine tasters, he said, self select as art buyers and Osoyoos has more tourist traffic than Oliver’s downtown. (Richard McGuire photo)
The Okanagan Art Gallery in Osoyoos is off to a strong start in its first year and the number of participating member artists is almost at the limit.
That’s the word from Michael Jorden, gallery secretary and one of the member artists, who spoke at the Rotary Club of Osoyoos earlier this month.
“We’re now up to 23 members and we are very close to being full,” said Jorden. “Because we are virtually full, we are also getting very picky about who comes in.”
The gallery is located in a former law office at 8302 Main Street across from Shoppers Drug Mart and between Shoe Biz and A New Leaf Tea Room. It has been open since late August.
Unlike the Osoyoos Art Gallery, which features exhibitions that change roughly each month, the Okanagan Art Gallery is a co-operative and the participating South Okanagan artists each have a wall and refresh their own work as needed.
Prior to moving to Osoyoos, the gallery operated four and a half years as the Oliver Art Gallery in Oliver.
The move to Osoyoos has been a good one, he said.
Jorden observed that Oliver gets tourists who visit its wineries, but with very little accommodation, tourists don’t stay in town and browse.
“There are more hotel rooms in this building than there are in all of Oliver,” Jorden said, referring to the Best Western Sunrise Inn where Rotary meets.
The artists learned in their time in Oliver that their real market is tourists, especially those who come to the region to enjoy the wineries.
“Wine tasters seem to self select for being the kind of people who want to acquire art and take it home,” said Jorden.
The growth of the South Okanagan as a wine region has also extended tourism in Osoyoos beyond the summer months so it now runs from around Easter to mid-October, Jorden said.
Without a ski hill, the winter months bring fewer tourists, but snowbirds pick up the slack, even if they are more “frugal.”
“This is a fairly recent phenomenon and I think it’s a lasting phenomenon,” said Jorden. “We know that every major resort hotel in town is booked up not only for this winter, but for the next two winters. So whether the snowbirds buy art or not is questionable, but they will, I think, take art lessons. So we’re going to give art lessons.
“Quite frankly, we’re just happy that people come and visit the gallery.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
