Gallery Vertigo is an artist-run centre and community gallery for artistic innovation in the North Okanagan. It is the physical home of the North Okanagan Artists Alternative, a registered non-profit society and recognized charity composed of local and regional artists and friends of the arts.

We welcome you to stop by, visit our gallery spaces,  and chat with our studio artists. Conversation is the heart of Gallery Vertigo and the NOAA. We are located across the street from the Vernon Towne Theatre at 2901 – 30th Avenue, Vernon BC.

​Our hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 10:30am to 4:30 pm

September in our Main Gallery

Cloth-O Festival 3 featuring Trailblazing Women of BC by QuArtz

September brings the Cloth-O Festival back to Gallery Vertigo for it’s third incarnation, this time featuring a new community project that everyone is invited to contribute to. Come to the gallery this month and see the new project.

Trailblazing Women of BC

Since 2009, QuArtz (a subgroup of the Vernon Silver Star Quilters) has explored the possibilities of textile and fibre as an art medium, bringing together a shared passion for quilting with a desire to push beyond the boundaries of traditional quilt making.

For our 2024–25 project, we chose Trailblazing Women of BC as a year-long theme for research, reflection, and artistic exploration. Each member selected a woman whose life and accomplishments made a significant contribution to British Columbia, with particular attention to the ways these women helped shape opportunities and experiences for women in the province.

Inspired in part by Haley Healey’s book Her Courage Rises, our research extended beyond its pages, allowing each artist to discover and interpret the life of her chosen subject. The women represented in this exhibition come from remarkably diverse backgrounds, including Indigenous advocacy, photography, gold mining, and other fields in which women challenged expectations, broke barriers, and forged new paths.

Each artist has created a 14 × 23-inch textile artwork reflecting her interpretation of a selected trailblazing woman. While the works share a common theme, each reveals the individual artist’s approach to colour, composition, imagery, technique, and storytelling. Accompanying each artwork is a brief written account introducing the woman whose story inspired it.

With Trailblazing Women of BC, we bring together research, storytelling, and textile art to honour women whose courage, creativity, determination, and perseverance helped shape the province we know today. Through our individual interpretations, we hope these stories continue to inspire curiosity, conversation, and recognition of the remarkable women who came before us.

September Featured Member

Charley Hampton

Artist Statement

Art is learning to express myself in ways that I cannot otherwise do. It’s about taking risks, learning through growth, living with the fear of making mistakes, and connecting with people who understand.

The Japanese principle of satori describes my connection to art: satori is continually acquiring new points of view and perspectives through which we deal with life.

My approach is to view images with an emphasis on structure, texture, color and movement. My focus is on loose interpretation of this view.

The gelli print process allows me to manipulate a photo to emphasize contrast, transfer the image to a gelli plate, colour the image and print it on paper.

Printed images tend to be rough but pleasing. They epitomize the Japanese principle of wabi sabi – beauty in imperfection.

Introduction Video

Testimonials