|
May 26, 27, 28/00 
A weekend of discussion, video screenings and performance focusing on the multiple roles held by artist mothers and the impact they have upon art practice, both for individuals and for the art world at large. SYMPOSIUM PRESENTERS Leslie Reid (Ottawa)
Leslie Reid was born in Ottawa in 1947.
She received a B.A. at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario) in 1967,
and continued her studies in London, England, at the Byam Shaw School of
Art, Chelsea School of Art, and the Slade School of Fine Art. Leslie
Reid is a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University
of Ottawa, where she has taught painting and drawing since 1972, and where
she has also served as Chair. She has also taught at the Polytechnic of
Central London and the Banff School of Fine Arts. She has been the recipient
of several awards and grants from the Canada Council, the Department of
External Affairs, and the Ontario Arts Council for her work in painting
and printmaking. She lives in Ottawa with her husband and two teenage sons.
Ruth Cuthand (Saskatoon)
Ruth Cuthand was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
in 1954. She received her BFA (1983) and MFA (1992) from the University
of Saskatchewan. She raised two daughters single-handedly, being the mother
of a special needs daughter and a lesbian daughter has been both rewarding
and vexing. She has taught for the past 14 years at Saskatchewan Indian
Federated College, Saskatoon Campus, and occasionally makes art. She currently
resides in Saskatoon with her 24-year-old daughter Sky.
Aganetha Dyck (Winnipeg)
Aganetha Dyck lives and works in Winnipeg.
She collaborates with honey bees to create art works. She is interested
in thought processes that are informed by the act of making, doing and
experimenting with materials. She thinks about how ideas are embodied and
communicated, how knowledge is acquired and passed on particularly in the
bees that supposedly work only on "instinct." She asks, "When working with
and between such different communication systems the bees and ours Ñhow
does one translate and transcribe from one sign system to another?"
Louise Willow May
(Winnipeg)
Louise May is a cultural activist, working
in many guises of media andcontent, always and ever negotiating the nature
of the Spectacle Ñresearch which unites the subjective (psyche and soma)
to social engagement. Her work has included performances (both staged and
random site-specific attacks),single-channel video, installation, text
and hypertext projects, including an active web-site archive found at www.LouiseMay.ca.
Many of May's projects occur in a happy state of collision and collaboration
with other cultural producers, demonstrating a love of dialogue and corresponding
rejection of monologue. Her works video, performance, lectures Ñhave
been shown in living rooms,on psychic airwaves and, occasionally, at cultural
institutions across Canada and internationally. May holds an
MFA from Vermont College and is Artistic Director of the St. Norbert Arts
and Cultural Centre. Zona May is an artist and student at St.
Norbert Immersion School. Her work, multi-media, bookworks, magic
potions and spells, abstract paintings and craftbased objects, joyfully
explores her physical and psychic environment.
Barbara Todd (Montréal)
Barbara Todd was born in Galt, Ontario and
studied art at the nearby University of Guelph. After living in Banff,
Alberta for many years she now lives and works in Montréal. Todd's
Security Blankets and Coffin Quilts, produced since the late 1980s, have
been exhibited widely. Her work of thelate 1990s expands the notion
of security to explore the resonances and paradoxes of the themes of darkness,
night, sleep, dreams and death.
Jin-me Yoon (Vancouver)
Jin-me Yoon¹s photo and video based work
has been exhibited internationallyas well as across Canada. Since giving
birth to her children, Hanum age five, and Kihan age two, the intensity
and complexity of motherhood has enriched her work concerning questions
of identity, subjectivity and representation. She teaches visual art and
contemporary cultural theory at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon
Fraser University.
SYMPOSIUM INITIATORS AND MODERATORS Elizabeth MacKenzie (Vancouver) Elizabeth Mackenzie has lived and worked in a number of Canadian cities including Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton and, most recently, Vancouver. She hopes to remain in Vancouver long enough to leave her city map in the glove compartment of her car. Elizabeth can still remember having her artwork represented in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada. These days she maintains a tenuous hold on her identity as an artist through the circulation of her videotapes that explore issues of maternal ambivalence. Her ongoing commitment to collaboration continues to sustain her as she juggles the demands of her life that includes two active daughters, a perpetually travelling partner and sessional teaching. Martha Townsend (New York) Sculptor Martha Townsend has exhibited widely
in Canada over the past 20 years. She has taught at many universities as
part-time faculty, sessional instructor and visiting artist. She matured
as an artist in Montreal in the1980s and early 1990s and there became involved
in feminist theory and art practice. Her site-responsive installation,
"Stone in a Glass House," curated by Sigrid Dahle and sponsored by MAWA,
took place in the winter of 1997. Her work was included in L¹Origine
des choses, the exhibition of sculpture by Montreal artists curated by
Pierre Landry that took place concurrently at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Martha Townsend maintains deep ties, both professional and personal in
Canada, although she now lives with her partner, Matt Darriau and their
son, Gabriel in New York City.
SYMPOSIUM COORDINATOR Vera Lemecha (Winnipeg) Vera Lemecha is an unaffiliated curator, writer and arts administrator. She was curator of the Dunlop Art Gallery and The Glenbow and director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery (NSCAD). She holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia Collegeof Art and Design and a MFA from York University. Her recent curatorial projects include Interstitial Spaces: Reva Stone, Normal: Leesa Streifler,and Ritual Coping: Joanne Bristol, Bev Pike and Mindy Yan Miller. She was editor of an issue of MAWA¹s annual journal, Inversions: the female grotesque and co-curator, with Reva Stone, of "The Multiple and Mutable Subject: an international symposium on subjectivity and the Internet" for the St. Norbert Arts and Cultural Centre. She shares her interest in technology with her son, Felix, who is eight.
Back to MAWA archive |