I am screen print artist originally from Saskatoon (Treaty 6), currently based in Ottawa on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin. I am of mixed Métis, Norwegian, and Ukrainian descent and a member of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan.
For the past 11 years I have worked as an artist and arts administrator, founding and running numerous arts non-profits in Saskatoon. From 2016-2021 I wrote over $750,000 in successful project grants for 5 arts organizations and oversaw the resulting projects. I also managed day-to-day operations for two of these organizations, Void Gallery and Nuit Blanche Saskatoon, bringing both into core funding during this period. Highlights of project funding include a Canada Council – Digital Strategy Fund grant of $480,000 for the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries, which allowed us to build an app for augmented reality art through the Shared Spaces project, and a Creative Saskatchewan – Business Capacity grant of $55,000 for the Saskatchewan Craft Council, through which we developed a provincial program of professional development training for artists that started in 2017 and continues to this day.
Learning from and trying to act in ways that respond to and support the communities I am part of has been a priority throughout my artistic and administrative practices. Void, the artist-run centre I founded and ran for close to a decade, went through numerous changes in response to our communities, transitioning from commercial gallery to printmaking studio to centre for community-based art practices. In 2018, growing out of Void programming I co-founded Shop Cold Pizza, an art and apparel brand that prints and sells work on behalf of artists. Cold Pizza takes on the financial risk facing artists when printing their own goods and explores how art can be part of everyday life – how it can be worn or exist in people’s homes.
This effort to locate art within communities rather than institutions has been a focus for me in recent years, and in particular ways we can move artistic practice and resources to communities. As one outcome, since 2018 I have worked with Core Neighbourhood Youth Co-op to build a t-shirt screen printing studio in their building, so that youth can design and print their own apparel without needing to have their designs approved by someone else. I donated a t-shirt press CNYC and and continue to provide training and support for the studio they now run.
I received my BFA from the University of Saskatchewan in 2009 and my MDes (Master of Design) from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver in 2015. I am currently a Program Officer with the Explore and Create program of Canada Council for the Arts.