- Application Deadline
Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at 11:59pm - September 2018 – September 2019
Call for Submissions
Year-long Mentorship Program, Sept 2018 – Sept 2019
Extended application deadline: Tuesday, May 8, 2018
For all women-identified visual artists
Download the 2018/2019 FMP Info Package
The Foundation Mentorship Program (FMP) has been the core of MAWA’s programming activity since 1985. It is offered each year because it is so effective in helping participants in their journey towards being professional artists. Women who have gone through the FMP describe it as having been “pivotal,” “transformative” and “life changing.” It is designed to help women-identified people 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. It is a year-long program in which established artists (mentors) meet individually with their mentees for 4 hours per month to share their experience, expertise and advice. The entire FMP group meets for 3 hours per month for critiques, discussion, gallery visits and other activities.
Applicants are selected based on the quality and potential of the artwork submitted, the emerging artist’s willingness to dedicate time to the program and the mentor’s ability to work with the emerging artist through a shared medium or conceptual interest. Mentors choose mentees who they feel they can help. Potential mentees of all adult ages and backgrounds are encouraged to apply. 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.
If you have applied before and were unsuccessful, consider revisiting your application and the quality of your images, and apply again. Demand for this program far outstrips available spaces. Sometimes the mentors agree that an artist’s work is excellent, but they do not feel that they have the specific skills or experience to help that artist. Another year, another mentor might select you.
To apply for the Foundation Mentorship Program:
Please email a single pdf document containing:
- a letter outlining why you want to participate in this program and what you hope to achieve through mentorship (make sure the letter also includes information regarding how we can contact you by phone, email and post); please also describe your artistic practice (if English is not your first language and you would would like to apply verbally, please call the office and we can make accommodations)
- an artist résumé (maximum 3 pages)
- up to 20 embedded jpg images of your artwork captioned with the title of the work, the media, date completed and dimensions, or links to up to 3 minutes of video
If you are not already a member, please also submit a MAWA membership form and payment. MAWA memberships cost $15 for underwaged persons and $30 for others. Applications are due at MAWA by Friday, April 27 at 4pm. Email applications to [email protected] and put “FMP Application” in the subject line.
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Amy Karlinsky is an art critic, editor, educator and curator who has taught theory and criticism, writing and Canadian art at universities in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. As an independent curator, she has produced shows for public and private galleries, including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Gallery 111 and St. John’s College. As an art critic, she has contributed regularly to the Winnipeg Free Press and Border Crossings, and she has published over 100 essays and articles for Canadian Art, C Magazine, Blackflash, Etudes Inuit Studies, Urban Shaman Gallery, Martha Street Studio, La Maison des artistes and more. She has taught at Baker Lake, Tec Voc and Villa Rosa, and she has contributed to the Manitoba arts curriculum. She is the former director of the Nunnatta Sunaquatngirt Museum in Iqaluit. Her interests are in innovation and creativity, theory and narrative structures, psychology, interpretation and collaboration.
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Erika MacPherson is a video artist and documentary filmmaker whose current thinking and practice queerly explores questions arising from a critical white-settler perspective. Spanning concepts of deep silence, sentience, justice, agency and the inter-relationship of everything, her works range from clearly obscure DIY experimental installation to linear narratives. Her recent projects include this river, a film about the devastating experience of searching for a loved one who has disappeared, and Heimþrá (In Thrall to Home) about the arduous treks that led her family to Manitoba where they settled in the 1800s. this river, produced by the NFB and co-written and co-directed with Katherena Vermette, won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary in 2017. Heimþrá (In Thrall to Home) will premiere in Winnipeg in March..
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Gurpreet Sehra is a multidisciplinary artist who works in traditional and contemporary media, including textile, painting, video, printmaking and installation. She has completed three public art commissions in Winnipeg. She has exhibited, held artist residencies and presented at interdisciplinary conferences across Europe and North America.
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Helene Vosters is an artist-scholar-activist whose work focuses on issues of state violence, social memory, and the role of performance and aesthetic practices in mobilizing engagement. A self-taught multi-disciplinary artist—performance, craft and relational arts—her practice utilizes a task-based labour aesthetic. Her durational, counter-memorial meditations include: Impact Afghanistan War; Unravel: A meditation on the warp and weft of militarism; Flag of Tears; and Stitch-by-Stitch. Vosters has published articles in Canadian and international journals (Performance Research, Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Journal of Practice-based Research in Theatre, and Canadian Theatre Review), and book sections in Performance Studies in Canada, Performing Objects and Theatrical Things and Theatre of Affect.
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Brenna George is known for paintings drawn from events in her life. She combines journalling and humorous insights with exuberant brushwork and anthropomorphism, which she describes as “where sentimental mushiness meets fretful thought.” Her work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada and the Surrey Art Gallery. She has mentored at MAWA, Video Pool and the Manitoba Arts Network, and teaches painting and drawing at the WAG, RWB, Forum Art Centre and Fort Garry Palette Club. www.brennageorge.com
