(Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News)

By Regan Tate

Warm, friendly professional communicator’: Late Medicine Hat College art instructor to be honoured in memorial exhibit

Jan 7, 2024 | 10:00 AM

Medicine Hat College is holding an art show in memory of a trailblazing former instructor.

The memorial exhibition will feature dozens of sculptures and paintings made by Nelson Yuen over the course of his 50-plus-year career.

Yuen retired after 28 years working at the college in 2014. He died in August last year.

Dean Smale, the college instructor putting the exhibit together, said Nelson was his first friend when he came to Medicine Hat and an easy person to get along with.

“Nelson was a very warm, friendly professional communicator,” Smale told CHAT News on Wednesday.

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“He loved people and I think that comes through the work quite a bit; it’s quite bright in colour, exuberant and dynamic, very much like Nelson.”

Yuen’s art crossed many mediums, including pencil crayon, watercolour, lithography, acrylic and oil painting, wood carving and assemblage.

In a forward for the show, retired art instructor Poul S. Nielsen said the exhibit accurately reflects Yuen’s work.

“I believe that this retrospective is a wonderful testament to his versatility, uniqueness, originality and creativity,” Nielsen wrote.

He shall be sadly and greatly missed by all and certainly not soon forgotten.”

A selection of about 50 works created by Yuen since the 1970s until his death in 2023 will be available at the exhibit.

The show runs Jan. 8 to Jan. 24, Monday to Friday between 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

A public reception will be held on Jan. 12 at 7 p.m.

ER