Kamloops Art Gallery’s new education co-ordinator is keen on exploring connections between traditional art practice and contemporary art.

Tarin Hughes, recently arrived from Canning, N.S., already feels more established in Kamloops, and with good reason. A University of Waterloo graduate, she’s held a variety of positions in the field but this is the first unconstrained by a contract term.

“It means so much for me to come to a community, to come to an art space, and be part of a team,” she said Wednesday surrounded by The Optimism of Colour, KAG’s spring exhibition.

Like her predecessor, Linda Favrholdt, Hughes oversees the gallery’s school programs and art classes. She also hopes to explore collaborations with TRU visual arts students while having a hand in some of the interpretive aspects of KAG. In addition she will be looking at ways of engaging people of all ages in gallery programming.

“What I’m trying to do is to take more of a contemporary focus without overlooking traditional art practice.”

Often working with school groups, she sees lessons in The Optimism of Colour, a retrospective of the work of leading Canadian abstract painter William Perehudoff, as well as in the accompanying show of works by A.Y. Jackson and Kamloops own Ted Smith.

“There is so much material here, and the beautiful thing about abstraction, there is so much open to interpretation.”

Since graduating two years ago, Hughes has worked at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts in Nova Scotia, Waterloo Art Gallery, Gallery Stratford and Artery Gallery Stratford.

An artist herself, she arrives with her husband, Matt Schust, a professional artist specializing in sculptural painting.