Jim Kalnin in his studio, photo by Mary Gray
What: Selected works by Jim Kalnin
Opening reception: Saturday, September 27, 2025, 1:00 – 3:00 pm
Exhibition dates: September 27 to October 9, 2025, open weekdays from 10 am to 4 pm
Where: FINA Gallery, Creative and Critical Studies building, 1148 Research Road, UBC Okanagan
Jim Kalnin is an emeritus professor from our fine arts program, where he taught drawing and painting from 1987 to 2009. He was the founding Curator of Lake Country Art Gallery from 2010 – 2011. He has taught art in many community settings eager to convey his belief in the value of art in people’s lives. Jim has published two books on spirituality. He has exhibited widely in British Columbia, and been included in exhibitions in other parts of Canada, California and Sydney, Australia.
This exhibition is organized and curated by Shawn Serfas.
To attend the reception on September 27, please RSVP to fccs.ubco@ubc.ca.
Pulse has been gleaned — mostly — from Jim’s recent work. Taken together this collection offers a glimpse of the diversity of his visual enquiry. The criteria for this show was not a unified theme but rather is meant to express the more enduring and fundamental quality of his 70+ years of commitment to his art practice. Hopefully you’ll glimpse something of the energetic and elemental foundation of his engagement with life, spirit and Mystery.
Jim Kalnin was born in Pine Falls Manitoba in 1942, and spent his early years on a small farm near Lac du Bonnet, followed by several years in a company town (Point de Bois in the Canadian Shield) on the Winnipeg River. The next stop, at the end of a three-day train ride, was in Victoria BC where the population of his high school was double the population of the whole town he and his family had just left.
Once the agony of high school passed, Jim enrolled in the Vancouver School of Art (later to become Emily Carr College of Art and Design.) His five years of art school opened many creative doors including film animation — mostly on inventive projects sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada. These led to teaching animation at the Vancouver School of Art and at Kingait, a.k.a. Cape Dorset NWT in the mid 1970’s.
Travelling to new places soon became an addiction, with extended low-budget expeditions across Canada, to Central and South America and to Southeast Asia. Then wind-blown, he settled first in his old haunt near Nanaimo and then in the Okanagan Valley. After living for several years in a tiny community above Okanagan Lake, Jim went back to teaching art at Okanagan College which ultimately turned into a full-time position at UBCO.
His bachelor life also changed into the joys of family life when he met Lois Huey-Heck and her son Bryan. They became a family and settled in Oyama in 1990. Only after retiring from teaching at UBCO in 2009 did Jim’s ‘travel bug’ return. He and Lois kicked off a freer and easier life with an extended tour of southern Mexico into Guatemala (which they laughingly referred to as their first ‘geezers with back packs adventure’). That led to a number of winter sojourns, mostly staying in the same 500-year-old Casa in the same town, Patzcuaro, in the highlands of Michoacan. These sojourns gave them both the opportunity to focus on their art for extended periods from 2010-2020
In the 16 years since leaving the Creative Studies Department Jim’s life and art have continued the tradition of exploring inner and outer landscapes — only now much closer to home! Meditating for an extended period most every day, Jim continues to have a heart and a deep concern for the planet and all creatures with whom we share the pulse of Earth.
The process of ageing has become an adventure of its own for Jim. At almost 83 the shifts in energy and memory add challenge — but also an invitation to simply let things be as they are. It all makes space to live even more in the moment: to play on hands and knees with a six-year-old grandchild; to ever-more-slowly turn over the garden beds in spring; and still push paint across a bare expanse of canvas and see where it takes him.