In one of Whistler’s choicest hotels, a vertical garden takes over one of the main lobby walls, a deep green sea of plants literally breathing life into the hotel.
The vertical garden was installed in 2018 during hotel renovations. It is made up of three floor-to-ceiling panels filled with plants and
in between a plaque reads: “Your well-being is our priority. Breathe easy with our signature vertical garden, designed to not only beautify your environment but also help relieve stress and purify the air we share.”
There’s no doubt, says Westin Resort & Spa Whistler’s Director of Rooms Andrew Misquitta, that the wall has been a great success.
“It has been a big hit among our guests,” he says. “It has been a nice added feature for the Westin lobby.”
The vertical garden serves several purposes: it livens up a hotel wall with vibrant colour and depth, as well as bringing nature, and all of its many benefits, into the building.
Of course, nature and the surrounding environment have long been many artists’ muse.
At the Adele Campbell Fine Art, the long-established Whistler art gallery also located in the Westin, nature is a large part of the inspiration for work.
“The general theme of the gallery... is Canadian art,” says owner and director Elizabeth Harris. “But (art that is) largely inspired by that connection to our natural surroundings.”
Take artist Samantha Williams-Chapelsky, an abstract landscape artist who has a solo exhibit with Adele Campbell this summer, featuring more than a dozen pieces. The work is inspired by a recent road trip to B.C., nature translated into big and bold abstract impressionist pieces, done in thick acrylic in a very distinctive texture. She calls
it “extreme” with some parts of the canvas deep and thick with paint. Williams-Chapelsky begins with birch panels and uses brooms, trowels, palette knives and... lots of paint.
“I really try to get that expressive quality of the landscape into the artwork,” she explains.
A stunning diptych piece (two side-by-side panels) will be a part of the Whistler exhibition at Adele Campbell. Called Backcountry View, the large panels (measuring 120 cms x 120 cms) detail an alpine lake with dark mountains in the background. Above, a blue sky is defined with a swirl of white cloud.
Another piece, also part of the Whistler exhibition, is called Skyline Searching, not as large as the diptych but just as dramatic, with vivid blues and whites, channeling an idea of endless sky and water amid the mountains.
As with all her art, Williams-Chapelsky’s idea is to transport people into that place of nature, capture the emotions and the feelings it evokes. She calls it a “return to base.”
“When we return back to nature, we find this inner peace,” she says. “It’s a way of reconnecting to ourselves, reconnecting to the earth.”
Artist Ben McLaughlin, who is represented by Mountain Galleries in the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, uses nature in a different way. With a background in industrial design, McLaughlin has been creating furniture pieces that capture the rugged West Coast vibe.
Honing a style through “The Coastal Series,” McLaughlin uses a three-layer technique in his resin with the effect of creating the sense of ocean waves crashing into the wooden coastline.
“It makes it feel very much like a coastal landscape,” he says, of the dramatic depth created by the layering process in the resin.
His Ocean Resin coffee table, where the varying shades of blue in the resin make it look like moving water, is the perfect example of this technique. The resin rests against the natural whorls in the wood like the ocean against the coastline. There is a topographical feel to the piece.
Light is also a factor, transferring to all three layers. “It has a lot of luminosity to it,” he adds.
There is a hyper local element to his work. All trees are sourced in the Lower Mainland.
“I spend a lot of emphasis on selecting the right slab of wood,” he explains of this critical part of the artistic process before he begins transforming it into furniture.
McLaughlin is now shipping pieces—coffee tables, dining tables, end tables, and chairs— throughout Canada and the United States.
“They’re going to places that aren’t necessarily on the Coast,” he says, adding that this speaks to how people have a deep connection to this place, whether they live here or not.
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of Whistler Magazine.
