Mentees:

Alexis Vessey

Originally from PEI, Vessey made Halifax/Dartmouth her home of 14 years where she established herself as an arts administrator and ceramic artist, and where she started her small family. Vessey’s work is motivated by naturally occurring organic forms and landscape, she alters her surroundings in an otherwise everyday setting, inviting the viewer to step into a slightly bent and terrestrial world. Using her hands as her main tool, she pinches, pushes, and manipulates the clay. Vessey’s intuitive nature allows for the discovery of new possibilities and directions in the making of an object.

Ben Mosher

Ben Mosher is an interdisciplinary artist from Nova Scotia who resides in Halifax. Mosher completed technical training at Sheridan College in Ontario in 2012, then went on to complete their Bachelor of Fine Arts at Brock University in 2015. Since graduating they have received the Working Artist Purchase Award, as well they have the distinction of being chosen for a few group exhibitions. These include the premiere exhibition Shifting Practises at the Marilyn I. Walker Arts School and the landmark Nova Scotian survey, Terroir at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Mosher, a Nova Scotian that had resided in Ontario for a number of years, experienced a tension of place while away, as well as upon their return. These experiences created an interest in duality and of memory which has embedded itself in their often poetic, object and text based works. Tying these concepts of narrative and object together Mosher hopes to create the sense of discovery that one has while growing up in an ever changing landscape.

Kate Grey

Kate Grey is a Canadian ceramicist from Calgary, Alberta. She recently graduated from NSCAD University in the spring of 2016 earning her BFA in Ceramics and a Minor in Art History. Grey has exhibited her work at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, The Craig Gallery and The Mary E. Black Gallery. She currently lives and works in Halifax, Nova Scotia teaching ceramic classes to children.

Although primarily a ceramicist, in the last two years Grey has expanded her practice to combine her ceramic work with digital media such as photography, video and image projection. In 2016 Grey’s ceramic and video art piece, Scar Tissue, was nominated for the Starfish Award through NSCAD University. Grey’s art exploration stems from her interests in ceramic and conceptual art history, objectivity, materiality, consumerism, digital presence, memory and the human experience. An object maker by trade, Grey’s work often contrasts the tangibility of objects with the intangibility of digital media. Her work prompts the question – do we carry the same sentiments towards objects as we have historically or has the digital image replaced the relevance of the object? Can the two co-exist?

Ryan Josey

Ryan Josey is a young Canadian artist from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He completed concurrent degrees in Art History (BA) and Fine Art (BFA) from NSCAD University in 2016. He has exhibited regionally at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic; the Anna Leonowens Gallery, and internationally as part of the LILAC Art Series in New York. In 2015, he participated in the New York Arts Practicum, mentoring and collaborating with Canadian artist, Brendan Fernandes. His work was recently featured in Issue #129 of C-Magazine in “Given Time: Notes on Dimensional Poetry” by Dr. Karin Cope. He is currently back in Halifax and working on upcoming projects with Nocturne: Art At Night, the Centre for Art Tapes and RAC/CAR Magazine.

Ryan’s interdisciplinary practice incorporates aspects of drawing, performance, sculpture, photography, video, and poetry to produce independent works and larger installations. Often working collaboratively, he is deeply concerned with language and its mediating role between bodies, histories, identities and violence.

Mentors:

Sarah Maloney

Sarah Maloney, RCA, is a Halifax artist who completed an MFA at the University of Windsor and a BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Primarily a sculptor, she says of her recent work that, “the contrast of the metallic permanence of bronze with the temporality and fragility of the flora that is my current subject matter is of particular interest to me in this stage of my research. I am working to create sculptural landscape with an awareness of the history of Canadian landscape art refocused through a lens of feminism and what is associated with so-called women’s work.”

She has received numerous grants and awards and her work is held in the many public collections. She has exhibited in group and regional exhibitions, regionally, nationally and internationally.

Maloney has been artist-in-residence at the Memory Disability Clinic, Camp Hill Hospital, Halifax; Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland; and the University of Windsor Foundry, Ontario. In 2012 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and awarded the Creative Nova Scotia Leadership Council Established Artist Recognition Award. In 2009-10 she was a mentor for the VANS mentorship program. She currently teaches part- time in the foundation and sculpture programs at NSCAD University.

Craig Leonard

Craig Leonard’s work explores transience, ownership, repetition, substrates, platforms, counter-catharsis, inconvenience, storage, paradoxes, participation, administration, repetition and education. Leonard received his Master of Visual Studies from University of Toronto in 2005. Since 2006, he has taught classes on performance, printed matter, sound art, and installation at NSCAD University. Leonard has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including Acme Project Space (London), AXE NÉO7 (Hull), Raid Projects (Los Angeles), Esker Foundation (Calgary), LMAK Projects (New York) and Mercer Union (Toronto).

Andrea Dorfman

Andrea Dorfman is a filmmaker, artist, animator, writer and sometimes-cinematographer. She went to NSCAD and soon after graduating, began working in the local film industry as a camera assistant and eventually moved into cinematography and directing, making music videos and directing the CBC show Street Cents before writing and directing her first full length dramatic feature film, Parsley Days (2000). Since then, She has made two other features, documentaries and most recently animated films with the National Film Board. She uses film narratively and is consistently drawn to personal essay and memoir. She’s taught film and video at NSCAD and engage in community film and storytelling projects, acting as a facilitator for others to tell their own personal stories. In 2010 Dorfman began working with a Canadian human rights non profit that does collaborative legal justice work in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana, making short video pieces that the organization uses to fundraise with. Currently she is in post production with a full length NFB documentary about one of their projects which she has been following for the past 5 years.

Bryan Maycock

Bryan Maycock is a Dartmouth-based artist. He was born in Newmarket, England and graduated from Bath Academy of Art where he studied painting, photography and education. After emigrating to Ontario he worked as an education curator, taught and was founding president of the White Water Gallery. In 1983 Maycock relocated to Nova Scotia. He completed an MA at NSCAD and, subsequently, administered and taught full-time in Foundation Studies until retirement in 2013. His connection to NSCAD continues as Research Fellow in the Drawing Lab that he co-founded with Dalhousie University psychologist, Raymond Klein. Maycock’s interests and work are multi-disciplinary in nature although, most recently, his focus has returned to painting. The threads and themes that have resulted in fourteen solo exhibits in public galleries have included such disparate subject matter as movement, genealogy, computers, compost and mapping. Materially, Maycock likes to keep his options open. While paintings, drawings and prints have populated every exhibit, materials such as wood, metal, plexiglas and even sound have also served as conduits for his ideas. Aside from the solo exhibitions, Maycock’s work has been exhibited in group and juried shows across Canada and internationally, and he is represented in numerous public and private collections.

Sponsors for this year’s Mentorship Program include: