KAMLOOPS – A half-hour documentary film on the work of local artist and Thompson Rivers University faculty member Donald Lawrence will be broadcast at 4 pm Feb. 28 on BRAVO.

Produced by Regina’s “291 Film Company” as part of their “Landscape as Muse” series, the film, which, according to the film company’s website, “explores the connection between art and environment through two main components, the artist and his/her process, and the geography/location,” features Lawrence’s Underwater Pinhole Photography Project, a body of work that has been exhibited across Canada, including at the Kamloops Art Gallery in 2002, and which has been the subject of two exhibition catalogues and several reviews.

Lawrence worked with the film crew on location this past summer in the Deer Group Islands near Bamfield on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Lawrence used a “Hammer” folding kayak which he outfitted for the needs of his Underwater Pinhole Photography.

“This eastern European kayak is 30 years or so old and typifies the type that I have previously taken on solo trips to such places as Maine and Scotland’s Outer Hebrides,” explained the artist, who teaches in TRU’s Visual Arts program and is the Lead Researcher of a Research/Creation grant awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

In the body of work to be broadcast, Lawrence use pinhole cameras which he designed and constructed to photograph the anemones and starfishes that inhabit the shallow intertidal waters of BC’s coastal waters. Pinhole cameras are typically simple homemade adaptations of such things as shoeboxes and tin cans. By contrast, Lawrence’s cameras are complex constructions, sculptural works in themselves, a collage of everything from yacht fittings to common plumbing fittings. Together with other objects that he has created to take his underwater pinhole photographs, the design and use of these cameras speaks to his interest in the meeting place of urban and wilderness culture.

In keeping with the theme of the Landscape as Muse series such activities speak to Lawrence’s interest in the coming together of his practice as an artist and his interest in wilderness landscapes. The documentary relates his Underwater Pinhole Photography project to the history and broader scope of his artistic practice.

For more information or for images, please contact Donald Lawrence at 250-574-0223. Please note that Mr. Lawrence is available for interviews Feb. 16-18 only.