Do you see calls for public art commissions and think, “that’s not for me”? Think again! In order for there to be great public art in our communities, it is essential that artists put themselves and their ideas forward. Public art can be a part of any artist’s practice. It is simply another venue, another canvas and another site we can use to articulate ourselves. Public art can take many forms: community-based interactive projects, sculptures, performance interventions… There is no reason you should not take up public space! Learn more about public art by attending this day-long public art how-to forum featuring experienced artists who have all recently completed projects through the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Public Art Program. And there’s a free pizza lunch!

This is also a golden opportunity to hear artists Germaine Koh (Toronto), Sarah Crawley and Christine Fellows speak about their fascinating work.

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 10:00 am
Date: Saturday May 26, 2012
End Time: 4:30 pm

Spring is coming, honest! And with it a need to clean out your closets and buy a new wardrobe! Thankfully, MAWA can help on both fronts with our third mega clothing swap, once again DJ’ed by Mama Cutsworth. Fantastic fashions! Stupendous finds! Amazing mix-and-match potential! Who knows? You could leave looking like an artist you know. All for the low, low cost of $10.

Please drop off donations of clean, gently used WOMEN’S CLOTHING ONLY from Tuesday, May 8 to Thursday, May 17. MAWA is open Tuesday-Friday between 10 am-4 pm, and on Saturday May 12 from noon – 4 pm. Purses, shoes and accessories also welcome. All remaining articles will be donated to the North End Women’s Centre. Proceeds to support MAWA’s Legacy Fund.

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 7:00 pm
Date: Friday May 18, 2012
End Time: 9:00 pm

Newcomer Canadians have a wealth of artistic production to share. Learn about their traditional practices and purchase their wares at the MAWA Global Craft Fair. Shopping and learning, together at last!

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 1:00 pm
Date: Saturday May 12, 2012
End Time: 4:00 pm

Tuesdays May 8, 15 and 22, 2012, 7-9 pm at MAWA

$50 for MAWA members; most materials provided

Registration deadline: Friday, April 27, 2012, at 4 pm

A thousand years ago, painters began using egg to bind pigments onto wood panels. This medium allows detailed rendering and tiny translucent strokes. Fine strata of thin glazes add luminosity to the final result. Bev Pike, painter extraordinaire, will teach this age-old technique and its contemporary applications at MAWA, in a three-session workshop.

Participants will be asked to pick up a watercolour board from MAWA, on which to make a pencil drawing before the first session of the workshop. Then, at the first session, a red wash will be overlaid and white highlights added. At the second session a week later, yellow wash will be applied and the forms refined. At the third and final session, blue wash will be applied and black added. Ta da!

Please bring your own brushes (a few soft, small watercolour brushes including rounds, brights and flats, and a liner). Everything else will be provided.

Bev Pike is an artist centuries behind her time. She studied egg tempera in art school along with other ancient painting techniques. In the 1980s, Pike used oil-glazed chiaroscuro on canvas for her Boudoir Series. Since 1991, she has been painting large scale gouache works on paper that deal with neo-Baroque landform tableaux. Pike has exhibited across Canada and her artist books are in national and international collections. She also works in video and writes feminist satire.
Image: Botticelli 

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 7:00 pm
Date: Tuesday May 8, 2012
End Time: 9:00 pm

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 6:30 pm
Date: Monday May 7, 2012

with Laurie Bertram

Presented by MAWA and Platform centre for Photographic & Digital Arts

Drawing from the Winnipeg Police Museum Archive, this talk examines turn-of-the-century mug shots of Western Canadian women on the margins who were arrested for various offenses. Through these photographs, Bertram investigates intersections between commemoration and incarceration. Amid ongoing attempts to secure attention for missing sex trade workers in the West, she asks: what challenges do criminalized women pose to Canada’s commemorative landscape? How can carceral images be redeployed in the construction of radical gender histories? Bertram will look at incarcerated women’s compelling use of fashion, cloth and notions of portraiture in their sometimes-defiant confrontation with police cameras and photographers who “captured” their image.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Dr. Laurie K. Bertram is now the Grant Notley Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. She is a specialist in material culture, trauma, and memory in Canadian history and completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2010. Laurie’s exhibition, Pioneer Ladies (of the evening), will be at Platform from Friday, May 4 – Saturday, June 9, 2012, with an opening reception on Friday, May 4 from 7-10 pm.

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 12:00 pm
Date: Friday May 4, 2012
End Time: 1:00 pm

Three panelists will each present images, some of which they define as art and some of which they don’t, and articulate why. Then the floor is open to you. Debate! Disagree! Argue passionately for what you believe in!

Many questions are bound to come up, such as: Is it art if the creator didn’t call it art? Is it art simply because a creator calls it art? Is there a difference between non-art and bad art? Is craft art? Documentary photographs? Commercial design? Architecture? And more!

Don’t miss the critical dust-up of the season! Featuring panelists:

Alison Gillmor writes on art, film and pop culture for the Winnipeg Free Press, CBC’s Manitoba Scene and Border Crossings, and has contributed to Canadian Art, Black Flash, The Walrus, CBC Arts & Entertainment, Western Living, the Globe & Mail, Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic and now… MAWA!

Amy Fung is an interdisciplinary and independent arts writer, organizer, editor of the Edmonton-based PrairieArtsters.com, and now wreaker of critical havoc in Vancouver. Visit AmyFung.ca for more information on projects past and present.

Cathy Mattes is an all-round art maven. In her curatorial and writing practice she focuses on Aboriginal issues and art. She is now the art history lecturer at Brandon University, Visual and Aboriginal Arts Department.

Moderated by the immoderate Sarah Anne Johnson (who may pipe up with opinions of her own)

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 2:00 pm
Date: Saturday April 28, 2012
End Time: 4:00 pm

The Foundation Mentorship Program is a year-long program in which senior artists share their experience with developing artists. It is designed to help women in the visual arts develop skills and define their decision-making philosophies, and to provide access to the information, resources and support they need to realize their goals. In addition to a one-on-one relationship with a mentor, the program provides a peer group for the mentees through group meetings.

Mentors meet with their mentees individually for 5 hours per month, and the entire group meets for 3 hours monthly for critiques, discussion, gallery visits and other activities.

Applicants are selected based on the quality and potential of the work submitted, the emerging artist’s willingness to dedicate time to the program, and the mentor’s ability to work with the emerging artist because of mutuality of practice or conceptual framework.

Successful applicants will be charged a $300 fee for the program. There is no fee to apply, although you must be a MAWA member. Students are not eligible.

Thanks to Kim Fullerton at Akimbo, two bursaries of $250 each will be available to successful applicants to help offset the cost of registration.

If you have any questions, please contact Lisa Wood, Program and Administrative Coordinator, at 949-9490 or programs@mawa.ca.

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 4:00 pm
Date: Friday April 27, 2012

Presented by MAWA, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Manitoba Craft Council

Nancy Edell (1942-2005) is best known for the transgressive, representational works she created using an unlikely medium: rug hooking. Her practice also included woodcuts, monotypes, drawings and animated films. Her career began in Nebraska, ended in Halifax and included many years in Winnipeg. Throughout, Nancy was rigorous in her craft and passionate about her feminist content. Towards the end of her life, she envisioned herself an “art nun”, and created visually spectacular representations of art nuns in action! Her last solo exhibition was featured at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2005.

This film by Winnipegger Kirby Hammond is an intimate portrait of the artist and a stunning visual representation of her works. It also contains interviews with Nancy’s heirs, and discusses the difficult problem of artist estates and inheritance tax laws.

As a special bonus, Nancy Edell’s animations from the 1970s and another short by Kirby, Universal Movement Machine about Whitehorse textile artist Meshell Melvin, will also be screened.

Location: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 100 Memorial
Start Time: 7:00 pm
Date: Thursday April 19, 2012
End Time: 9:00 pm

Saturday, April 14, 2012, 1-4 pm at MAWA
Free! All genders welcome! All ages! Materials and snacks provided. Childminding provided.

Tasnim Siddiqua will teach the techniques of block printing on fabric, a tradition common throughout India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Learn how the traditional, hand-carved wood blocks create intricate, interlocking designs and are used to make repeating patterns on cotton. Tasnim was born in Bangladesh and came to live in Winnipeg one year ago with her husband and their two children. Her family runs a block printing business in her city of birth, Dhaka, which provides beautiful, custom made textiles, often for the women in families who are planning a wedding. The block printing business in Bangladesh is highly competitive and it is important to constantly design new patterns to attract customers. Hence, Tasnim’s family has an abundance of pre-used wooden blocks, some of which have now been sent to Winnipeg in order to achieve new life by the participants of this workshop.

Tasnim Siddiqua shows off a block printed textile

Location: MAWA, 611 Main Street 
Start Time: 1:00 pm
Date: Saturday April 14, 2012
End Time: 4:00 pm