Whitehorse artists get inspired at Miles Canyon

It's hard not to be inspired by Miles Canyon, with its aqua blue water, the steep, winding cliffs and the knowledge that people have travelled through the narrow waterway of the Yukon River for thousands of years.

This weekend, seven artists are walking the trails around Miles Canyon and creating works of art inspired by the area.

Created at the Canyon is an event hosted by the Yukon Conservation Society. Artists created original works on Friday and Saturday. After the pieces are done, they will be on display at Northern Front Studio in Whitehorse, starting Aug. 2.

Artist Samiha Amin set up at the base of the stairs to the trail and painted the bend in the river before it flows under the Robert Lowe suspension bridge.

"I chose this specific view because I feel like that little island over there is really significant to a lot of the locals here," she said.

Amin said people shared their memories of the area while she worked. She heard about people getting married on the same point she painted and cliff jumping when they were kids.

This isn't Marie-Hélène Comeau's first time attending the event, so she decided to take her art in a different direction than just painting the canyon itself.

"There's that neat tree by the stairs that I decided to start with," said Comeau.

In her book, Comeau sketched out the tree and its roots growing down and around the stairs. Then, she replicated it on a canvas.

"Usually I don't know where I'm going with my paintings or my art, so I start with something and see if it works," she said. "But everything can change."

Comeau said the canyon affects the way she creates.

"It's just fun to be here outside at the canyon — meeting people, listening to the water, the wind," she said.

Josée Carbonneau works with fish skin and scales to make clothes for dolls. Her inspiration at Miles Canyon is the thousands of stampeders who built rafts and travelled through the canyon as they made their way to Dawson City to get a claim in the 1898 gold rush.

"I have the idea that I want to make a little person, a doll obviously, that's going to go down on a raft with whatever she needs to get from point A to point B," said Carbonneau.

Carbonneau said she probably won't send the doll down the river, but the doll she is working on will be displayed on the raft she already started at home.

She said she is used to working outside because she lives in the wilderness, but Miles Canyon is different.

"There's something here in the canyon. It's kinda alive," she said.