3 Kisses: paintings, ceramics and sculptures by Jytte, Peter and Zoltan Kiss, Sept. 8-27 at the Ferry Building Gallery, 1414 Argyle Ave., West Vancouver. Opening reception: Tuesday, Sept. 8, 6-8 p.m. Meet the artists: Saturday, Sept. 12, 2-3 p.m.
Zoltan Kiss makes a mean martini.
His liquid concoctions are famous in his family, so much so that they have earned their own name - Zoltinis. As the story goes, it was over a round of Zoltinis that the artistic West Vancouver Kiss family hatched the idea to hold a joint art show.
Their collaborative exhibit was on the back burner for a few years, but it's finally happening. For the first time ever, Zoltan, his wife Jytte, and their son Peter will be displaying their paintings, ceramics and sculptures together from Sept. 8 to 27 at the Ferry Building Gallery. The exhibit is called 3 Kisses.
Peter, who runs a gallery on Granville Island with his wife, artist and jeweller Tania Gleave, plans to show his painted wood sculptures in addition to a couple of wall hangings that he describes as "two-and-a-half-dimensional paintings."
"Dad will be showing predominantly paintings, but I think a few of his ceramic pieces," Peter notes. "My mother will be showing monoprints and some pencil and ink sketches."
While the three artists may share a surname, Peter says there is little similarity between the work he and his parents create.
"We're quite independent, we've found our own little niches," he says.
Originally from Hungary, Zoltan left his native country during the Second World War while he was still an architecture student and spent five years in Denmark, where be met Jytte and trained in pottery, before moving to West Vancouver in 1950. He completed his architecture degree at UBC in 1951 and worked for the firm Thompson, Berwick, Pratt before launching his own practice. Although long retired from the industry, architectural motifs remain prevalent in his paintings.
Meanwhile, Jytte has always been an avid crafter, dabbling in stained glass, weaving, enameling and the like. The upcoming Ferry Building show marks her first formal exhibition of framed artworks.
Needless to say, Peter grew up in creative household. "I have no training in art, so I always say it came from being surrounded by it," he says.
"Everybody was making something and putting it up on the wall or on a shelf." Through osmosis he developed an understanding of art. "You just begin to appreciate form, shape, colour, that sort of thing." Before venturing into the professional art world, Peter earned a degree in zoology and worked as a marine biologist. He later went back to school to study architecture and practiced the craft, like his father.
"But there was just too many straight lines for me, too many rules," he says.
Peter has been a full-time artist for the last 26 years and opened his Granville Island gallery in 2001. He gravitated toward sculpture, in part, he says, because no one else in his family was doing it.
"My dad was so good at everything else. He wasn't doing any wood sculpture, so it was a niche that was available." The accessibility of wood sculpture was also appealing. There's no need for a kiln or expensive welding equipment. Peter requires only construction lumber from Home Depot, a few tools and some glue to create his 3-D figurative works. "It's not really super deep, you know, it's got a little message and it's fun and it looks good and it makes people smile." His whimsical pieces often have equally playful titles, which he tends to think up after the work is finished. Sculptures available for sale in his gallery include "Visitor (from a parallel universe)," "Where the Lightening Collided!" and "Miner for a Heart of Gold," to name a few.
"The title arrives either while I'm working on the piece, because I'm thinking about it, or it arrives when it's finished and I stand back and look at it and I figure out what its story is." Before the 3 Kisses exhibit was titled as such, Peter put forward his own suggestion, but his play on the family name was promptly vetoed. "I wanted to call it The Triple X Show," he says with a laugh. "I think my father was not too sure about that idea."
