Visiting The Obscuras 2025 Exhibition
Written by Kelly Gardiner, Communications Manager, Arts Habitat Edmonton
Thomas Weir, an artist with an MFA from the University of Guelph and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta, spent the past year immersed in the Garage Studio at ArtsHub McLuhan House. His practice, spanning printmaking, sculpture, and photography, is grounded in a steady, thoughtful process of experimentation and image-making. On the final day of his end-of-residency exhibition, Obscuras 2025, I had the chance to experience the work up close on a bright, beautiful summer afternoon.
The Highlands neighborhood surrounding ArtsHub McLuhan House was at its seasonal best. The air was warm, the trees full, and the street alive with early summer energy. Children ran through sprinklers, couples tended to their gardens, and the line at Kind Ice Cream wrapped around the corner as people waited for a scoop of something cold in a waffle cone. Turning onto 64 Street, the thick canopy of mature trees arched overhead, casting patterned shadows on the sidewalk. It’s a street that always stops me in my tracks—calm, storied, and lush with character.
The exhibition began before even entering the space. Pulling up in front of ArtsHub McLuhan House, I noticed the Obscuras 2025 poster hanging from the signpost, gently swaying in the breeze. I headed up the long walkway that wrapped around the perimeter of the porch, crossed the backyard fence line, and made my way toward the open garage door. On the driveway, Thomas had arranged a few lawn chairs—simple, intentional seating that warmly invited the community, offering a space to pause, connect, and settle into the moment.
Inside, the garage studio had been transformed. Thomas had reimagined the space into a gallery environment, building a temporary partition wall to conceal the cabinetry and offer new surfaces for hanging work. Additional lighting, installed along the garage door rails, gave the space an intimate, focused atmosphere.
The exhibit itself felt dynamic. A print was suspended from the ceiling with bungee cords, which brought an adventurous and lively element to the visual interpretation of the print. Another print used a sculptural element that appeared to leap out from its print, blurring the line between dimensions.
As I stood with the work, Thomas shared insights into his process. These weren’t straightforward prints; they were intricately constructed images, built through layered photographic techniques—stitched visuals, photographic positives, and editing. Each piece revealed more the longer you looked. The complexity of the material and method evoked a sense of timelessness as if we were looking at fragments of the past folded into the present.
Framing many of the works were geometric forms—shapes that were used in sculptural still-life scenes that had been photographed as the subject matter in prints throughout the exhibition. These shapes were magnetically adhered to the surface of the works using rare-earth magnets, allowing them to be repositioned and reinterpreted. In the piece Antiquer, a large print magnetically held to a galvanized steel sheet, the sculptural elements could be moved freely across the image. This interactivity encouraged viewers to become participants, reshaping the artwork and engaging directly with the artist’s process.
Obscuras 2025 was more than an exhibition—it was a reflection of a year spent inside an evolving studio practice grounded in exploration, layering, reinterpretation, and process. Thomas Weir’s approach invites us to consider how meaning is made and remade through images, shapes, and materials that shift over time.
Now completing his residency at ArtsHub McLuhan House, Thomas moves on to his next chapter as the 2025/26 Emerging Artist-in-Residence at the Society of Northern Alberta Printmakers (SNAP). His work is also currently featured through the Edmonton Public Library’s Feature Creators program.
To learn more about Thomas Weir, visit https://thomasweir.org/work