LEAD ARTISTS:
Caitlind r.c. Brown, Wayne Garrett, and Lane Shordee
Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett are Calgary based artists exploring the interspace between seemingly polarized entities: light + dark, nature + culture, DIY + institutional, individual + collective. Caitlind graduated from Alberta University of the Arts in 2010, co-founding WRECK CITY curatorial collective in 2013. Wayne trained as a machinist at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, working in the Yukon Territory before returning to Calgary to pursue a music diploma at Mount Royal University. After meeting at a suburban arts collective, the duo began collaborating, slowly developing a national and international arts practice, primarily centered in public space. Whether working in domestic settings, formal galleries, pre-demolition buildings, inner-city islands or their own back yard, Caitlind & Wayne instigate diverse projects that endeavor to transform the everyday through a critical shift in perspective.
Lane Shordee is a scavenger artist based in Calgary, Alberta. Drawing from construction waste and items found by happenstance, he builds elegant sculptures and installations that both challenge and indulge our relationships with the things we throw away. Lane mines the immediate surplus of materials available, and, informed by his environment, reframes it into cohesive structures, allowing its presumed worth to be re-evaluated. In the same way the term “scavenger” traditionally holds a derogatory connotation, through new perspective, it can become something of considerable merit and nobility. His process is of an organic and sometimes comical nature that toys with semiotics, functional aesthetics, and happy coincidence – shapes and forms are left to chance or whimsy. It is this playful flexibility that grants each piece an inherent naivety and warm charm. Works begin as sketched schematics which are fleshed out and assembled from objects on hand, objects he can construct, and objects he must seek out. He maintains a steady cache of lost and found objects to be adjudicated and reworked. Embracing shift and impermanence, Lane abides by the notion that we live in a cultural mash-up of ideas rooted to all parts of history – as with memory, each idea becomes new with every attempt to access and re-create it. As such, materials are engaged in a dialogue-of-bricolage, and a collaboration ensues, informed by space, ecology, and the history of the engaged article. Recovered items are respected and regarded as a natural urban resource, and thus reclaimed as artful by-products of by-products – in effect, a dissemination of our individual ideas of consumption and waste.
– Clare Duckett
DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER:
Ramin Eshraghi-Yazdi
Ramin Eshraghi-Yazdi is a Calgary/Montreal based Filmmaker. He has directed and produced over 400 projects as the creative director of Nur Films, including everything from experimental art installations and documentary work, to broadcast commercial and music videos, as well as a slew of short films. Inspired by all that is visually stunning and stories not often told, Ramin’s interests vary but his mindset is always tainted with an indie sensibility that favours storytelling.
SHOOTING ASSISTANT: Kara Artym
Kara Artym is a cinematographer and filmmaker from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Film and Video program with Honours in 2010, and has been working in the local film and video industry ever since. Her career started in the local corporate and commercial sector, and has since evolved to include work on short films, web series, music videos, documentaries and feature films. She is passionate about working on content that can invoke social change and to question the status quo. Her work with non-profit organisations have taken her across the world, and is a core component of her work in Calgary. Capturing the world through the lens of a camera has always been her preferred method of storytelling, and her adventurous spirit is a complementary trait for her creative exploits
PHOTOGRAPHER:
Mike Tan
Michael Tan is the eye behind Mike Tan Photo (formerly Diane + Mike Photography) and an all-round cool guy. Mike has a parallel practice as a stage performer, including with Theatre Junction, Vertigo Mystery Theatre, Alberta Theatre Projects, and various independent films, a background that becomes clear when you watch him as a photographer: he’s constantly searching for (and finding) quintessential moments of action + relationship. A “self taught” photographer, he captures images that epitomize moments and freeze them in time for future reference, archive, and understanding.
STONE ARTIST:
Kablusiak
Kablusiak is an Inuvialuk artist based in Mohkinstsis and holds a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts. They are represented by Jarvis Hall Gallery, and their work has been acquired by public and private collections across so-called Canada. Awards include the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Prize (2017), the Primary Colours Emerging Artist Award (2018), and short-list nominee for the Sobey Art Awards (2019). The lighthearted nature of their practice extends gestures of empathy and solidarity; these interests invite reconsideration of the perceptions of contemporary Indigeneity.
BENCH ARTISTS:
Jeremy Pavka & Sean Procyk
Specializing in Sculpture and New Media Sean Procyk and Jeremy Pavka have an interdisciplinary collaborative practice focusing on immersive public engagement. Their projects respond to a regional context with a particular focus on the relationships that exist between landscape, community, and ecology. Often using comedic tropes, the two create site-specific projects that aim to enrich the collective sense of place. Their expertise includes architectural fabrication, landscape construction, and digital technologies including film and media.
Sean holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Dundas Valley School of Art, a Bachelor of Architecture from Carleton University and a Master’s of Fine Arts from OCAD University. He teaches in the experience design program at Sheridan College.
Jeremy holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Media Arts + Digital Technologies from the Alberta University for the Arts (formerly Alberta College of Art + Design).
Recent exhibitions include: Hamilton Artist Inc., Hamilton, Canada (2018), Latitude 53, Edmonton, Canada (2017), Stride Gallery, Calgary, Canada (2016), and 8eleven Gallery Toronto, Canada (2015).
Laura & Michael Hosaluk
Michael Hosaluk is recognized internationally and in Canada as one of the world’s most creative wood “turners”. Born in 1954, in Invermay, Saskatchewan, Hosaluk is self-taught. Hosaluk’s work covers a wide range of objects and materials including functional vessels, furniture and sculptural pieces. His work is humorous and elegant, possesses character and gesture and is full of reference to architecture, nature and culture. Hosaluk’s work has been exhibited throughout Canada, Great Britain, Europe, China, Japan, Australia and the United States. Hosaluk’s pieces can be found in the permanent collections of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace, Idemitsu Corporation, Tokyo; Boston Museum of Fine Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Detroit Institute of Arts; Yale University Art Gallery; Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Royal Ontario Museum. Hosaluk is a member of the Royal Academy of Art and Honorary Lifetime member of the Saskatchewan Craft Council. He received the Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in Craft in 2006 and the Lieutenant Governor General Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011. He has lectured and demonstrated extensively throughout Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, France, Norway and Israel. In Hosaluk was the founder of the biennial International Emma Lake Collaboration which started in 1994 and is the model for numerous collaborative conferences worldwide. His connections to the global creative community gives him an eclectic palette of talent to curate unique exhibitions of art and craft. Michael Hosaluk lives and has his studio near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and remains active locally and globally.
Laura Hosaluk is an interdisciplinary artist living in Saskatoon. Her creative practice is colorful, energetic, and optimistic, spanning from painting, ceramics, found objects, and land art. She is passionate about collaboration as her arts education is a bi-product of that learning. In 1992, at the age of nine, she began participating in the EMMA International Collaboration. An innovative hands-on experience encouraging students to go beyond their usual art practice and explore medium, technique and subject matter, in an environment free of pre-determined outcomes. She continued her education with EMMA in 2010, stepping into the role of Lead Organizer. This educational model has deeply influenced her to create something that is truly “ours” rather than “mine” through inspiring community process driven work that creates positive social change, inviting viewer to connect with nature and its environment. Hosaluk’s work exhibited at the Sala Rekalde in Bilbao, Spain and the Blackall Studios in London, UK. Slate Fine Arts Gallery in Regina, SK represents her work. 2016, she was invited to MIT in Boston, MA, to take part in a talk ‘Creativity in the World’, expanding on the collaborative model in teaching practices. She has served as board member at the Saskatchewan Craft Council.
Bench image artist credits: Michael Hosaluk, Skip Orlady, Daniel Kirk, Russel Baldon, David Bynoe, Fred Coates, and maybe Doug Haslam.
Susan Clarahan & Joel Staples
Susan Clarahan and Joel Staples are visual artists who work and live in the Rocky Mountains, they are both focused on developing deep, personal relationships with the landscapes they live in, and their artistic practices reflect this. Susan’s work is focused on creating intimate adventures in wild landscapes, and documenting them with analogue photography. Joel is a sculptor and carpenter who examines the relationship between labour and landscape in craft.
Together, Susan and Joel built a bench that allows for stargazing and sunbathing; soaking up the sunshine by the river, and gazing at the moon on freezing winter nights.
WANDERING WEEKEND MUSICIANS:
Jennifer Crighton
Jennifer Crighton is an artist, curator, musician, cultural administrator and movie costume maker. She has a special interest in community, especially as this relates the spaces we call home, and the people we gather around ourselves for support and inspiration. For her, working in any creative field is a collective endeavour, where the magic is always in the story of who took part. Her collaborators can be people, but they can also be old houses or trees, online social networks, musical instruments, drawing implements or river footpaths….
Who Cares?
Jiajia Li and Laura Reid have performed together on numerous occasions in the past several years, from improvised collaborations at Bug Incision experimental music series, jazz series at University of Calgary, to outreach concerts through Health Arts Society. Coming from similar classical backgrounds with a shared passion for exploring the infinite possibilities in music and sound creation and presentation, the 2 friends officially formed a duo project called “Who Cares?” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The aim as a duo has been to provide personal and musical support for each other during the pandemic while searching for new ways to present classical and contemporary music, and to connect with fellow musicians and music lovers through public livestreams and videos. “Who Cares?” self-released the album Vol.1 in 2021 and is available on bandcamp.
Sarah Houle & Shane Ghostkeeper
With each album, Ghostkeeper has continued to explore new territory. At the heart of The discordant but ultimately alluring sounds that Ghostkeeper produces are a testament to the band’s collective, unfettered creativity. With each album, Ghostkeeper has continued to explore new territory. At the heart of this Calgary band’s noisy warped, and compelling sound is the songwriting of Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle.
THE WANDERING ISLAND 