ROVING, rock’n’roll-loving York artist and curator Chalky The Yorkie has a canny eye for spotting locations for his shows.

Last year, Chalky and the York Artisans group took over the first floor at Pine & Oak Interiors in Piccadilly for the summer-long Art Warehouse project.

Tonight, he opens his latest joint exhibition, Chalky The Yorkie Presents The Winter Show, a creative collaboration of eight artists and photographers, in the Edwardian tile-floored, windowless, absolutely arty Basement at Bar Lane Studios at the Bar end of Micklegate.

Chalky has cherry-picked Katie Galuska, Rachael Baines, Dave Mair, Tom Rodgers, Kit Martin, NJA Ward, Artisans’ stalwart Robert Ford and himself for an underground show that will run until next Saturday.

“In my capacity as project manager, I’ve subtitled it The Experience Of Winter and The Differing Viewpoints of Creative Application, which covers both bases, artistically and photographically,” he says.

“I’ve tried to pull together all of the artists and photographers where I felt their styles of work would work as interactive foils, creating an interesting exhibition.”

Chalky selected Hungarian-born Katie (short for Katalin) Galuska for her first show in York after initially bumping into her at a Pulse art show last year. “She struck me as an interesting person and I always look at the person and personality as much as their art,” he says. “So I kept her card and bore her in mind for a possible show.”

Katie has not shown her work anywhere in the nine years since she last held photographic shows in her college days in Hungary. That year she came to England to learn the language from scratch, settling in York to work initially as an au pair.

“I was lucky enough to come here to York and even luckier to stay, having a nice job with a family at the start,” she says.

“The opening opportunity was a tool, as I didn’t want to struggle with the language, and it then let me do what I always wanted to do: art and photography, and as the technology opened up, it became easier to acquire digital cameras.

“So I started working as a freelance photographer and artist, doing private tuition in photography and art workshops for Rural Arts around North Yorkshire.”

Nine years on from her last show, she feels ready for public scrutiny once more. “I needed time to mature, to find my interests and my world, in terms of subject as well as visual expression,” says Katie.

“I tend to ‘play’ with photographs and I do that in a traditional way, enlarging and cutting out images, building up layers and spacing them to create 3D imagery in a frame.”

Katie, who has designed the show poster’s artwork, will have four works on a winter theme on display. “I started off with the snow, because I grew up in Hungary, and the snow was winter for me – white and bright and light! So two works will be about that and the others will be about indoor winter life – colourful and bright and warm.”

If the Winter Show marks Katie’s York debut, it also will be Dave Mair’s first major show in the city, although he has exhibited watercolours and small etchings previously at a York Artisans show at the Space 109 Community Arts Centre. This time he has done oil, gesso and mixed-media works.

Artist Rachael Baines takes inspiration from the variety of nature for her striking and beautiful pieces, while Robert Ford will present the winter triptych Death, Life And Rebirth, and NJA Ward, an impressionist oil painter of the old school, has created a series entitled Impressions At A Winter’s Edge.

“He likes painting in the outdoors, no matter what the weather is,” says Chalky.

Tom Rodgers became the first photographer to be granted a solo show at The ArtSpace, in York, earlier this year and has exhibited previously at the Living Room too.

Fife photographer Kit Martin has followed a diverse career path from medical and forensic photography to community and environmental projects. “I’m led by the environment around me, and through my images I reveal things that may otherwise be passed over, unrealised, unseen,” says Kit, whose latest commission was for a book, Woodlanders: New Life In Britain’s Forests, published by Saraband.

Last but not least come Chalky’s Christmas gifts to the world: an installation piece; a painting entitled Winter Blues; and his unusual decorations for his black Christmas tree.

“I’m doing shrunken heads and strange adornments to go on the tree,” he says. “It’s a bit macabre, I know, but that’s how I think of Christmas.”

•Chalky The Yorkie Presents The Winter Show in the Basement studio, Bar Lane Studios, York; preview tonight, 7pm to 9.30pm; then tomorrow until December 18, 11am to 4pm.