2022 Mentors and Apprentices
Art Apprenticeship Network paired 14 Emily Carr apprentices with established artists, curators, or administrators working or associated with a not-for-profit for the duration of February – May 2022.
We are pleased to announce Annie Briard, Brit Bachmann and Rachel Lau (UNIT/PITT), Christine Howard Sandoval, Emily Hermant, Emmy Lee Wall ( Capture Photography Festival), Landon Mackenzie, Julie Andreyev, Germaine Koh, Stephanie Rebick (Vancouver Art Gallery), Glenn Lewis, Rachelle Sawatsky, Lindsay McIntyre, Sara-Jeanne Bourget and Mark Johnsen (Patio Press), and Valérie d. Walker as this year’s mentors.
Get to know the mentor and apprentice teams:
Annie Briard, Mentor and Gemma Crowe, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Annie Briard is a Canadian visual art and media artist whose work challenges how we make sense of the world through visual perception. Creating lens-based and light-focused works, she explores the intersections between perception paradigms in psychology, neuroscience and existentialism. Her moving images, media installations, expanded and print photography works have been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including “Within the Eclipse” at Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver), “Second Sight” at AC Institute (New York), “Paracosmic Sun” at Monica Reyes Gallery (Vancouver), “Sight Shifting” at Joyce Yahouda Gallery (Montréal), as well as group shows, festivals and fairs internationally, including at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Mûr (Montréal), Three Shadows Photography Centre (Beijing), the Lincoln Film Centre New York, Matadero Madrid, the Switzerland Architecture Museum, among many others. Recently, she presented large-scale public art projects for a number of commissions in Canada. Sourcing inspiration from the affectation of new and/or altered sights, she regularly undertakes art residencies, which have included working in New York, Los Angeles, Spain, Iceland, as well as long-haul hikes across the North American backcountry. Annie Briard’s work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council. Briard holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she currently teaches. In conjunction with her practice, she occasionally curates exhibitions and public programs in relation to her research interests.
Gemma Crowe is a new media and movement artist working with the mediated human image: records of our bodily existence. Living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia, Crowe creates community and connectivity through embodiment and discursive practices such as collaborative choreography, improvisation, live video feedback, community discussions, sound installation and documentary and dance filmmaking.
Crowe works by the belief that art is an ideal vehicle to explore ways of knowing beyond cognition by encouraging connection and a felt-sense through aesthetic affect. Using her own body as subject, Crowe reframes recorded experiences through editing and durational media for new perspective and facilitates embodiment for pleasure and self-reflexivity, in pursuit of healing and deeper connections with one another. As a current MFA candidate, her research at Emily Carr University of Art + Design examines how to apprehend features of the world by listening and generating a felt sense of our physical bodies in space.
Brit Bachmann and Rachel Lau of UNIT/PITT, Mentors and Nadia Mahamoor, Apprentice (I Spy… Program Apprentice)
UNIT/PITT is a charitable non-profit artist-run organization founded in 1975 as the Helen Pitt Gallery by the student society of what is now known as Emily Carr University of Art + Design. UNIT/PITT supports art and critical awareness by offering the tools, space, resources, and mentorship for emerging artists and members of their neighbouring communities to engage in experimental creative work that advances a more expansive, inclusive reality for art and cultural production. Since the arrival of COVID-19, UNIT/PITT has presented mail art programs, remote residencies, online exhibitions, online publishing programs, and workshops.
Brit Bachmann is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based on unceded lands belonging to the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, in Vancouver BC. She is the Director of UNIT/PITT, and co-founder of the art writing platform, ReIssue.pub with Casey Wei. In addition to cultural labour, Brit maintains a visual, sculptural and sound art practice working predominantly with clay.
Rachel Lau is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and radio producer based in what’s colonially known as Vancouver. Inspired by the tenderness and strength of queer and racialized communities, they create work that embraces feeling and communality. As the Program Coordinator at UNIT/ PITT, they organized and curated the I SPY 2021 project. Rachel was also a participating artist of I SPY 2020. Outside of UNIT/PITT, Rachel is a co- librarian and curator of Queer Reads Library, a mobile collection of queer books and zines based in Hong Kong and Vancouver. They graduated from the Bachelor of Media Studies program, with a minor in Asian Canadian and Asian migration studies, at the University of British Columbia.
Nadia Mahamoor (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary creator currently residing on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Her work currently focuses on identity, textiles, fantasy, futurisms and moral ambiguity. She enjoys conceptual design, experience building, expression, creating dialogs, sharing stories with communities, and exploring new narratives. Currently, she is in the process of completing a BDes at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, majoring in Industrial Design.
Christine Howard Sandoval, Mentor and Karl Mata Hipol, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Christine Howard Sandoval is an interdisciplinary artist of Chalon Ohlone, Mexican, and Spanish ancestry. Her work challenges the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation through the use of performance, video, and sculpture. Howard Sandoval makes work about contested places, such as the historic Native and Hispanic waterways of northern New Mexico; the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in New York; and an interfacing suburban-wildland in Colorado.
Howard Sandoval has exhibited nationally and internationally; at the ICA San Diego, the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Disjecta (Portland, OR), The Museum of Capitalism (Oakland, CA), Designtransfer, Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin, Germany), El Museo Del Barrio (Bronx, NY), and Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY). Her first solo museum exhibition debuted at The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center in May 2019, during which time she was the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Howard Sandoval has also been awarded residencies at UBC Okanagan, Indigenous Art Intensive program (Kelowna, BC), ICA San Diego (Encinitas, CA), Santa Fe Art Institute, Triangle Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute (NY) and an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design (NY). She is currently Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art Praxis in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University (Vancouver, BC).
Karl Mata Hipol: I am Karl Mata Hipol, born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada in 2015. My artistic work is primarily drawing and painting. Influenced by my narrative, I combine my artistic and architectural background to create abstract blueprint paintings. Currently, I am taking a bachelor’s in fine arts, majoring in Visual Art, and minoring in Curatorial Practice at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Recently, I curated an exhibition at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art titled “Beyond the Horizon.” I have exhibited at the Headline Gallery; Seymour Art Gallery, 2021 Discovery exhibition and won an Honorable mention; The Reach Gallery Museum, Art on Demand 6.4 exhibition (2021); Federation of Canadian Artist Gallery and won an Honorable mention award at the “2020 Abstracted Exhibition” and Second place at the “2019 Concept” Exhibition.
Emily Hermant, Mentor and Camilla Giordano Cerna, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Emily Hermant is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explore themes of communication, gendered labor, technology, and craft. She received her BFA from Concordia University in Montréal, and her MFA as a Trustee Merit Scholar in Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals in Canada, the United States, South America, and Europe, and has been featured in LVL3 Media, ArtSlant, Espace Sculpture, The Washington Post, and TimeOut Chicago, among others. Hermant has been awarded grants from the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec, and residencies at the Burrard Arts Foundation, Haystack, ACRE, Ox-Bow School of Art, The Ragdale Foundation, NKD Nordic Artists’ Centre, and the Vermont Studio Center. Hermant is based in Vancouver, BC, where she is an Associate Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practices in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She is represented by Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver.
Camilla Giordano Cerna: Vancouver based artist Camilla Giordano Cerna (b.1996, Mexico City, Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist about to graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She works mainly within a sculptural and painting practice, which addresses issues around identity, cultural shifts, sexism and the overall emotions present while trying to make sense of reality. Recently, her work utilizes different sculptural materials to create installation-based works that respond to the conditions we experience in our daily lives as inhabitants of the 21st century by trying to create an immersive sensorial experience within them.
Emmy Lee Wall of Capture Photography Festival, Mentor and Sidney Gordon, Apprentice (Communications and Events Apprentice)
Capture Photography Festival is Western Canada’s largest lens-based art festival. Annually in April, lens-based art is exhibited at dozens of galleries and other venues throughout Metro Vancouver as part of the Exhibition Program, alongside an extensive Public Art Program, an Events Program that spans tours, films, artist talks, and community events as well as an educational partnership with Emily Carr University. Capture’s vision is to connect Vancouver to the world through lens-based art. The Festival acts as a platform to expand visual literacy through lens-based art; strives to give voice to traditionally underrepresented communities and to present compelling, urgent lens-based art. Capture aims to connect communities to incite meaningful dialogue between artists, curators, audiences, organizations, and institutions. Capture is committed to presenting perspectives from diverse backgrounds and members of underrepresented groups.
Emmy Lee Wall is a curator and the Executive Director of Capture Photography Festival. Wall is committed to showcasing critically engaging and timely work while providing a platform for underrepresented voices. She’s particularly interested in lens-based practices that engage with visual culture and vernacular imagery and in considering the responsibility of curatorial practices with respect to public space. Projects curated for Capture Photography Festival include Pictures and Promises at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2021) and Family Album at the Pendulum Gallery (2022, upcoming) as well as public art installations including work by Elisabeth Belliveau (2020); Moyra Davey (2020); Christopher Lacroix (2020); Elizabeth Zvonar (2020); Vikky Alexander (2021); Anique Jordan (2021) Krystle Coughlin Silverfox (2021); Meryl McMaster (2021); Emilie Regnier (2021); Zinnia Naqvi (2021); Steven Shearer (2021); Shannon Bool (2022, upcoming) and Sara Cwynar (2022, upcoming).
Sidney Gordon (b. 2000) is a queer, non-binary, multimedia emulsion based artist born and raised on Treaty 4 territory. They are now residing on unceded Coast Salish territories, where they are practicing and completing their BMA in Film + Screen Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Sidney is a member of Club AB, a borderless community-funded organization and platform of ever-growing emerging experimental media artists and nightlife performers. Their film has been screened by invitation in Zumzieg Cinema’s curated program BLITZ #37 (Barcelona ES), and their recent photographic series will be featured in Capture Photography Festival 2022 and ECU student exhibitions.
Sidney’s practice predominantly focuses on experimental analog filmmaking and alternative photography, expanding into media-based performance and installation. Through many cross-disciplinary eco/chemical processes, Sidney’s work challenges the way viewers conventionally interact with everyday structures and materials. The main focus of their film work is creating experiential embodiment, often portraying and deriving from personal subconscious experiences, while their photographic practice dominantly focuses on cameraless holistic processes that question authorship through material collaborations. Alongside their interests in these areas, many of their works also engage with socio-political subjectivity, predominantly across the themes of intersectional feminism, environmentalism, and identity.
Germaine Koh, Mentor and Tina Nguyen, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Germaine Koh is an internationally active artist and curator based in Vancouver and Saltspring Island, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Quw’utsun First Nations. Her work ranges widely across media, adapting familiar objects to create situations that look at the significance of everyday actions and common spaces, and which encourage connections between people, technology, and natural systems. Her projects in progress during the 2022 Art Apprentice Network period include a public art commission for the Topaz Skatepark in Victoria. Koh’s ongoing projects include Home Made Home, an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing, and League, a participatory project using play as a form of creative practice. Recently she was the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence, and in 2021 she was the Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia.
Koh’s exhibition history includes the BALTIC Centre, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Para/Site Art Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein, The Power Plant, The British Museum, the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, Plug In ICA, Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Liverpool, Sydney and Montreal biennials. She has received the Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award and been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award.
Tina Nguyen (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in so-called Vancouver (the unceded territories of the Musqeaum, Tseilel-Watuth, and Salish people). She works in installation, sculpture, print, textile, writing, and social practice. Her work is community centered and site-specific, drawing inspiration from communal spaces in which people interact, play, or become invisible. Her practice draws inspiration from immigrant labor, globalization, and asian diaspora, in which she draws from her family history with displacement, exploited labor, and resource extraction. In her work, she aims to represent and include communities excluded from the western fine arts narrative.
Glenn Lewis, Mentor and Becca Schile, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Glenn Lewis graduated from the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) in 1958. He also studied ceramics under Bernard Leach in St. Ives (Cornwall, England) (1961-1964). Lewis has worked in video, performance, film, ceramics, photography, sculpture, and writing. As one of the co-founders of the Western Front in Vancouver, Lewis initiated and administered the Video Program (1974-1976), curated the Performance Art Program (1977-1979), acted as arts administrator and program coordinator (1979-1987), initiated and coordinated the Computer-Integrated Media Program (1985-1987). In addition, he was head of the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council (1987-1990). He had solo exhibitions at Douglas Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Belkin Satellite, Vancouver, Canada. Lewis lives and works in Vancouver.
Becca Schile: Working on the unceded lands of the Tsleil-Waututh, Skxwú7mesh and Musqueam Nations, artist Bex has a certificate in Graphic Design from the University of Calgary and is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University focused in Painting and Photography. Her current practice is centered in explorations of the relationship between body, mind and nature.
Her artwork draws on her lived experience and she is intrigued by the way her body moves and is perceived within space. Learning how to cope with undiagnosed chronic pain from a young age has manifested into much of her artistic practice. She displays bodies in ways that elicit discomfort, with limbs that don’t seem to have a home. She does so to portray a feeling of alienation: of feeling lost within her own body. Her recent works reflect an interest in the organic shapes of human anatomy and how they often mirror those found in nature. Her intention is that by looking to nature, she can use it as a guide to find a way back to her body.
Julie Andreyev, Mentor and Keira Madsen, Apprentice (Branching Songs Production Apprentice)
Julie Andreyev is an artist-activist, researcher and educator in Vancouver, located on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish people, including xʷməθkʷəy̓əm(Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish),and səlilwətaɬ(Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, as well as the unceded traditional territories of non human animals and plant life including bears, deer, raccoons, eagles, ravens, crows,hummingbirds, cedar, fir, salal and others. Andreyev’s multispecies studio practice, called Animal Lover, explores more-than-human creativity and ways of knowing. TheAnimal Lover works have been shown locally, nationally and internationally. Andreyev has published her research in academic journals, books, catalogues and magazines. Her book Lessons from a Multispecies Art Studio: Uncovering Ecological Understanding &Biophilia Through Creative Reciprocity is published with Intellect Books, UK, 2021. Her research and artwork are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Andreyev has a PhD from Simon Fraser University, and is Associate Professor in the Audain Faculty ofArt, Emily Carr University ofArt + Design where she teaches in the New Media + SoundArts major. Andreyev enjoys walking with her canine collaborators, Heroe and Zorra, paying attention to the liveliness of the local animals, trees and plants, and Earth forces. She is currently working on creative co-productions with birds (Bird Park Survival Station), and immersive media experiences depicting old-growth forest ecologies (Wild Empathy).
Keira Madsen was born and raised on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations, also known as Vancouver, Canada in 1995. She has always been drawn to different means of expression, whether through music, performance, dance, drawing or painting. After living and learning in Denmark (the country of her ancestral roots) for five years, she returned to “Vancouver” in 2019 to begin her undergraduate studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is currently in the third year of her bachelor program in New Media and Sound Art. She can usually be found painting, playing with sound and music, or looking up adoptable dogs online.
Landon Mackenzie, Mentor and Marion Landry, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Landon Mackenzie has built an impressive body of work and is known for her large-format abstract and mapping paintings and works on paper. Her work has been exhibited in over 100 exhibitions across Canada and internationally, and collected by many museums including the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), and received her MFA from Concordia University in 1979 before winning 1st Prize at the Quebec Biennale of Painting in 1981. Mackenzie has received numerous awards including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2017. Based in Vancouver she is Professor Emerita at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Marion Landry (b.1974, Montreal; lives/works: Vancouver) is an artist who uses geometrical form as primary language of expression. Her paintings explore ambiguous spaces while drawing parallels with the nature of perception. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2016), and diplomas in Design from Cégep du Vieux Montréal (1991-1993) and 2D-3D animation from ICARI (1996). In 2019, she attended a residence in Athens Greece which culminated in an exhibition of her work. Landry’s exhibitions include South Main Gallery, Vancouver (2018), Seymour Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016) and Art Mûr, Montréal (2016). Landry is producing work as a settler on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
Lindsay McIntyre, Mentor and Isabella Dagnino, Apprentice (Artist Assistant)
Lindsay McIntyre (she/her) is a filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist of Inuit and settler descent. She has an MFA in Film Production from Concordia University and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Alberta. Working in 16mm film using experimental and handmade techniques, her short films circle themes of portraiture, place, form and personal histories. She was named the 2021 Women in the Director’s Chair Feature Film Award winner, the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton recipient for Excellence in Media Arts by the Canada Council (2013), was honoured with the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (Hnatyshyn Foundation, 2017) and her personal documentary Her Silent Life won Best Experimental Film at imagineNATIVE (2012). She has been a member of the Double Negative Collective, EMO Collective, artist-run film labs, and an international consortium of emulsioneers. She is a co-investigator on a SSHRC-funded interdisciplinary project with Ruth Beer entitled Shifting Ground: Mapping Energy, Community and Geographies in the North and is also a skilled Cinematographer (LAKE, 2019 by Alexandra Lazarowich/NFB, Ste. Anne 2021 by Rhayne Vermette. Having made over 40 short films over the past 20 years, she is embarking on her first feature The Words We Can’t Speak (currently in development). Recent projects include an animated documentary for INUA at Qaumajuq, Ajjigiingiluktaaqtugut: We Are All Different (2021) which earned a special mention as one of 2021 VIFF’s Best Shorts and was nominated for Best Animation at the American Indian Film Festival, a Telus Optik Local documentary Final Roll-Out: The Story of Film (2018), an award-winning short Where We Stand (2015), about the state of analogue film in the digital age, and a monumental projection-mapping installation on the Vancouver Art Gallery, If These Walls (2019) for Burrard Arts Foundation. Her short documentaries, experimental films and expanded cinema performances have been seen around the world and can be found in several permanent collections. She is an Associate Professor of Film + Screen Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design on unceded Coast Salish territories and she teaches film anywhere else that people will listen. She is also the mother of Alice Miron.
Isabella Dagnino received their Bachelor in Fine Arts from the University of the Fraser Valley this past June and is currently a Master in Fine Arts candidate at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Their art practice is rooted primarily in analog medium and large format photography. As someone with Latinx, Indigenous, and settler ancestry, much of their work examines the experiences shaped by their cultural background and their relationship to place and community.
Rachelle Sawatsky, Mentor and Marjan Jamal, Apprentice (Ceramics Production Assistant)
Rachelle Sawatsky is an artist and writer whose work explores abstraction, sensorial experience and queer aesthetics, primarily through painting discourses. They have exhibited their work internationally, including Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Karma International, Los Angeles; Gallerie Mezzanin, Vienna; China Art Objects, Los Angeles; and Vancouver Art Gallery, among others, as well as a solo presentation with Kunstverein Toronto at the Material Art Fair, Mexico City. Their work has been written about in Artforum, Frieze, Art Review, Canadian Art and The LA Times. Their critical and creative writing has been published in numerous publications including catalogues published by the Hammer Museum, Artspeak Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Night Gallery, the Capilano Review and BookWorks UK.
Marjan Jamal is an artist living in Vancouver on the unceded territory of Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. His relationship with craft started in highschool in the woodshop and art department. His work involves functional design as well as formal and material investigations mainly in ceramics and woodworking, and he is always curious about other material processes. Working digitally is an important part of his process, and he is passionate about digital fabrication. He is currently completing his BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Sara-Jeanne Bourget and Mark Johnsen of Patio Press, Mentor and Richard Brittain, Apprentice (Production Assistant)
Patio Press is a community driven printmaking project/virtual & hybrid residency created in 2020 by Sara-Jeanne Bourget and Mark Johnsen. It has inspired new methods of collective learning, teaching and sharing, (studio-based, online and hybrid) stemming from the constraints of the pandemic. Patio Press has been established through various collaborations with local artists, workshops, and community events. Our mission is to support artists who are interested in print by expanding and fostering their creative practice through our virtual & hybrid residency.
Mark Johnsen is an American visual artist living and working in Vancouver, British Colombia. His print-based practice examines the possibilities of the unique, hand-pulled impression in an era of digital reproduction. Through studies of material exploration, traditional and non-traditional printing techniques: he works to capture gestural and representational time stamps. He is the co-founder of Patio Press, a hybrid-printmaking residency run alongside artist, Sara-Jeanne Bourget. He holds a BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts (2012) and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2020). He has exhibited throughout The United States, Canada, The United Kingdom, Turkey, Bosnia, Japan, Switzerland, and New Zealand.
Sara-Jeanne Bourget’s drawing and printmaking practice stems from the creation of handmade and naturally sourced charcoal. Her deep-seated awareness of materials is rooted in the intimate knowledge of their provenance, fabrication, and uses. She inquires how the act of mining materials in/site/fully can be reflected in various practices, including non-human interactions.
She has exhibited her work and participated in residency programs in Finland, Quebec, and The United States. She has twice received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in support of her work and pursuit of her studies. In 2020, she co-founded Patio Press, a hybrid-printmaking residency with Mark Johnsen. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University (2015) and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2019). She is currently a sessional faculty member in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University.
Richard Brittain: I am an artist working and living in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations. I am currently a 4th-year Visual Arts major at Emily Carr University of Art + Design with a focus on print media, although I am also interested in collage, illustration, sculpture and painting.
A primary focus of my practice is exploring the complex and often fraught relationship we, as a species, have with the Earth. I find inspiration in the shapes, textures and patterns that exist within nature. Drawing on these, I seek to imagine new narratives in which humans embrace our place as part of the natural world, just as the natural world is an integral part of ourselves.
Stephanie Rebick of The Vancouver Art Gallery, Mentor and Cheryl Wong, Apprentice (Curatorial Apprentice)
Vancouver Art Gallery: Founded in 1931 and located on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, the Vancouver Art Gallery is Western Canada’s largest public art museum. Our mission is to create—through art—paths to share perspectives, build and engage communities and shape our collective future together. This mission is expressed through exhibitions showcasing outstanding examples of historical, modern and contemporary art from British Columbia and around the world; education programs that encourage dialogue and understanding; publications that advance scholarship on a wide range of artistic subjects; and a permanent collection—currently numbering more than 12,400 works—that serves as the region’s most comprehensive resource for visual culture. Committed to inclusivity and accessibility, we cater to a broad public across Greater Vancouver. Each year, hundreds of thousands of children, youth, students, families, adults and seniors of all backgrounds benefit from our programming. During the pandemic, our online programs reached more than 17,000 home-bound individuals.
Stephanie Rebick is a curator, editor and writer based in the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations. She currently works at the Vancouver Art Gallery where she is an Associate Curator and oversees the Gallery’s publishing program. She also frequently collaborates with Information Office, an art book publisher and design practice. She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions including Where do we go from here?, Modern in the Making: Post-War Craft and Design in British Columbia, Robert Rauschenberg 1965–1980, Out of Sight, Guo Pei: Couture Beyond, Cabin Fever, MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture and Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life; and has assisted with dozens of other exhibitions, publications and digital initiatives at the Gallery. Her curatorial interests include visual culture, new media, and the intersection of craft, design and contemporary art.
Cheryl Wong is an interdisciplinary creative currently pursuing a BDes in Communication Design, and a minor in Curatorial Practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her interest stretches over a wide range of disciplines, ranging from fine arts, visual design, place-making, and critical writing. Having deep connections with her hometown Hong Kong, her current works deal with concepts around her cultural heritage and explorations in bilingual dialogues. She is also passionate about the ethics of art/ design culture, specifically discourse around the gallery space, as well as the industry’s relationship with consumerism and sustainability.
Cheryl believes the creative field is a reflective space that can produce true innovative changes, and has the potential to shape a better, responsible, and inclusive future.
Valérie d. Walker, Mentor and Jordan Corder-Swanson, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Valérie d. Walker is a force of nature, alchemist, trans-media artist, curator, educator, Indigo Griot & solar-radio-wave creatrix. Born in Honolulu, Hawai’i, Valérie holds instructor level Ikebana & Chado (tea-ceremony) certification from Urasenke-Kyoto, plus a BSc. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (hardware and software) from the University of California at Berkeley & received her MFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Valérie’s TransMedia art-work considers queer feminist poc-agency endowed with Afro-Futurist Indigo Griot Time Travel & Indigenous Earth Stewardship whilst reverberating with anti-deluvian craft knowledge mixed with techno presence(s). V seeks out socially engaged collaborations with community artists and arts and culture organizations. Throughout her career, Valérie helped to establish, Studio XX, Canada’s premier feminist art space, home of HTMLLes, a unique, long-running digital-feminist biennale. V produced and hosted The XX Files Radio Show, a digital-feminist community radio broadcast, with over 25+ years of TechnoFemme radio, all shows are online as part of Matricules Canada’s online digital archives; work supported by Patrimonie/Heritage Canada & Studio XX. Currently, V has a residency award in the Malaspina Printmakers Downtown Vancouver studios where she’s exploring non-toxic printing methods using natural dyes and non-toxic mordants. Valérie d. Walker exhibits work in Canada and internationally, V was a featured artist in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s 2021 Trienalle, “Dislocations and Echo”
Jordan Corder-Swanson (They/Them) is a an interdisciplinary artist based in so-called Vancouver (the unceded territories of the Musqeaum, Tseilel-Watuth, and Salish people).
In their practice they find great joy exploring ways to mold spaces through sculpture, print and textile installations. Their practice orbits around concepts of bodily experience through the artwork and hinges on the need to immersively engage the viewer in the piece’s space. They are drawn to creating work that could be the catalyst to the viewer’s collective memory and experience, be that spatially, visually, or through tactile sensation. Jordan is currently finishing their BFA in Visual Arts and minor in Curatorial Practices at Emily Carr.
Art Apprenticeship Network is funded by the RBC Foundation in support of RBC Emerging Artists.