Current

I'm a Cree artist from Treaty 6. Territory Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Art had taken the form of graffiti and illustration in my teens. During elementary and high school I was always doodling in class. I didn't realize at the time that it would lead to something bigger. During my time at the University of Saskatchewan, studying psychology, I began to take art more seriously. I started to combine Indigenous ways of knowing with concepts in psychology and other fields of study. Spiritualty, Energy, and Vibration are at the core of my artwork. I'm interested in representing a combined perspective of Spirit and Science through abstract forms and color.

www.brodyburns.com @b_c_burns

Often seemingly minimal, Nancy Lowry's paintings are like apparitions taking form. Uncannily familiar, they teeter in the delightful, precarious space between landscape and abstraction.

Nancy Lowry was born in Toronto in 1978 and has lived in Saskatoon since she was a child. She first started painting the landscape through a teen workshop at Emma Lake. After studying liberal arts, painting and drawing at the University of Saskatchewan she went on to complete her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2003. She has participated in numerous workshops and residencies since, including a one-month residency in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, the Triangle Arts Association in Brooklyn, New York, and many years attending and later organizing the Emma Lake Artists' Workshop.

Her unique "paintscapes" are inseparable from the tradition of landscape painting, while also demonstrating a strong affinity with abstraction. Although intimately scaled, her paintings have a powerful presence. There is a forceful materiality in their heavily-tooled surfaces, strong gestural marks and bold use of colour. Mutable and resistant to classification, they allow viewers to discover new forms and associations each time.

Rowen Dinsmore is an emerging artist and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours graduate from the University of Saskatchewan. Using a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, and video, the artist explores the topic of self-portraiture as a means to investigate identity and the self. She uses these mediums to develop layers that abstract and complicate the portrait.

Influenced by social media and art history, Dinsmore studies what it means to be a woman in the modern era through an artistic lens, often approaching topics of spectatorship, the gaze, and the feminine form. Her work offers both a critique and an embrace of these aspects of the female experience in a post-internet world.  

She approaches her mediums and turns them into colourful reflections of herself; each work being a conceptual or representational self-portrait. Her work is an accumulation of her experiences, perspectives, and fascinations with others experiences and perspectives that are then reflected through her self-portraits. Though her work is self-reflective, the intention is that viewers may see themselves and their experiences within each portrait and narrative.

Emily Ann is a Canadian artist and fashion designer based in Saskatoon. Emily’s work has taken many different forms and evolved over the years, with a background in the fashion industry Emily still designs garments that can be worn but takes the approach of an artist. She deeply values traditional methods of craftsmanship and combines these practices with new innovative ideas that value respect of the environment and land. Emily views creating as an emotional experience that requires a deep empathetic connection between the maker and their artwork. Emily’s work often combines crisp geometric silhouette with organic materials.

Barbara Reimer works predominantly with photography, digital media, and installation to investigate waste, process, and materiality; most recently adding sculpture and, to a lesser extent, mark-making to her art practice.  Educated in Saskatoon and Toronto during the 1990s, she has an extensive background in commercial photographic and digital specialist areas, and has spent large parts of the most recent 16 years independently researching and developing expired film in coffee and other “non-toxic” solutions.  Past and present work is influenced by “the responsible photograph” (a term coined during the Finding a Green Photo project), documentary sculpture, the institution, travel, waste, and the “availability” of photo processes.  Barbara has exhibited nationally and internationally, taking part in solo and group shows in Nicaragua, Toronto, Saskatoon, Michigan, Iceland, and Wuhan, China.

Past

Biofeedback Collective resides and practices on Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The collective’s three members, Kelsey Ford, Lauren Warrington, and Emily Zdunich are all recent graduates from the University of Saskatchewan. Between them, they explore a range of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, virtual and augmented reality. What unites them as a collective is an overarching interest in conceptual and responsive approaches to art making. The collective is focused on creating relational and feedback-based programming for underrepresented and emerging artists. Biofeedback recognizes the long history of colonialism in Canada and our own positionality in different places and spaces within this context. And together, the collective is interested in exploring how we relate to one another, our bodies, the places in which we inhabit, and how our unique histories and ancestries come together.

Based in Saskatoon, artist Jillian Bogan blurs the lines between figurative and abstract painting. With a background in portraiture, she embraces the world of abstraction, sometimes resulting in a fusion of both genres. Jillian's abstract work deals with freezing the feelings of a moment whereas her figurative and portrait work sets a scene and tells a story.

Jillian's work is a testament to her passion for experimentation. She continually seeks new techniques and ways of using materials to push the boundaries of her craft, resulting in a diverse body of work. She pulls inspiration from artists that lived before her and combines their influences into her work. Whether it's the figurative paintings of the old masters or the soak staining techniques of Helen Frankenthaler Jill takes inspiration not only from their works and technique but their willingness to experiment and create. 

Holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Saskatchewan, Jillian's art is an exploration of emotion, being human and of the natural world.

My name is Lorin Gardypie and I am from the Beardys and Okemasis First Nation. I am a northern traditional style powwow dancers and have a bit of experience storytelling through contemporary dance. I am a 3rd generation residential school survivor and a ceremonial leader in my community. I have been working with Federal and Provincial corrections for just over 13 yrs. I am trying to instill culture, ceremony and spirituality back into the offenders who have been with drugs and alcohol. We also have detailed discussions and sharing circles to help navigate through troubled past and traumas. 

I also work with northern Sk Indigenous communities to help them reconnect with their culture and identity. I am extremely interested in contemporary dance as it offers the opportunity to share stories, history and realities through creative movement and expression

Tatum Wildeman is a Saskatchewan based contemporary dance artist; born and raised in rural Saskatchewan and resides Saskatoon. Tatum is also a Registered nurse and pursing a Master’s degree in nursing focusing on the use of dance for improving the mental health of Indigenous youth in the far North. Tatum combines her dance and healthcare practices to improve the mental health and wellness and advocate for social justice for marginalized peoples in Saskatchewan. 

Tatum is passionate about the health and well-being of dancers. Tatum incorporates a balance of conditioning and strengthening, somatic practice, breath work, and a culture of caring into her practice. Tatum utilizes her dance practice as a therapeutic process for herself and those she works with. 

Most notably, Tatum is the Artistic Director of the Saskatchewan Dance Project, and board member of the Canadian Dance Assembly. Tatum has extensive performance and teaching experience within Saskatchewan such as choreography for Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan 2021 production of Macbeth, Lugo at Remai Modern 2019, The Joint Dance Congress, Adelaide Australia 2018, movement coach for The Herd, as well as full-length contemporary dance works supported by the Saskatchewan Arts Board and Dance Saskatchewan Inc.

Kamisha Alexson is a two-spirit Nēhiyaw Iskwēw from Kahkewistahaw First Nation, on Treaty Four Territory. She lives and practices her visual art, spoken word and hand-drumming in Saskatoon on Treaty Six Territory.

Her story comes from the experience of being raised an Urban disconnected youth without a strong sense of culture or community, and how she began reclamation in young adulthood. Her multi-disciplinary work ranges from mixed media installations, visual art and spoken word, that is deeply rooted in two-spirit identity. As a Plains Cree woman, Kamisha wants to share with the youth how she decolonizes through the art of healing intergenerational traumas. Her creative practices often include gifted knowledge for foraged materials, taking from the land only what is needed and nothing more.

David’s work deals primarily in painting. His work has been described as punked out formalism that is a combination of painting, sculpture, mixed media and installation. He is inspired by Saskatchewan’s culture of painting and the legacy of the Emma Lake Workshops. His work takes formalist painting, abstraction and minimalism and brashly turns it on its head; creating artworks that have oozing paint that leaps off the plane, psychedelic patterns, textural oddities and unexpected materials. 

To view more of David’s work, check out his website!

Chelsea Brant (she/her) is an Emerging Multidisciplinary Artist and Independent Curator and a recent MFA graduate from the University of Saskatchewan. Chelsea completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph and has since worked for several arts organizations within administrative roles, curatorial assistantships as well as programming coordination positions. Her work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally with her most recent MFA Thesis Exhibition presented at The Gallery at Art Placement in Saskatoon, SK.

After I got my MFA degrees from China and Japan, I taught Visual Art at ChengDu University in China for a few years until I decided to move to Canada in 2013. For the past eight years I have focused my energy on raising my three children. After my youngest began getting older, I started to have some time for myself to paint. I realized the experience of raising children with cross-cultural communication is also an extension of the central theme of my paintings. 

My art explores the relationship among me and my children as we grow, play, and discover the world with our identity. I create acrylic/oil paintings that combine figuration, landscape, and images from my children's Chinese and First Nations heritage and further develop my style, skill, and concepts. I want to create this work to become an active, professional artist in my community of Saskatchewan, and greater Canada.

I have spent most of my life in around the city of Saskatoon in treaty six territory.  I work as an art educator in Saskatoon Public School Division and as a visual artist, completing an MFA at the University of Saskatchewan (2017). 

My work is drawing-based, site specific, and relational – sometimes involving interviews or personal objects. The work I produce revolves around questions of materiality, the atmosphere surrounding personal objects, and contemporary and pop-culture expressions of spiritual practice. Throughout my work as an artist and teacher, I have been seeking to connect with and encourage other artists, to make work that sets the stage for moments of introspection and relation, and to be interminably challenged by work of others.

Peace Akintade is an interdisciplinary artist and poet from Yorubaland, Nigeria. Her work touches on growing up in Kuwait, Nigeria and Canada, the impact of slavery in the village in which she lived in Africa, colourism, and relearning her culture in the face of colonization. A former Saskatchewan Youth Poet Laureate, Peace has emerged as a sought-after public speaker, educator and creative collaborator. Her practice explores the intersections of poetry with contemporary dance, film, experimental theatre and music.

Mitchell Larsen is a genderfluid artist whose practice incorporates music, theatre and dance with fabulist fiction, queer history, and poetry. Megan Zong is a Chinese-Canadian theatre artist with extensive experience as an actor and has recently branched out into playwrighting and producing. As a collaborative duo, dance and movement are key components to their work and they plan to further explore structured improvisation and examine the relationship between performer and audience.

Darren Miller is a composer and his work embraces both conventional instrumentation and its extension through technological means. He studied in Saskatoon, Victoria, Banff, Darmstadt (Germany), and Buffalo (New York) and holds a PhD in music composition on the topic of audio morphing software. Darren was the co-founder and director of Sask New Music and the annual Strata Festival of New Music. His compositions, live performances and sound design have been presented in a variety of contexts and across disciplines including concerts, sound installations, theatre, film and dance.

Elham has completed her BSc. in Painting and MSc. in Illustration in Iran.

Most of her artwork is about women. Regardless of the material, she is able to make a masterpiece on a canvas, either on the ground or on the wall. She deeply believes that she can get inspiration from the surrounding world in any situation as all she needs, is her hands, eyes, and mind!

Elham has illustrated many books for kids in Iran. So far, she has exhibited her artworks in many places and has participated in many festivals, and even she has been chosen for many art competitions.

Sculpting is one of her favorite hobbies and she spends most of her spare time doing it.

I believe that art can exist without being defined as such, and that people sometimes make art based on their lifestyle without recognising it as art. Furthermore, everyone who lives artistically has the desire to have spectators. As a woman whose intellectual concerns have been chiefly women and freedom, I aim to demonstrate this in my visual art, as art is the only thing that provides me satisfaction. 

I have always been involved with art in different fields such as music, making sculptures, calligraphy, and patina. I have my bachelor's degree in handicrafts from Alzahra University in Iran in 2015. Specifically, I worked on classical Persian painting, and pursued this interest for years. It is now my dream to break out of my cocoon and do something new – to learn different techniques from artists and find new ways to improve and express myself. 

Muveddet Al-Katib completed her BFA in Turkey, taking inspiration from the art, history and surroundings of her home city of Antioch and native country before embarking on the path that her unique artistic vision has led her on.  In 1998, she immigrated to Saskatoon and has been developing her artistic practice in drawing and painting.  Muveddet strongly believes that art is not just an object but rather it is a social necessity to connect to each other.  Her interest in bridging cultures of east and west has led Muveddet to examine western interpretations of Eastern Art with sensitivities to cultural adaptation and cross-cultural communications.

Her work has been exhibited provincially and nationally and is in many public and private collections including SK Arts, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Ambassador’s Collection at the Embassy of Turkey (Ottawa).

Over the years, Muveddet’s involvement in Engagement projects has led her to participate in Residencies including the City of Saskatoon Artist in Place: Bunkhouse Project, Artists in Schools Projects, and Artists in Communities which she received the City of Saskatoon Living in Harmony Award (2019 and 2021) for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Based in Saskatoon, Eveline works with a variety of media and art forms. In recent years she has concentrated on conceptual and performance Art, including personal attendance and performance at the annual International Arts in Society Conferences in Rome, London, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Paris; followed by on line attendance since 2019. She started an Instagram project “Silence, femmes…” on March 8th 2021, International Women’s Day. It aimed to make us more aware of violence against women, and the unfortunate silencing of those women. I posted two symbolic photos each week – a main “performance” photo of me, a second one related to it, and text extracts or references relating to violence against women. She included a third weekly photo of special clouds (relax, please!). Unfortunately, after running successfully for 51 weeks, only a few days before International Women’s Day this year, the whole project suddenly disappeared from Instagram! Presumably due to some technical malfunction, it showed how ephemeral we and our on-line activities can be - but not our ideas and our convictions.

Jared Armando Sofoifa is a Guatemalan born Artist. His style is a universe of mayhem, beauty and colours bursting from the canvas. He has been making Art since childhood, exploring the depth of his humanity through his work, trying to reconnect with the magnificent jungle he left behind. Currently he is working on a project to make his paintings more accessible, and democratic. He has been producing time lapse videos of his work set to his original soundscapes and poetry. The footage of his "Construct, Deconstruct, Adjust, Readjust" can be viewed here. He wants the paintings produced to be raffled off rather than sold at a high price, unattainable to most. With the purchase of a raffle ticket costing a small sum, anyone could have a chance of winning an original painting, and a copy of the footage of its creation. His goal is to raise enough capital to travel to foreign lands to create these painting videos and raffle off the results.

Thanks to AKA and PAVED he is able to have a workspace to produce his Art. He will be live streaming and recording his process. Currently he is painting a piece to be donated to a local shelter or soup kitchen, because he believes that a man's soul must be fed regardless of financial status.

"Who was the fool, who the wise man, who the beggar or the emperor? Whether rich or poor, all are equal in death."

The visual language I utilize in my practice is drawn from the geography of my Iranian upbringing which is filled with memories of a chaotic revolution, and the political and social crisis which followed. The subject matter of my works includes critical responses to social and cultural norms, my perception of identity, and the imaging of issues such as displacement, the notion of memory, and alienation.  

I investigate memories that are vividly present but not real enough to cause joy or fear anymore. These “factitious memories,” as I call them, are the subject of my very recent digital work. I am interested in exploring the alienated sense of detachment and displacement not only from a physical and cultural sense of place but from the perspective of my own body. 

Karen Polowick holds a BFA in studio art from the University of Saskatchewan, and she continues to live and work in Saskatoon.  Past works exhibited include painting, super 8 film, and installation.  Her current practice centers primarily around drawing and analogue photography, and it's the photography side of things that she will be concentrating on during her time in Paved's Apollo Room.

While at AKA/Paved for the month of February, Karen plans to experiment with alternative darkroom printing practices.  As well, she will further explore various hand-processing techniques for film which she encountered during a residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto Island.

Jasmin Fookes is an interdisciplinary artist residing on Treaty 6 territory in Saskatoon. Intuition is the catalyst for the diverse assortment of materials she collects and organizes trusting that a deeper camaraderie will emerge over time. Energized by natural materials such as bygone blossoms and foliage, seed pods, and fallen nests spotted in urban green spaces by virtue of chance encounters. Additionally, she has amassed a collection of commonly undervalued, mass-produced objects reminiscent of her own everyday experiences, and wonderings such as antiquated nails, springs, deconstructed boxes, and glass bottles. Wishing to cultivate a sense of wonder through the installation of these collections and excite new ideations by shifting their commonly accepted contexts. What is it that makes one thing ordinary and another extraordinary? This work revitalizes a sense of wonder for the world we live in, its beauty, fragility, and complexity and the urgency of caring for it.

Jasmin’s time at AKA/PAVED represents the first phase of a project that will result in a portable cabinet of curiosities from a repurposed structure to house diverse assortments of my locally collected and altered natural materials and mass-produced objects. In this first phase she will be making and altering models of potential alternative viewing spaces – ice fishing shack, chicken coup, garden shed, pop-up camper, or van for example.

Betsy Rosenwald is a Saskatoon-based visual artist whose work incorporates a variety of media, including wax, oil, drawing, and photography. Her collaborative installation with Dawna Rose, Journal of the Plague Year, was on view in February 2021 at 330g Projects in Saskatoon. A series of political paintings on post-consumer waste, the project began in 2020 as an urgent response to the political and social chaos wrought by Covid-19 and the Trump presidency. 

Most recently, her work has been featured in the Spring 2021 issue of Grain magazine, and in the online exhibition Word, as part of the Easton (PA) Book Festival. Her paintings have been widely exhibited throughout the US, Canada, and internationally, and are represented in the collections of SK Arts and the Canada Council Art Bank. She has received funding support and artist residencies from SK Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Art Matters Foundation (NY), Artscape Gibra­ltar Point (Toronto), Klondike Institute for Art and Culture (Dawson City, YT), Emma Lake Artist/Writers Retreat and the MacDowell Colony (NH).

Born in Boston, she moved to New York City to complete an MFA at Brooklyn College. Her early work is associated with the East Village art scene in New York City, where it was represented by Civilian Warfare Gallery. Her work is currently represented by The Gallery/Art Placement, Saskatoon.

Dawna Rose lives and works in Saskatoon. She uses a wide variety of media and materials in her artwork and is currently concentrating on painting in oils and gouache.

Dawna completed an MFA at the University of Saskatchewan and has received grants from the Saskatchewan Arts board and the Canada Council for the arts. She has attended numerous art residencies in Iceland, Vermont, Banff, Toronto and Eastend. Most recently she has collaborated with Betsy Rosenwald on their exhibition Journal of the Plague Year which she will be working on while in residence at AKA.

Her last project was a site specific installation of 2.9 Billion Birds Gone which can be seen on Sasktel Local on Demand or on YouTube.

Rebecca La Marre is a queer Canadian artist with a writing, research and performance practice.  She uses clay and text to give form to questions about what it means to be a person in the world, and how ideological structures, language and ritual shape experience.

Her work is exhibited and published internationally. Venues include the Serpentine Gallery,  MOMA PS1, and the Darling Foundry. Her writing has been published widely in journals and periodicals, with a forthcoming piece in The Happy Hypocrite this year. She is an emeritus commissioning editor for E.R.O.S. Journal.

Follow along on her website!

Gabriela García-Luna is a photo-based multimedia artist who has lived and worked in Mexico, India and Canada, exhibiting her work in various countries. Gabriela was born in Mexico City. In 2009 she moved to Saskatchewan, where she actually lives. She holds a degree in Graphic Design and Communication from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico (1986) and a Masters in Fine Arts Degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (2020).

Her work investigates the connections and tensions between different natural and constructed spaces, those in the world and in the realm of imagination. Her photo-based multidisciplinary practice relates to the experience of anticipation of what is constantly being transformed in the ongoing cycle of destruction and creation.

Her work includes two dimensional, sculpture, video and installation.Follow along on her website!

My embodied drawing practice is deeply tied to process; this process is intuitive, reflective, self-revealing, material, and attempts to engage in the “here and now.” Language, feeling, physicality, metaphor, action & reaction, push & pull: these words come to mind when considering this process.

Movement, weight, pressure, speed; drawing records the body’s relationship to the physical expression of these gestures with immediacy and directness. In some ways, it is an act of presence, or a call to attention. In my practice, it facilitates a solitary dialogue through which I attempt to come to know something – a mark, a moment – and then try to make sense of it.

Carey Shaw (she/her) is a photographer of settler ancestry based out of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6. With a BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design in 2001, her photography work focuses on portraits, relationships, memories and safety. Carey has worked as an Artist in Residence with the Saskatchewan Arts Board and community arts educator and artistic coordinator with the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Common Weal Community Arts. They have taught photography and traditional darkroom practices with PAVED Arts, the City of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan and Regina Continuing Education programs. Carey currently sits on the Board of Directors of BlackFlash Magazine.

Further explore her practice on her website.

Xiao Han is a Wuhan-Saskatoon-Toronto-based artist, curator and art-writer. With photography, Han's artwork focuses on politics, gender issues and explores crossing cultures between Canada and China based on her experience.

As an independent curator, Han has curated numerous exhibitions with artists and art institutions between Canada and China. Han is a recipient of grants such as the Catalyst Grant University of Saskatchewan and SK Arts. 2017 Summer, Han's public photography "Yee Clun" is installed in Regina Arts Park permanently. This project reflects the lost story in Regina, 1924, a Chinese immigrant and restaurant owner Yee Clun challenged the racist "Saskatchewan's White Women's Labour Law" in Regina. 2019 Fall, Han（via. Kyuubi Culture）curated their latest public art project with the Chinese guest artist Li Wan at Nuit Blanche, Saskatoon. 2020 Fall, Han (via. Kyuubi Culture) hosts an online-artist-book-club during the pandemic. 2021, Han's upcoming exhibition "Artist and Asian-Restaurant" is a collaborative project in the community with the Riversdale BID; partners include Asian restaurants on 20th street, AKA Artist-Run Center and the other art communities in Saskatoon.

To further explore Han’s work, check out her website.

Zac Morgan is an independent artist living a multi-hyphenate’s dream in Saskatoon, SK. Some favourite projects include HAIRSPRAY (Choreographer, Vocal Coach), LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (Marketing & PR), and HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (Director/Hedwig).

As a director/producer, Zac’s work has been featured locally in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, and on CBC News. During 2020, an obviously difficult year for many, Zac fought hard to create and trail-blaze during a time when so many felt discouraged. He produced a series of online musical revue’s entitled ‘Musical Mondays’ that featured a variety of Saskatoon performers belting out show tunes on Monday nights. After the success of several online shows, and pub shows, Zac became one of the founding members of Sparrow Theatre Company. He produced and directed Sparrow’s inaugural show A KILLER PARTY. 

As an artist, Zac has worked professionally as a graphic designer and brand consultant for over 12 years. After graduating from Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s New Media Communications program, he began working at a sign shop, and spent years honing his craft before relocating from Yorkton to Saskatoon to work on bigger projects.

Lindsey Rewuski (she/her) is a visual artist and graphic designer. Her light-based works explore the physical process of creating analogue art in real-time. Using movement, composition, and colours that are both inspired by and contribute to the experience of interacting with sound, her works are often designed in collaboration with artists who perform live or provide audio components.