Skillful: In Praise of the Human Hand

We often overlook how much time and patience is required to achieve true expertise. While speed and convenience are usually celebrated, the years of dedicated practice that underpin genuine mastery are hardly ever acknowledged.

Skillful, a new exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery, challenges that way of thinking.

Featuring works by Governor General's Award recipients Jane Kidd, Lou Lynn and Greg Payce, the exhibition is a reflection of what it means to devote a lifetime to making—working with materials until they become an extension of thought and transforming decades of exploration into objects that carry both technical precision and conceptual depth.

Walking through the gallery, visitors encounter three distinctly different artistic practices that are united by a shared reverence for craft. Monumental woven tapestries stretch across the walls with remarkable texture and detail, sculptural works in glass, bronze and steel transform familiar tools into elegant objects of contemplation, while ceramic vessels quietly play with perception, revealing hidden human forms as you move around them. Together, the works encourage visitors to slow down, look closer and appreciate not only the finished pieces, but the countless hours of experimentation, failure and refinement that made them possible.

When asked what it means to be truly skillful, none of the artists spoke about talent. They spoke about time.

For textile artist Jane Kidd, skill begins with integrity.

Towering woven tapestries immediately draw the eye. At first glance they appear richly patterned, but as viewers move closer, intricate organic forms begin to emerge—leaves, shells, skeletal structures and fragments of the natural world carefully woven into dense textile surfaces. The works reward patience, revealing new details the longer they are observed.

"I want to be skillful in the way I negotiate my materials," she says.

After decades of working with textiles, Kidd no longer sees material as something to control but something to understand. Her tapestries encourage viewers to slow down and appreciate the care and effort involved in creating each piece.

"I want people to take the time with the work," she explains. "When you spend time looking closely, you move beyond first impressions."

Glass and mixed-media sculptor Lou Lynn approaches skill from another direction.

Scattered throughout the gallery are sculptural works that transform familiar objects into something entirely unexpected. A wool comb, a shovel and other everyday forms are reimagined in bronze, glass and steel, blurring the line between utility and sculpture. Heavy industrial materials appear surprisingly graceful, while delicate glass becomes a symbol of strength and resilience.

For Lynn, mastery is found in intention.

"The work you see isn't an accident," she says. "It's very purposeful."

Nothing is arbitrary. Every piece reflects years of learning, experimentation and refinement. Having explored multiple mediums before discovering the sculptural possibilities of glass and bronze, Lynn's work demonstrates that craftsmanship is not about perfection but about making deliberate choices. She hopes visitors leave the exhibition questioning what craft can be.

For ceramic artist Greg Payce, Skillful is also a response to a period in contemporary art when craftsmanship was often dismissed in favour of concept alone.

His ceramic vessels are among the exhibition's most playful works. At first they appear as beautifully crafted forms arranged in careful groups. But as visitors shift their perspective, something unexpected happens: faces and human figures begin to emerge from the negative spaces between the vessels. The illusion is subtle and captivating, rewarding careful observation and reminding viewers that some of the most meaningful discoveries happen only when we take our time.

"There was a time when skill was devalued," he reflects. "The idea became more important than the making."

Payce doesn't reject conceptual thinking—his own work is deeply conceptual—but he questions the false divide that has sometimes separated ideas from craftsmanship. After all, pottery itself may be one of humanity's oldest and most significant concepts.

Long before written language, people shaped clay into vessels, tools and objects that carried knowledge from one generation to the next. Craft, he argues, has always been intellectual.

Perhaps the most striking idea to emerge from our conversations was the role of the human hand.

"We think of the brain as the place where learning happens," Payce says, "but people learned through their hands long before they learned intellectually."

That idea is unexpectedly mirrored in Kidd's reflection on "thinking through your hands."

Although working in different mediums, both artists describe making as a form of thinking—one that cannot be separated from touch, repetition and lived experience.

Skill, in this sense, is not simply something we possess but something we have to cultivate.

Visitors may admire the finished works on display, but what remains invisible are the thousands of hours behind them.

Kidd speaks of spending decades understanding a single material.

Lynn recalls searching across different mediums before finding the one that matched the way she thinks as a sculptor.

Payce has been working with clay since childhood, explaining that for every successful piece, another one never made it to the gallery.

Mastery, they remind us, is built quietly. One repetition, one failure and one decision at a time.

Despite the extraordinary achievements represented in the exhibition, there is remarkably little elitism in the artists' advice to aspiring makers.

"Just explore," Lynn encourages. "Let your imagination take you wherever it's going to take you."

"Relax," Payce adds. "Try it. See where it leads."

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson Skillful offers.

Not that everyone should become a master ceramicist, textile artist or sculptor, but that making in itself has value. Working with our hands teaches patience in a culture of immediacy, attention in an age of distraction and persistence in a world that often rewards shortcuts. It reminds us that some forms of knowledge cannot be downloaded or automated. They can only be learned through doing.

As visitors move through Skillful, they encounter remarkable works of art. But they also encounter something increasingly rare: evidence of lives devoted to practice.

In celebrating the human hand, the exhibition ultimately celebrates something even more enduring—the quiet, lifelong pursuit of becoming better at what we choose to make.

Visit the Exhibition

Skillful is on view at the Kelowna Art Gallery, 1315 Water Street, Kelowna, BC, from June 13 to October 25, 2026 in the Nicola Wealth Gallery. For gallery hours, admission and exhibition details, visit the Kelowna Art Gallery.

Story and photos by Mide Coker