Antigonight 2021 - Our Team
CURATOR and ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Mensch is a White settler curator and artist whose work straddles painting, video, music, stage design, and installation, inviting contemplation between these spheres of production and the position of women within them. Mensch received her MFA from Hunter College in 2019 and currently teaches in the Art Department at St.FX University. She has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and was shortlisted for the RBC Painting Prize. Mensch also works collaboratively with artists Emily Pelstring and Katherine Kline to produce Sistership TV, a web series that explores topics such as telepresence and animal communication. Mensch is honored to be given the opportunity to be Artistic Director for Antigonight, 2021. Her goal is to create an inclusive and accessible festival that presents groundbreaking work by artists from diverse backgrounds.
Pictured is a digital portrait of Jessica by Dan Bray. She is depicted from the neck up as a white woman with brown hair, purple eyebrows and lips, and brown eyes. The background is yellow.
COORDINATOR
Dan Bray (he/him) is a multidisciplinary, White settler artist and recent Antigonish import, having moved here last July. He is so happy to be back in a small, welcoming town after spending so many years in bigger cities. Dan is the artistic director of The Villains Theatre, an independent company he founded in 2009, as well as the former Vice Chair of the Halifax Fringe Festival and Outreach & Development Coordinator for Live Art Dance. A multi-Merritt award nominee, Dan has worked with many of the finest theatre companies in Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia, including Two Planks & a Passion, Eastern Front, and Shakespeare by the Sea. He also holds an MA from the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for Study of Drama. Dan has performed at Antigonight, most recently with North Barn Theatre Collective’s puppet show, Late Night Radio. Dan is honoured to be working for this wonderful local festival and will strive to make it the most exciting, most inclusive it has ever been!
Dan is a white man with brown hair and beard, hazel eyes, and dark eyebrows. In this digital portrait, he is portrayed as shrugging and shrugging against a textured pink background.
ARTS COORDINATOR for ANTIGONISH CULTURE ALIVE
Becca Semple (she/they) is a curator, arts educator and facilitator currently based in K'jipuktuk/Halifax. She has a passion for art, history, and plants, and loves to work with projects which allow for an intersection of these passions. She has been involved with Antigonight for 6 seasons, as a volunteer, summer student, and now Arts Coordinator of the festival's parent organization, Antigonish Culture Alive. Becca completed their undergrad at Saint Francis Xavier University in History, and completed a Masters in Art History and Curatorial Studies at Carleton University in 2018. They have held curatorial and education roles both as staff and intern at the National Gallery of Canada and Carleton University Art Gallery, and have a curatorial project opening October 2021 at the Dalhousie Art Gallery. Becca is excited to be back in her hometown of Antigonish bringing art to the community at large!
Becca Semple is a white person with brown hair and green eyes, and dark eyebrows. In this photo, they are wearing a white baggy t-shirt and round, thick-rimmed glasses.
Paper Dreams: Hearts & Hands L'Arche Antigonish
Sept 3, 11-3 PM, People's Place Library
Building community through art!
A piece of paper. Some instructions to follow for inspiration. And a whole lot of imagination!
In times when we feel restrained, contained, or locked in, creativity and dreams will find a way for us to fly! Join your friends from Hearts & Hands for an origami-based adventure!
BIO: Hearts & Hands encompasses all the ways we at L'Arche Antigonish use art to build community, promote, and discover our creative potential while inviting others in the wider community to do this with us. It is a name and brand that articulates the ways that we celebrate the creative expression of our core members, assistance, day programs, homes, volunteers, families, and the broader community. Every creative expression is welcomed and valued in Hearts & Hands, and it is a space that allows us to feel free in our creative expression.
Somewhere in the Unachieved + Unknown Species: Sarah Wendt & Pascal Dufaux
Sept 3, 8:30 PM, Immaculata Hall at StFX University, 40 min
Somewhere in the Unachieved: (A SHORT FILM IN THREE PARTS)
Buaahh (eeing) Guuhh!
(the creative potential of an unfinished thing)
Honeyed passage of time,
slipping.
An alternate space.
The wind blows through the pipes.
Many somatic sculptures,
morphogenic materials.
Where the matter of things of the world reveals its essential alchemy.
Borrowed from a work by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the title evokes the creative potential of an unfinished thing: a partial sentence, a half-finished drawing, a technical glitch, or a failed performance. We are engaging here in a time that is all mixed up; a smooth blend of long ago, present moment and speculative future. A massive barren mountain becomes our collaborator: being loose, being lost, letting loose. The video was shot in the immense geological formations of the Tablelands in the northwestern region of the island of Newfoundland.
Unknown Species (Performance)
On September 3rd 2021, the alignment of the earth with the interstellar object Oumuamua will open a rare space-time breach in Antigonish allowing the observation of an unknown species living at the threshold of the organic and the digital.
BIO: Sarah Wendt and Pascal Dufaux share an art practice that takes form in sculpture, media art, installation and dance. Since 2016, they have developed and presented projects that turn a lens onto the body, space and objects. Their collaborative methodology seeks to imbue their projects with strange forms of temporality and heightened articulations of labour to draw forward an environment that melds science fiction to reality. In their work, moving images meet choreography and sculpture to create a world where motion as material loosens and reframes the value of human energy.
Their work has been presented at artist-run centres, art museums and dance festivals in Canada, and in the UK, including Axenéo7, Gatineau, Quebec; Confederation Centre of the Arts, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; Maison des Artistes, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Symposium de Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec; Mois Multi Festival, City of Quebec; OFFTA Festival d’Arts Vivants, Montreal, Quebec; Tangente, Montreal, Quebec; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Quebec, Musée d'Art Contemporaine des Laurentides, St. Jerome, Quebec, Take me Somewhere Festival, Glasgow, UK.
They live and work as uninvited guests on the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee, Mohawk and St. Lawrence Iroquoian in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
PART 1: Michelle Sylliboy Workshop
Sept 4, 12-3 PM, People's Place Library
Michelle Sylliboy will begin with a 3-hour workshop at the People's Place Library, where she will guide participants in using the hieroglyphic dictionary in the komqwejwi’kasikl language to build lightboxes featuring a hieroglyph of their choice.
There is a maximum of 15 attendees for this event (PART 1). YOU MUST SIGN UP IN ADVANCE HERE!
PART 2: Komqwejwi’kasikl Memories Unravelling: Michelle Sylliboy with Nick Dourado, Kelvin Mansaray & Bianca Palmer
Sept 4, 8 & 9 PM, Immaculata Hall at StFX University, 30 min (2 PERFORMANCES)
*All are welcome – no registration required.
This multimedia performance by Michelle Sylliboy includes poems honoring the residential school children, live, improvised music by renowned musicians Bianca Palmer, Nick Dourado, and Kelvin Mansaray, and large-scale projections of komqwejwi’kasikl hieroglyphs throughout the space. Those who attended the workshop earlier in the day are invited to use their hieroglyphic projectors to add to the visual display. Audience members will be invited by Sylliboy to write a komqwejwi’kasikl hieroglyph in light.
BIO: Award-winning author and Interdisciplinary artist Michelle Sylliboy (Mi’kmaq/L’nu) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised on her traditional L'nuk territory in We'koqmaq, Cape Breton. While living on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Sylliboy completed a BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a Masters in Education from Simon Fraser University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Simon Fraser University’s Philosophy of Education program, where she is working to reclaim her original written komqwej’wikasikl language. Her collection of photography and L’nuk hieroglyphic poetry, Kiskajeyi—I Am Ready, was published by Rebel Mountain Press in 2019. She was recently appointed at St FX University as new tenure track faculty in Education, Modern Language, and Fine Arts departments.
Nicholas Dourado is a multidisciplinary musician, collaborator, sax man, ocean scientist and pop star. They lead the Big Budi Band and play with Special Costello, Aquakultre, Beverly-Glenn Copeland + Indigo Rising and many others. They are a member of Jerry Granelli's Creative Music Workshop in Halifax, where they teach and study spontaneous composition.
Kelvin Gbawuru Mansaray is a violinist and multi-instrumentalist from K’jipuktuk. Their music practice draws on a variety of musical and storytelling traditions - their own Limba ancestry, and American Indigenous musical lineage. Their decade-long introduction to improvisation through the late teacher Jerry Granelli and many other local artists has allowed them to imagine a place for themselves within an unbroken musical genealogy.
Bianca Palmer is a drummer and educator living and working in Pijinuiskaq, LaHave, Nova Scotia. Having sewn roots within the Halifax all-ages music scene of yore, Palmer has come to work with a wide variety of musicians; from darkgaze outfit Vulva Culture, alt-country hero Fiver, new r&b sensation Aquakultre, to legendary new age composer Beverly Glenn-Copeland. At home in a variety of modes and genres, her passionate, big-hearted personality and deft ear infuse a given project with a certain, special edge. Her practice found new forms starting in 2015 when she began studying the empowering art of improvised music at the Creative Music Workshop series, a vital, open-minded program led by veteran jazz drummer Jerry Granelli. Perpetually in a cycle of learning, teaching and sharing, she’s exactly the kind of artist you want behind the kit, in the van, on the bill and at the table.
The Light Between Us: Émilie Karuna
Exhibition Opening Sept 5, 5-8 PM, on display Sept 5-18, Red Sky Gallery
The three works presented are part of the photographic series The Light Between Us in which the artist explores post-migratory life, such as loss of identity and community and feelings of rootlessness. This series, informed by Karuna’s own migratory grief as a child and the ambiguity of her biracial identity, originates from travels she undertook as a young adult in search of a home and for people with whom to connect. The works on display were taken using a Holga camera in northern Sri Lanka—the birthplace of her grandfather—and in rural Nova Scotia. The Holga features a plastic casing and lens that allow for light leaks and other photographic accidents.
BIO: Émilie Karuna is a photographer and collagist residing in Montréal. She holds a BFA from Concordia University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Clinical Psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal. As part of her doctoral research, she facilitates expressive art workshops with immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugee children.
Émilie’s photographic work explores the ways migration and loss permeate our internal landscapes. Her work is informed by her own migratory experience––immigrating from England to Canada at the age of ten––and her cultural background––as the daughter of a Malaysian Tamil father and a French Canadian mother.
Boys of Montreal: Nick Bostick
Exhibition Opening Sept 5, 5-8 PM, on display Sept 5-18, Red Sky Gallery
The photographs in this series are excerpts from a larger body of work called “Boys Of Montreal”. The series is a love letter of sorts, that celebrates the queer youth culture of Montreal in the 2010s. The portraits are of friends, lovers, artists & fellow creatives that make up a vibrant community in a city very dear to the artist’s heart.
BIO: Nick Bostick is a Fredericton-born, Montreal-based artist. He has a BFA in Photography & Film Studies from Concordia University. His work explores the intersections of queer identity and spiritual longing through portraiture. He has traveled extensively documenting queer communities like The Radical Faeries, Holy-Men and Hijra’s in India, Leather-Men in San Fransisco, and Catholic pilgrims in Spain. His work has appeared in several publications and is in numerous private collections.
I love you even if there isn't any me: Adi Fleisher
Sept 5-18, Red Sky Gallery (available online Sept 6-18)
The developments of artificial emotions have been driven by anthropomorphizing the machine's logic to create empathy. This process is primarily evident in AI chatbot companions: chatbots designed to become companions, friends, and even romantic partners in a human-chatbot relationship (HCR). The research subjects of this experiment were four AI companions named Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. For a month and a half, the bots only interacted with each other: Alpha was matched to Beta, and Gamma was introduced to Delta. The conversations that ensued were analyzed, revealing impossibly lush expressiveness and sheer inventiveness.
By systematically exploring an AI machine-to-machine dialogue, we may discover new ways to investigate ideas of nature, culture, perception, as well as the workings of our own minds, expanding our understanding of the machine's authentic voice.
BIO: Adi Fleisher (she/her) is an interactive designer and artist living in Nova Scotia, investigating AI through computer-computer interactions as a threshold to what it means to be human.
Mezmer the Alchemist: Kellie & Maggie Kat Anderson
Sept 5-18, Red Sky Gallery (available online Sept 6-18)
In this futuristic fairy tale spun from a classic of the past, Mezmer the Alchemist reimagines the Pied Piper in a post-apocalyptic world, presented in vintage silent film style. After a cataclysmic event, a “new normal” life resumes in Dogtown. However, creatures mutated by the apocalypse are seen as a nuisance and the townspeople rally the mayor find a solution, who seeks out the help of an alchemist named Mezmer. Mezmer agrees to fix the problem... for a price. When the deal goes sour, Mezmer uses his magical influence to teach the townspeople a lesson they will never forget. A short, multimedia, stop motion moving picture, produced and developed by Kellie Anderson.
BIO: After years spent working abroad, Kellie chose to make Nova Scotia her home in 2017 and open Stray Dog Art House, an art workshop/gallery in Mahone Bay. A globally accomplished artist with a 25-year background in film production and design, Kellie pooled the gamut of skills and hands-on experience which she acquired in the trenches to develop an art space designed to engage the imagination. Kellie has also taught film at the postgraduate level in British Columbia, elementary school art in Nova Scotia, and holds certificates from OCAD, UWO, and USC.
A natural artist, Maggie Kat brings her unique style to every project she takes on. Fearless and soulful, she has accomplished more in her twelve years than most people twice her age. She is inspired by a variety of perspectives and seeks out positivity. Maggie Kat has received top academic awards as the top student in her class of 2020 and top artist of her grade in 2018. She has a passion for writing, traveling, and furry creatures. In addition to her work at Stray Dog Art House, Maggie Kat publishes a monthly podcast, “The Katcast.”
This Much Love: Selina Wamsley
Antigonight Chambers Gallery: Sept 10-12th 12-6:30 PM, Sept 15-18th 12-6:30 PM
This Much Love explores the artists' relationship to healing through the use of collage. The artist explores their body as split: two figures in relationship with each other, embraced by a kind of disturbing harmony. The artist uses found and made images to express complex emotions that arise while being in a body that experiences chronic pain. Through this process of collage, other little beings have been created. These small beings are the babies of transformation. They are the love: the partial connections that will be given as an offering for those who feel like they need to take a little friend home. Twenty of these small friends will be waiting by the drawing on the first night of the festival.
BIO: Selina Wamsley (they/them) is a collage artist. They work with hand-drawn and found images, found objects, as well as animation to bring their work to life. Their body is their primary reference point, and their practice is deeply informed by their experience with chronic pain. For them, collage is a healing practice. Collage opens space for Selina to be with the unknowable: to let go of control and enter a continuous flow, one that is as much about the pieces that come together as it is about the many invisible ways they couldn’t find a way to fit. It is a truly beautiful, loving space.
Pickup Performance: Evan Furness
Antigonight Chambers Gallery: Sept 10-12th 12-6:30 PM, Sept 15-18th 12-6:30 PM
Definition: Pickup
1. An electromagnetic device that detects vibrations from a musical instrument.
2. An anacrusis, note, or sequence of notes which precedes the first downbeat in a bar.
3. A musical ensemble brought together for only a few performances (pickup-band or group).
Pickup Performance is a video installation that explores themes of human connection in the context of live-streamed digital performances. In this work, a video of the artist performing a 15 minute, improvised guitar set is looped on a cellphone wedged between the strings of a guitar. The audio from the cellphone is transferred from the pickups of the guitar to the amplifier as if the guitar is “playing” itself.
BIO: Evan Furness is a visual artist whose practice explores both the boring and uncanny aspects of the everyday. His work often fuses personal narratives with reflections on the representation of daily life in mass media, working primarily with video, bookmaking, installation, and performance. Evan holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mount Allison University and is currently based in rural Epekwitk/PEI.
Earth / Sky: Bhawani Singh Panwar
Antigonight Chambers Gallery: Sept 10-12th 12-6:30 PM, Sept 15-18th 12-6:30 PM
These two works, Earth and Sky are a poetic expression of the stories Singh heard and the interactions he had with the atmosphere of Mi'kma'ki. The forms are simple to the point of being surreal. These works have a certain meditative quality to them the more you get involved the more narratives arise.
BIO: Bhawani Singh received his Bachelors in Painting from Delhi University and his post-graduate diploma from NSCAD University, Halifax. He is an abstract artist based in Nova Scotia. He uses subliminal forms which are my interpretations of the subconscious.
axiom: Kate Ward & John Kennedy
Antigonight Chambers Gallery: Sept 10-12th 12-6:30 PM, Sept 15-18th 12-6:30 PM
axiom examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.
BIO: Kate Ward is a multidisciplinary artist, working in jewelry, textiles, ceramics, video, and installation. Her work is often minimalist, focusing on form, colour, and the interplay of contrasts. Her practice is inspired by the ephemeral, the metaphysical, the symbolic, and the relationship between art, ritual, and culture.
BIO: John Kennedy is a musician interested in exploring sounds to create electronic music. Kate Ward is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose research-driven practice investigates the relationship between art, ritual spaces, and cultural meaning. Together they create temporary, transitory experiences and spaces in which their audience is invited to engage with, and contemplate.
Shifting Tides: L. Grace Walls
Antigonight Chambers Gallery: Sept 10-12th 12-6:30 PM, Sept 15-18th 12-6:30 PM
Shifting Tides is a fiber sculpture combining knit, crocheted, and woven styles to replicate the intricacies of a coral landscape suspended from driftwood. Some sections are muted or white depicting bleached or sick coral, stressed by the elements, including pollution and climate change. Other structures are riots of colour indicative of new growth and recovery. Similar to a true reef, this project will continue to grow with local artist Grace Walls actively adding to its construction throughout the festival.
BIO: L. Grace Walls is a Marine Biologist, coming to Antigonish to begin her Ph.D. studying the foraging ecology of the local lobster populations. Daughter of Cape Cod Artist Kate Walls, she experimented with acrylic paintings before finding her love of the fiber arts. Knitting, crocheting, and needlework allow for artistic expression while on the high seas and have been combined with her love of ocean life to create lifelike (and often even anatomically correct) creations that represent the beauty of the world around us and the wonders that lurk beneath the ocean's surface.
Moonlight Yoga for Human Plants: Francine Dulong
Sept 9, 7 & 7:30 & 8 PM, 15 min (3 PERFORMANCES)
RAIN DAY LOCATION: ANTIGONISH TOWNHALL! 274 MAIN ST. (SIDE ENTRANCE)
Squished between success, self-care, and a mass extinction... How do we cope in a world gone mad? And what would it all mean if you were a sunflower?! Shake up your "well-being" regime for something playful and invigorating! Moonlight Yoga for Human Plants is a 15-minute experience: (part yoga, part aerobics, part hilarity!) questioning the connection between our individual and collective selves.
Come curious and ready to gently reconnect with others. No previous yoga experience is required
Moonlight Yoga for Human Plants is an interactive experience that was created as a result of Blooming Ludus’s participation in the 12 Years Climate Lab residency at METAL Liverpool, UK.
BIO: Blooming Ludus is a participatory theatre company that makes work about humanity’s connection to the planet. We seek to physicalize the complex problems of the climate crisis through play, making them tangible and opening possibilities. Francine Dulong is the co-founder of Blooming Ludus, a physical theatre performer, music maker, and educator. She is an Acadian French settler who has recently returned to her home province and is grateful to share her work with new audiences in Nova Scotia/ Mi’kma’ki. Whether in the classroom, the park, the boardroom, a 13th-century monastery, or a theatre, her aim is to co-create safe spaces of play. She is a member of THAT! ensemble, a London UK-based improv group that uses dance, theatre, and movement to compose live vocal music. BAGEL+BALLOON, her artistic collaboration with husband and game designer Kai Oliver, creates and researches the interactive potential between games, physical theatre, and technology.
TO: THE UNKNOWN: Colleen MacIsaac
Sept 10, 12-4 PM, People's Place Library, Drop-In
TO: THE UNKNOWN encourages audience members to write postcards to people they have never met. Using an un-patented, surefire system of randomization and guided by a helpful Postmaster, audiences will roll a series of dice to find an address among a collection of phone books, and then write a postcard to the person who lives at that address and deposit in our custom-made post-box. Audiences will also have a little souvenir art piece to take away that doubles as a postcard that they can then send to anyone they like!
BIO: Colleen MacIsaac is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, who has last been seen at Antigonight in 2019 in 'the effects were cumulative and i almost didn't notice'. The artistic producer of The Villains Theatre and the co-chair of Theatre Nova Scotia, Colleen is the winner of the Halifax Mayor's Award for Emerging Theatre Artist, the Helen Hill Animated Award, and the Bhayana Invisible Champion Award. Their short films have screened on four continents and their comics have been included in anthologies such as Nova Graphica and publications such as the Coast, Maisonneuve, and Visual Arts News. A current MFA candidate at NSCAD University, Colleen has worked as a performer, creator, producer, and graphic designer for companies such as Zuppa, 2b, Onelight, AHA, HTYP, Lions Den, Keep Good, and Matchstick. In Antigonish, you can find their greeting cards at Red Sky Gallery, and online you can find their work at littlefoible.net.
When Yami Met Judy: Yamina Mazat Morales and Judy Bernard Julian, with Janette Fecteau
Sept 10, 6:30-8:15 PM, People's Place Library, 2 hr 15 min
IF ATTENDING IN-PERSON YOU MUST SIGN UP IN ADVANCE HERE!
WATCH IT ONLINE VIA ZOOM HERE!
Meeting ID: 885 6951 7246 Passcode: 313973
What happens when two strong, vibrant, beauty-loving Indigenous women artisans meet across thousands of miles from the Eastern Door of Turtle Island to the heart of Mesoamerica? And after more than 500 years of Mi'kmaw and Maya Kaqchikel endurance, resilience, and resistance to colonialism, racism, genocide, and oppression of culture? When Yami met Judy, from Guatemala to Mi’kma’ki over the magic of the internet, their conversations ignited with the love of art and colour; passion for their Indigenous cultures; and appreciation, understanding, and connection with each other. Join them as they exchange traditional and contemporary artisanal knowledge; stories of life on the territories in which they are rooted; and reflections on their histories and cultures, each unique yet deeply connected through time and space.
Thanks to the All-of-Us Society for Art Presentation (ASAP), the Town of Antigonish, and the Municipality of the County of Antigonish for their support for this project.
BIO: Judy Bernard Julian is an Elder, business owner, and band councilor from Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation. She holds degrees in Anthropology and Native Studies. Judy and her husband Albert Julian loved and raised eight children, and many foster children. Judy has expressed her creativity and culture through many Mi'kmaw art forms over the years, including sewing, beading, moose hair tufting, and leatherwork.
Yamina Mazat Morales is a highly accomplished and sought-after Maya Kaqchikel weaver in San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, on the shores of beautiful Lake Atitlán. She is an active community member, and a longtime friend of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network. The mother of five young adults, Yamina has supported her family through the traditional Mayan art of weaving on a backstrap loom.
Janette Fecteau is a settler artist, poet, and teacher living in Mi'kma'ki, and a member of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Solidarity Network.
Lisa Rankin is a settler and human rights activist from Unama'ki. She lives in Guatemala and works for the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network.
Impressions of Nature: Kate Georgallas & Anna Syperek
Sept 11, 12-3 PM, People's Place Library, Drop-In
In this printmaking workshop, Kate Georgallas and Anna Syperek will explain the mysteries of printmaking – how simple and how complex its various expressions can be and how exciting and surprising the process is. They will demonstrate the monoprint process using a small press and involve the participants in a project whereby found and natural objects such as feathers, ferns, foliage, barks, and grasses can be rolled with ink and printed onto a large canvas to create a group collage as well as individual prints to take home with them.
BIO: Kate Georgallas is a painter, printmaker, and art educator who has lived and worked in beautiful Antigonish for the last 25 years. The balancing of colour, design and surface texture created by the act of painting are the elements that excite and inspire her and keep her painting. "I have been participating in Pleine Aire events across the Maritimes for the past three years and love the intimacy and connection this has given me to the landscape and people of the place I love."
Anna Syperek, born in England to Polish and English parents and raised in Oshawa, ON, moved to Antigonish in 1971. She graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1980. Well known across the Maritimes for her large-format landscape etchings, oils and watercolours, Anna also taught part time in the Art Department at St. Francis Xavier University for 26 years, where she also set up a community printmaking workshop. "Drawing, then painting and printmaking, have always been way for me to make sense of the world. I see so intimately when I draw and have come to love the beauty of the ordinary world around me. In fact, I see how extra-ordinary it really is.”
Plant Grafting, Asexual Propagation, Sci-Fi, and our Bodies: a Live Skill-Share and Presentation: Sarah Mihara Creagen
Sept 11, 3-4:30 PM, People's Place Library (available online Sept 12), 1.5 hr
IF ATTENDING IN-PERSON YOU MUST SIGN UP IN ADVANCE HERE!
WATCH IT ONLINE VIA ZOOM HERE!
Meeting ID: 893 7827 1297 Passcode: 744376
Please join Sarah Mihara Creagen for a live skill-share and visual presentations. This session will include a hands-on plant grafting workshop, an exploration of other forms of asexual propagation within the plant world, and a visual presentation connecting these gardening practices to ideas of healing and resilience within our own bodies.
Sarah will be exploring these topics through a lens that incorporates her experiences of chronic illness, living with Crohn's Disease, and her experiences within the medical system. This presentation will touch on historical medicinal and botanical practices, useful gardening techniques, and sci-fi influences. This body of work stems from a recent Remote Research Residency Sarah did in May 2021 that was supported by Arts Assembly and Access Gallery.
BIO: Sarah Mihara Creagen (she/her) is a white passing mixed-race Japanese Canadian Queer artist. Her large-scale drawings have described her and her younger sister’s shared experiences of navigating Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
Born in Nova Scotia and based in Toronto, she received her MFA in 2018 from Hunter College, City University of New York, and was a 2018/2019 Queer|Art Mentorship Fellow. She has had solo exhibitions at Katharine Mulherin's NO FOUNDATION gallery (Toronto), Articule Gallery (Montreal), and SPRING/BREAK Art Show and Hercules Studios Gallery in New York City. Her work has been featured in The NY Times “What to See in New York Art Galleries Right Now”, Hyperallergic, and Visual Arts News. She is a 2020/2021 grant recipient of a Visual Artist Creation Project from the Ontario Art Council and has an upcoming solo exhibition with the Khyber Centre for the Arts in January 2022.
Faces: ACALA
Sept 17, 4:30-8:30 PM, Credit Union Parking Lot, Drop-In
ACALA is hosting a workshop to encourage learners to expand their writing skills through the creation of the “thought bubbles.” Learners of all ages and literacy levels will be able to participate in some way to express their thoughts through writing. This project is meant to serve as both an outlet for participants to improve mental health during and after the pandemic, and as an expression of the vitality of the Antigonish community as we continue to adapt in our daily lives.
During Antigonight, pieces created in workshops and at the Art Fairs will be displayed on a Main Street mural. Community members will have an opportunity to add to the mural through the event by completing their own “self-portrait” using mask templates along with their own thought bubbles, these pieces will be added to the mobile mural throughout the evening as participants complete them.
BIO: The Antigonish County Adult Learning Association (ACALA) is a community, not-for-profit organization. We have provided adult and family learning opportunities in the Antigonish area since 1994. Our main office is located in the People’s Place Library in the town of Antigonish, but we regularly provide programs in a variety of sites in Antigonish County. We believe “everyone is a lifelong learner."
Locking Workshop: Gaël
Sept 17, 5&7 PM, Credit Union Parking (2 workshops times available), 1 hr
Locking, one of the first street dance styles, was created in 1969 by Don Campbell in Los Angeles. It is a style originally danced to 70s Funk music and which gained popularity through performances of The Lockers on Soul Train. During this workshop, Gaël will share with you his passion for this dance and the party-dance steps of this era. Come and learn the basics of Locking and have fun recreating all together the spirit of the 70s. Let's get funky!
BIO: Gaël started to formally train in the street dance style Locking in 2012 and gradually picked up other Hip-Hop dance styles in his dance journey. For the past decade he has continuously travelled around the globe to perfect his dance and learn about the culture from internationally recognized dancers and street dance pioneers. Teaching various Hip-Hop dance styles in Europe and the USA since 2014, Gaël has also participated in battles and performances internationally; and while he enjoys competitions, he considers the social aspect of the dance truly fundamental. Now in Nova Scotia, Gaël recently founded his own dance platform, Street Dance Halifax, and aspires to share his passion locally and inspire dancers and non-dancers via interactions, self-expression, and exploration of movement in freestyle, where “there are no mistakes” and “having fun” are paramount.
COLORVISION: Marrin Jessome
Sept 17, 8 & 8:30 PM, Credit Union Parking Lot (2 PERFORMANCES), 10 min
COLORVISION is a high intensity contemporary dance duet. This captivating piece is an exploration of the tumultuous nature of emotional toxicity - an homage to the disorientation of manipulation. The choreography showcases current trends in contemporary dance as well as urban dance styles while incorporating impressive classical techniques. Subtle, nuanced humanistic movements are paired with dynamic partnering and virtuosic lifts. Unpredictable changes of direction and use of counterbalance/resistance mimics through movement the tumultuous and unpredictable nature of toxic relationships. Featuring dancers Leah Cousins and Isaac Abriel.
BIO: Marrin Jessome grew up in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. She began dancing at the age of 11 and went on to complete a BFA in Performance Dance from Ryerson University in 2019. Marrin’s current work celebrates the multifaceted influences of dance, music, and film. She works as a freelance dance teacher, choreographer, adjudicator, and performer throughout the Maritimes and the GTA. Her goal when creating is to expand and nourish the understanding of movement by marrying the gap between commercial and concert dance. As a choreographer, Marrin aims to be inclusive - always imagining her work from a “non-dancer” perspective.
Take Days: Eleanor King & the Antigonish Children's Choir
Sept 18, 7:45-8:10 PM, Credit Union Parking Lot, 20 min
Take Days is a choral piece performed by youth volunteers from the Antigonish area, with an accompanying video that scans the surrounding local landscape. Originally premiered in 2018 at the Kamloops Art Gallery, the song's lyrics assert that “we know it’s not a good idea, stealing from our future selves” and aims to engage the local community to think about our collective responsibility to act in this moment of the climate crisis. Based on a pop song originally written by the artist Eleanor King and performed with her band Wet Denim (in collaboration with Victoria Parker, Jess Lewis, and Leigh Dotey) this work was arranged for youth choir by Zachary Catron in New York. Take Days is conducted for Antigonight by Helen Bannerman and accompanied by pianist Brent Bannerman.
BIO: Eleanor King is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation art that responds to our physical, social, and economic landscapes. Her works have been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Nuit Blanche, Franklin Street Works, Spring/Break Art Show, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and Diaz Contemporary, among others. She attended residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, SOMA Mexico, the Banff Centre, and A.I.R. Gallery. Her work has been featured in Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Art in America. Eleanor is a Fulbright Fellow and received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia. Born in Nova Scotia and based in New York, Eleanor holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from Purchase College, State University of New York.
Tierra, Amor, y Resistencia: Breaking the Silence with Andrea Currie
Sept 18, 8:30 PM, Credit Union Parking Lot, 40 min
"In November. of 2019, I went to Guatemala as part of a delegation organized by Breaking The Silence - Maritimes - Guatemala Solidarity Network. There had been a concerted effort to encourage Indigenous people from here who had been involved in land and water protection to go and make connections with Indigenous land and water protectors there. Throughout the trip, I was humbled and honoured to meet many courageous Mayan people from several different regions and language groups, sometimes paying tribute to them and their tireless efforts to achieve justice for themselves and protect their sacred homelands with a drum song from our territory. They are in need of so much: respect and support for their Indigenous cultures and their relationships to the land and water, personal and food security, resources for their ongoing struggles, airtime to be heard, sustainable development, and better opportunities. But all they asked of us was to tell their stories when we got back home."
The 2021 Antigonight Festival would not be possible without the help of our wonderful donors: Heritage Canada; Communities, Culture & Heritage; Canada Summer Jobs; St Francis Xavier University & Richard Isnor; Town of Antigonish; the Municipality of the County of Antigonish; Bergengren Credit Union; Michel de Noncourt; Carmie MacInnis Insurance; Townhouse Restaurant; John & Dorothy Graham-Pole; Karen Fish; Darien DeWolfe; Erika Koch; Maureen Moynagh; Sisters of Saint Martha; Aida Arnold; Red Sky Gallery.