2021 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 January – December 2021.
We are pleased to announce Annie Briard, Beth Howe, Brit Bachmann & Casey Wei (ReIssue), Dan Starling, Emily Hermant, Henry Heng Lu (Centre A), Jeremy Hof, Julie Andreyev, Landon Mackenzie, Lindsay McIntyre, Paul Wong, Randy Cutler, Sharon Kallis (EartHand Gleaners) and Valérie Walker as this year’s mentors.
Get to know the mentor and apprentice teams:
Annie Briard, Mentor and Kaitlyn Roberts, 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.
Kaitlyn Roberts is a multi-disciplinary artist who has achieved her Honours BA in Visual Arts. Her artistic education birthed an attraction to explore autoethnography. Roberts’ studio practice, specifically, surveys the complexity of mental illness translated through visual art while highlighting how it affects both the artist and the viewer. As a current candidate for the Master of Fine Arts degree from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Roberts is using her practice to investigate the relationship between the mind and the body. This includes research into the connections between mental illnesses and the viewer’s gaze.
Beth Howe, Mentor and Arina Sin, Apprentice (Production Assistant, Publication)
Beth Howe works with printmaking, drawing, artist’s books, and digital/analogue intersections. Recent exhibitions and projects include ‘Stitching and Weaving in the Digital Age’ at Currents New Media Festival (Currents 826, Sante Fe), ‘Prinstallations’ (San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA), and ‘Iona’, (Shunpike Storefronts Public Art Projects, Seattle, WA). Her prints and bookworks are in a variety of collections such as the Auchenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and BIG INK: an organization dedicated to large-scale woodblock printing. She currently serves as Associate Professor in Print Media at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC and publishes limited edition artists books under the imprint Emelar Editions.
Arina Sin is a graphic designer and photographer that works interdisciplinary between arts, design, and performance. They are currently completing a B.A in design at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. While their work is centred within arts and community, in personal practice they contemplate futures with immaterial artifacts on the internet. They likes the craft of bookmaking that coalesces photography, narrative, material, and the written word into a succinct art-object. Inspired by artist books and publishing as a graphic designer, they want to explore what it means to publish online, as an open-source, and as an ongoing process.
Brit Bachmann & Casey Wei of ReIssue, Mentors and Danielle Rozali, Apprentice (Programming Assistant)
ReIssue is an interdisciplinary art writing platform focused on shaping and sustaining a contemporary west coast discourse rooted in critical engagement with experimental art practices.
Brit Bachmannis a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada, on unceded lands belonging to the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. She is the Executive Director of UNIT/PITT Society for Art and Critical Awareness, and co-founder of ReIssue.pub, an art writing partnership between UNIT/PITT and VIVO Media Arts Centre.
Casey Wei is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and musician based in Vancouver.
Danielle Rozali is an interdisciplinary artist currently completing her BFA in Critical and Cultural Practices at Emily Carr University of Art and Design on the unceded territories of the Musqueum, Squamish, and Tseil-Waututh Nations. She works conceptually and experimentally, often meshing mediums to explore topics of heritage, diaspora, multiraciality, queer identity, trauma (generational and otherwise) and community. Her practice is currently based in drawing, painting, print and book-making and writing, though sound media and cooking are current curiosities to pursue! Past forays have also included photography, film-making, performance, sculpture and installation, and social practice. She is excited to continue her artistic development with ReIssue and hopefully contribute to an ongoing artistic discourse based in embracing and engaging with interdisciplinary forms of making.
Dan Starling, Mentor and Siqi Yang, Apprentice (Illustration Assistant)
Dan Starling’s work plays with the conventions of narratives through intervention, extrapolation and reconfiguration to produce exciting juxtapositions that encourage critical engagement. Based in research, Starling’s work deals with how historical and contemporary aesthetic forms frame the narratives that in turn influence how we see ourselves individually and collectively. Starling has studied at Emily Carr University and Städelschule, Frankfurt, and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Starling’s work was most recently shown at Wil Aballe Art Projects, VIVO Media Arts Centre and the Libby Leshgold Gallery in Vancouver.
Siqi Yang is a Wuhan-based illustrator, and currently a senior student studying in Emily Carr University of Art and Design, located in “Vancouver”, the unceded and shared homelands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil- Waututh) peoples. Her printing practice includes lithography and silkscreening. Attempting to get lost in intense line works, she re-envisions immensity through various meanings. She tends to work with nature, and to use imageries with spiritual interpretations and cultural references. She weaves them into the beauty of uncertainty.
Emily Hermant, Mentor and Kyla Gilbert, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Emily Hermant is an interdisciplinary artist whose sculptures, material drawings, and installations explore themes of communication, gendered labor, technology, and craft. She received her BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in Montréal, QC, 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.
Kyla Gilbert is a visual artist based out of Vancouver BC. Kyla completed her BFA in Theatre and Development from Concordia University in 2017. She spent the two subsequent years touring with two multimedia shows created by DJ Kid Koala. She began to transition from performance into more sculptural work, taking part in studio residencies in the U.S. and Canada. She is currently undertaking her MFA in Studio Arts at Emily Carr University.
Henry Heng Lu of Centre A, Mentor and TanTan Hong, Apprentice (Programming and Library Assistant)
Centre A (Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) is a leading public art gallery currently situated in the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. It is a registered charity and the only public art gallery in Canada dedicated to contemporary Asian and Asian-diasporic perspectives since 1999. Centre A is committed to providing a platform for engaging diverse communities through public access to the arts, creating mentorship opportunities for emerging artists and arts professionals, and stimulating critical dialogue through provocative exhibitions and innovative public programs that complicate understandings of migrant experiences and diasporic communities.
Henry Heng Lu is a curator and artist based in Vancouver. Currently, he is Curator at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. He is co-founder of Call Again, a mobile initiative/collective committed to creating space for contemporary diasporic artistic practices in the context of Canada and beyond. He has presented projects through numerous channels, including Creative Time Summit, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, The New Gallery, Vtape, Modern Fuel, and Trinity Square Video. His writings have been published by Canadian Art, ArtAsiaPacific, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, C Magazine, Richmond Art Gallery, PLATFORM Gallery, ArchDaily, OCAT Shenzhen and Gardiner Museum.
TanTan is a multimedia installation artist, visual storyteller, writer, bookmaker, and educator from South Korea. Her practice has been based in Seoul, Hong Kong, LA, and now, in Vancouver. Her practice and research concern microorganisms, memories, and world building; the studies interworked between parafictional and historical landscapes birthed by American imperialism. TanTan holds a BFA from CalArts and is currently in her final year of her MFA at ECUAD.
Jeremy Hof, Mentor and Kyle Scott, Apprentice (Studio Assistant)
Jeremy Hof’s paintings are compellingly sculptural, built from countless layers of acrylic paint over an extended time period in his studio. Many are strategically hand-sanded to expose their construction, revealing the artist’s premeditated colour aesthetic, whether subtly gradient, strikingly optic, or sometimes psychedelic and kaleidoscopic. Hof’s work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Richmond Art Gallery, Galerie de l’UQAM, the Mendel Art Gallery, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Power Plant, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), and numerous other venues. His work is collected by the Vancouver Art Gallery, BMO collection, RBC collection, TD Bank collection, and others. In 2008, Hof was the winner of the RBC Painting Competition.
Kyle Scott is a transdisciplinary artist living and working in Vancouver B.C, on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His practice explores ontological and epistemic entanglements within, between, and across subjects through the modalities of painting, sculpture, photography and video. He is concluding his BFA at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Julie Andreyev, Mentor and Richard Brittain, Apprentice (Research Assistant, Bird Park Survival Station)
Julie Andreyev is a Vancouver based artist-activist, researcher and educator. Her multispecies studio practice, called Animal Lover, explores more-than-human creativity and ways of knowing. The Animal Lover works have been shown locally, nationally and internationally. Andreyev has published her research in academic journals, books, catalogues and magazines. Her forthcoming book Making Art with Animals: What Interspecies Creativity Reveals about Our Kinship with Nature is in the publishing stage with Intellect Books, UK. ETA: fall 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 of Art, Emily Carr University of Art + Design where she teaches New Media + Sound Arts, Critical Studies and Foundation courses. 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 creating immersive media depicting experiences within old-growth forest ecologies (Wild Empathy).
Richard Brittain is an artist working and living in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations. A primary focus of Richard’s practice is exploring the complex and often fraught relationship we, as a species, have with the Earth. He finds inspiration in the shapes, textures and patterns that exist within nature. Drawing on these, he seeks 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.
Landon Mackenzie, Mentor and Lacey Jane Wilburn, 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.
Lacey Jane Wilburn (b. 1988, Edmonton, AB, Canada) is a contemporary female artist most notable for her work as a socially engaged muralist and realist oil painter. Lacey Jane first studied Fine Art at the University of Grant MacEwan in Edmonton from 2007-2009, and graduated Concordia University in Montreal with Great Distinction in 2016 after completing studies abroad at L’Ecole d’Enseignement Supérieur d’art de Bordeaux, France (2015). In 2010 she formed the urban art duo L.A.L.A. (Lacey And Layla Art) with her collaborative mural partner, and together they have created over 100 murals across Canada, as well as in Honduras, France, Uganda and Iceland. She has participated in over 40 exhibitions since 2009 and was the recipient of the Yves Gaucher Prize in Studio Arts (Concordia University, 2016), the D. L. Stevenson Colour Scholarship for Academic Excellence (Concordia University, 2014), the Francis Henderson Klingle Scholarship for Fine Art, The Barbara and John Poole Family Endowed Fund for the Arts, and the Jason Lang Scholarship for Excellence, (Grant MacEwan University 2007- 2009). She currently works and resides in Vancouver, BC, where her practice is dedicated to both her studio works, her career in public art, and the pursuit of her Masters in Fine Art at Emily Carr University.
Lindsay McIntyre, Mentor and Sidney Gordon, Apprentice (Studio and Production Assistant)
Lindsay McIntyre is a film artist with an MFA from Concordia and a BFA from the University of Alberta. She applies her interest in film chemistry, analogue technologies and structure to make award-winning short 16mm films and expanded cinema performances. Her works are often processed-based and involve documentary and experimental techniques. Interested simultaneously in the apparatus of cinema, portraiture, representation and personal histories, she bridges gaps in collective experience and remains dedicated to integrating theory and practice, form and content. Her current research involves the autoethnographical exploration of intergenerational trauma and the grandmother effect as a biological survival mechanism and also the ways and means of indigenizing institutions. Internationally, she has contributed a body of knowledge to the practice of silver gelatin emulsion making and coating for motion picture film and teaches this and other celluloid-based practices wherever anyone will listen – always aiming to make analogue filmmaking practices more accessible. She was honoured with the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation (2017) and was named the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award recipient for Excellence in Media Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts (2013). She is Assistant Professor of Film + Screen Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design on unceded Coast Salish territories and is of Inuk and settler Scottish decent.
Sidney Gordon is a conceptual multimedia artist and experimental filmmaker in their third year of the Film + Screen Arts program at Emily Carr. Their practice predominantly focuses on analogue filmmaking, while also stemming into alternative photography, textiles, and installation. Through many cross disciplinary eco/chemical processes, Sidney’s work tends to challenge the way viewers conventionally interact with everyday structures and materials. The main focus of their work is creating experiential audience interactions, often portraying and deriving from subconscious experiences. Alongside their interests in these areas, many of their works also engage with socio-political subjectivity, predominantly across intersectional feminist discourses.
Paul Wong, Mentor and Yan Liang, Apprentice (Production Assistant, the Sounds of Chinatown)
Paul Wong is a curator and community advocate. He has been instrumental in the development of artist run centres in Vancouver and across Canada. He is the co-founding director of VIVO Media Arts Centre (Satellite Video Exchange Society, established in 1973), a founder of Mainstreeters artist collective (established 1972), and a co-founding director of On Main Gallery (On the Cutting Edge Productions Society, established in 1985), of which he is currently the Artistic Director. Paul is the president of Vancouver Art and Leisure and is on the advisory board of Pride in Art Society. He is also on the artist advisory committee for the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Yan Liang is a non-binary media and conceptual artist primarily practicing Digital & Video Art, Photography, Text, and Sculpture.Their style is surrealist with playfulness and humor, using their subconscious, emotions, and personal experiences as the sources of inspirations. They often use found images, videos, and objects for manipulation and juxtaposition to create visual aesthetics and meanings. Born in Guangzhou, China, moved to Canada when they were 15 years old. Currently, they are based in Vancouver, Canada, and study at Emily University of Art + Design.
Randy Lee Cutler, Mentor and Alyson Bucharest, Apprentice (Production Assistant, On the Other Hand)
Randy Lee Cutler investigates the emergence of new cultural forms through an exploration of the intersections of gender, art, science and technology. She has produced numerous hybrid projects that engage with conversation, research and language to connect with her audience in diverse ways. Working with themes of hospitality and geopolitics, she is fascinated with the intersection of matter and metaphor. Taking the form of walks, performance, collage, printed matter, video, and creative/critical writing, Randy’s practice weaves together themes of interdisciplinarity, collaboration, materiality and sustenance. Recent projects have focused on salt, minerals and the energy harnessed within vibrant matter. Her work has shown nationally and internationally including the Biennale of Sydney NIRIN 2020, Vancouver Art Gallery, Belkin Art Gallery and AHVA Gallery both at the University of British Columbia, Access Gallery, Artspeak, Contemporary art Gallery (Vancouver), Western Front/Tate Modern, Seoul International NewMedia Festival (NeMaf), Losing Ground: Experimental Video shorts from Canada’s West Coast at the Canadian Embassy with Arsenal Gallery (Berlin), Visualeyez Performance Art Festival, Herland Film & Video Festival, Out on Screen Film Festival, Outtakes Dallas Film Festival, Video Pool, Centre for Art Tapes, Groupe Intervention Video/Videos in the Park.
Alyson Bucharest is currently focusing on a major in Critical and Cultural Practices at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her main forms of expression are through collage and painting, while exploring conceptual frameworks that can engage critical commentary on social structures and environmental sustainability. Still evolving, she is grateful for the opportunity to work with Randy Cutler in this apprenticeship, to gain further experience and practice within a professional environment. She looks forward to expanding her practices and perspectives to continue to refine her work and involvement with the arts.
Sharon Kallis of EartHand Gleaners Society, Mentor and Rebecca Wang, Apprentice (Programming Assistant)
EartHand Gleaners Society, founded as an arts-based non-profit in 2013, connects makers with materials that come directly from the land around them; we model ‘How to be a Producer without first being a Consumer’. By working with the plants around us using ancestral skills common to all cultures, we inspire participants to discover cultural connections, learn new skills, and discover novel sources of raw materials for creative practices, including garden waste, invasive plants, and textile waste.
Sharon Kallis is founding executive director of EartHand Gleaners Society. With a “one-mile diet” approach to sourcing art materials, Sharon Kallis works to discover the inherent material potential in a local landscape. Graduating from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1996 she began working materials from the land in 1999 and has exhibited and engaged communities with her practice in Ireland, Spain, Mexico and throughout the United States.
Rebecca Wang is an artist and curator based in the unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories (otherwise known as Vancouver, Canada) and her hometown Hangzhou, China. Primarily focusing on photography and installation, Wang’s practice investigates the absurdity and uncanniness embedded in the structures that uphold the everyday which is often characterized by capitalist consumer culture. She hopes to unstabilize the default ways of knowing, perceiving, and existing that disconnect one from their belongings and surroundings. Wang holds a BBA Degree from SFU and is currently in her final year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with a minor in Curatorial Practice.
Valérie Walker, Mentor and Kiara Havixbeck, 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.
Kiara Havixbeck is a queer settler of mixed heritage currently residing and creating on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. They are a multi-media artist who isolates and oscillates between digital and tangible materials. Particularly, Kiara is fond of following curiosity to conduct material investigations through woodwork, sculpture, print making and other processes. They are most interested in exploring community narratives in relation to the construction of materials and iterate their findings within each of their works.