A longtime entrant in the Prince Albert Winter Festival Art Show and Sale took home top prize in 2025.
The Mann Art Gallery hosted the 49th Annual Winter Festival Art Show and Sale Awards and Opening Gala on Friday. Chris Dansereau of Prince Albert was the winner of Best in Show for his mixed media piece “Untitled” made of wood and porcupine quills.
Dansereau was shocked by his win and celebrated heartily while accepting the award.
“I just always put something in just for people to enjoy and I’m glad they enjoyed it that much that they saw some quality in it,” Dansereau said after taking home the prize.
Dansereau has been entering pieces of art since his youth. Friday’s award was his first Best in Show award for the Winter Festival Art Show.
“When I was 13 years old in 1988 (that’s) the first time I put pieces in the show, so it’s been a few years that I’ve been entering the pieces,” Dansereau said.
This is not his first win in a category of the awards. He received the Best in Wood award once before.
After winning Best in Show, Dansereau said that he was shaking.
“All these years of hard work and stuff with turning and carving and all this artistic stuff and it actually paid off,” he said.
“Since a young age, I’ve always just loved all the grains and the stuff you can do with it and how you can manipulate it,” he added
Dansereau said all of his pieces are called “Untitled”.
“It lets everybody put their own spin on it,” he said.
Dansereau is part of the Woodturner’s Guild in Prince Albert. Once at a demonstration, he did a technique called “two-part hollow forms.” He wanted to show viewers what could be accomplished when someone put the two parts together, and ended up creating the piece that won Best in Show.
“It’s kind of an experiment in creativity,” he explained. “I just loved the look of it, the feel of it and how it turned out.”
In her speech before the awards were presented, guest curator Monique Martin spoke about how artists question themselves with ‘would have, should have, could have’ but this piece did not give Dansereau that issue.
“No would have, could have, should have, I let it all go,” he said.
The Best in Show award is sponsored by the City of Prince Albert and On the Avenue Artisan’s Gallery. The winner receives $200 and a pot by Mel Bolen.
Adrian Golban took the $175 second place prize with the acrylic on canvas mixed media (stoneware, found objects) piece ‘Refilling My Memories II’, while Kathleen Slavin took third and $150 for ‘Going to the City’. The Guy Rutter Memorial People’s Choice Award winner will be announced after March 22.
There were 140 artists who entered pieces in the 2025 exhibit. There was also a walk-through with Martin on Saturday. The show runs until March 22.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
