On the night of July 4, the Penticton Art Gallery unveiled one of the most audacious and certainly one of the largest indoor art pieces ever displayed in the South Okanagan.
At 32 feet end to end, it's wider than a tennis court. And itÎÚÑ»´«Ã½™s taller than most ceilings.
But sheer size isn't its only remarkable attribute.
"First Wave," as it was named by artist David Spriggs when he created it in the COVID era, is a hybrid of sorts between a "regular" 2D painting and a 3D sculpture.
And that makes it look wildly unique.
Spriggs produced First Wave over the course of seven months in 2020 by meticulously painting 90 sheets of transparent film, each a different "layer" in the final presentation, and hanging them front to back and side by side, within centimetres of each other.
The end result is difficult to define and hugely distinctive to witness, particularly when it's illuminated and displayed as it currently is at the Art Gallery during its summer 2025 show that runs through Oct. 25.
Is it virtual reality? Something even more futuristic?
No, but it does seem to hover in mid-air, a gargantuan glowing apparition in an otherwise fully darkened Art Gallery main room.
On opening night, guests reacted to First Wave as if it were a visitor from another dimension ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½“ gawking at it, studying it, walking its circumference, carefully checking around back to see what technology might lurk there.
And they took pictures. And video. Lots of it.
"I feel people are having cathartic experiences," said Gallery Curator Paul Crawford. "They come in from a hot day. It's cool and dark in here. And there's this massive force just looming at the end of the room for them."
Indeed, it's the first time ever in Crawford's tenure that the Gallery's spacious main room has featured just a single piece of art.
"It's been very rewarding so far," he said. "It might be easy to be dismissive because itÎÚÑ»´«Ã½™s just one piece, but it's a very unusual piece, and it's been remarkable watching people come in. The responses are so deep, so profound."
During the gala opening that featured appies and refreshments and a crowd of 100-plus, artist Spriggs, born in the UK and now living on Vancouver Island but in Penticton for the event, let us into his world and his vocation.
ItÎÚÑ»´«Ã½™s a vocation that began in earnest when Spriggs was in his mid-teens. Then, he fancied the idea of painting wildlife. So that's what he did.
It didnÎÚÑ»´«Ã½™t take Spriggs long to begin pumping out paintings that, to us, anyway, rival stuff from revered wildlife artists like Robert Bateman and Carl Brenders. He was soon making prints of his works and selling them.
You can see a trio of Spriggs' impressive teenage works at the show, which curator Crawford says contrasts last summer's highly successful exhibit, in which the Gallery profiled, funnily enough, the aforementioned Robert Bateman.
In Bateman, says Crawford, the Gallery had a guy whose greatest commercial success came when he transitioned from "abstract expressionism" to realism and wildlife.
In Spriggs, the evolution is fully reversed ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½“ realism/wildlife to extreme abstract ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½“ but the level of global success is similar.
"I actually met Bateman when I was 15," laughed Spriggs, who's exhibited all over the planet and counts pop culture luminary Peter Gabriel as a client, at the July 4 opening. "So it's nice to know his work was here recently."
Beyond that, the evening was notable for something else. It was the very first time ever that Spriggs, and indeed the public, had seen First Wave fully assembled.
How could that be?
Because Spriggs crafted the piece for a Japanese art festival at the dawn of COVID and then watched helplessly as that country's lockdown measures shut down virtually everything in sight ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½“ including the festival.
"Yeah, I've only seen photos of it," he smiled at the opening. "One of my most ambitious works, and it's never really been seen.
"But here in person, I'm absolutely blown away by it. I have this feeling, and I hope others share it, of an overpowering sense in it. A sense of movement. Like itÎÚÑ»´«Ã½™s about to do something.
"And it's not often that everything falls into place to make a show like this happen. Paul (Crawford) gave quite a bit of time and effort to the exhibition, which is really important."
And that left us with one question. One really big question. What exactly is this "First Wave?"
"It was common terminology for the first round of COVID," Spriggs explained. "A time of anxiety. What was going to happen in the world?
"So I had this piece I had to do in Japan (just prior to the dawn of COVID), and I flew there to check out different sites. One of the sites was a fishing net warehouse by the water. Some of the waves there were enormous."
Spriggs flew home from Japan just before the lockdowns began.
"They still wanted me to make the work," he said, "but it was postponed a year. So I had time to reflect. It was a time of anxiety. What will happen to the world? And over time, I realized that now we don't always equate waves with the ocean."
Ultimately, the wave concept remained, but the wave itself evolved.
"I thought it would be relevant to really speak about his time of anxiety," said Spriggs. "And I thought it would be interesting to make the wave red. This is a blood red, physical colour.
"When you stand in front of it, you can almost feel it."
True enough.
Completing the Gallery's 2025 summer exhibit, entitled "First Wave" in honour of its premier piece, is another large-scale Spriggs offering called "Paradox of Power" in the Project Gallery.
To check it all out, head to the at 199 Marina Way between now and Oct. 25.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Admission is by donation.
