Visual Arts Nova Scotia is pleased to officially announce the participants of this year’s Mentorship Program. After receiving some great applications, the program will be supporting four dedicated emerging Nova Scotian artists. Nancy Chiasson, Jessie Fraser, Jeighk Koyote, and Boma Nnaji  have been individually paired with established artists and mentors Louise Pentz, Bonnie Baker, Jan Peacock, and Duane Jones.

EMERGING ARTISTS

Nancy Chiasson returned to Cape Breton in 2000 after 13 years in Ontario where she attended Dundas Valley School of the Arts studying pottery, life drawing and painting.  She established a pottery studio where she teaches classes and creates work both commercial and artistic.  While setting up her studio (took a couple of years) she began to explore collage and handmade paper to explore experiences with psychology (her first area of study) and the subconscious, meditation and the natural world. The industrial areas of Cape Breton were undergoing great changes upon her return to the island.  Watching the steel plant blast furnaces were literally blown up in a symbolic ending and carboniferous fossils littering coastal coal seams seemed the beginning.  Investigating fossils she ended up venturing to the floor of a strip mine where 2 storey high petrified trees were being knocked down by backhoes.  Her mind began to wander in time producing preliminary photo based collages and clay vessels as a response.  Her work deals with unseen forces, scale and the subconscious.

Nancy is currently working on the Transitions Project through the Shubenacadie Canal Commission conducting research and developing visual imagery in clay based on the lives of the Acadians along the waterway.  Her working title is Acadian Surfaces and she will be producing ceramic tiles based on her findings. In 2014 Nancy was awarded the Grand Pré Prize from Arts Nova Scotia for her artist in residency work at the Fortress of Louisbourg.  She worked abstractly creating collaged landscapes inspired by the rugged coastline and allowing her mind to wander through time.  Manipulating space, color and perspective provides endless fuel for these creations. She also created hand built pottery vessels inspired by eroding and historical buildings both real and imagined.

Jeighk Koyote (they/them) is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist based out of Kjipuktuk (Halifax), unceded Mi’kmaq Territory. Since 2015, they have primarily worked in shadow theatre, combining detailed paper cutouts with body movement, narration and puppetry. Using an overhead projector with etchings on acetate and a handheld flashlight, Jeighk animates their stories to music and narration behind a screen. Their work often centres around themes of mental health, the natural world and gender diversity. In 2021, their conceptual shadow sculpture-installation Testimony, was shown in the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design Gallery, as part of a residency with the Centre for Craft and the Highlands National Park. They have participated in a variety of residencies throughout Nova Scotia and are currently working on a featured-length shadow show, Ocean Kin. Weaving together the environmental and cultural controversy regarding sea otters, Ocean Kin speaks to the navigation of inner world torment and outer world expectations. This show is intended to tour in 2022. Jeighk is driven by messaging that is both personally and externally reflective, intended for their audience to see and be seen and above all, to feel.

Jessie Fraser is a craft-oriented visual artist based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. Telling a story is a translation of materials; it is a selection of information that is salient to you. This idea has led Fraser’s research and studio practice to consider how the present rearranges the past. Fraser Negotiates presence and absence, history and memory, and the effective potential of woven cloth through site-sensitive installation and weaving. Fraser completed an MFA in 2019 at the Alberta University of the Arts in Craft Media. They have participated in multiple residencies, most recently at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia and have exhibited work in several venues throughout Alberta and Nova Scotia; including group shows at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery and VivianeArt. Image, text and textiles, along with photographic and weaving processes are used as sites of intuitive and emotional investigation. Using time as both a process and a material, Fraser’s practice is the process of weaving. They weave not only with thread but also with historic narratives and atmospheric feeling.

During his early years Boma Nnaji was quickly drawn to the art of comic books which he spent time creating many volumes of his own superhero tales. Boma became fascinated with graffiti arts being the visual element of the music of his teenage years. Further interest was cultivated in arts during his undergraduate art and design courses while studying Architecture. After completing his degree in Architecture, Boma delved more into his artistic pursuit while working at Dada Art studios. Being an avid traveller, he is passionate about recording the subjects of his travels which include interesting faces and Architecture. As an Artist, Boma’s mission is to express the beauty of humanity and human achievement through his paintings. Boma lives and works in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

MENTORS

Louise Pentz is a graduate of NSCAD and taught art in the public school system for three years before turning to full time work with clay. After nearly forty years of work as a potter, sculptor and gallery owner she now works with a variety of materials and processes including drawing, painting, collage and textiles. She has been the recipient of one Canada Council Grant and a number of Nova Scotia Creations Grants. In 2014 her exhibition of figurative clay sculpture at the Mary E Black Gallery was nominated for the Lieutenant Governor’s Masterworks Award. Two films were created about this work by independent film makers, one of which was shown on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday program.

No longer working with clay, Louise’s current practice progresses between creating work which focuses on themes of social justice, (the intent of which is always to raise awareness that we need to acknowledge our past and work to do better), and exploring unfamiliar materials and processes in order to gain new experiences and just for the sheer joy of it.

Bonnie Baker is an artist working in rural Nova Scotia. Focusing on the role of rural identity in transition as related to land usage and domestic practice,  she uses early alternative photographic processes, installation, drawing and printmaking. She grew up in farmlands of Southern Ontario at a time when tobacco agribusiness was at its peak.
The rapidly changing social, economic, environmental landscape of her agrian community made an impression on her and her work continues to reference the life experienced outside of large urban centres.

An active founding member of an artist-run printmaking studio, Elephant Grass Printmakers, Bonnie believes community engagement, mentoring and teaching is integral to creative growth.  She received an Established Artist in Nova Scotia in 2016 and her work has been collected by the Art Bank of NS. Baker studied at Humber College, Toronto, lived in the Yukon an Alaska before moving permanently to Nova Scotia.  She further studied printmaking at NSCAD, at Women’s Studio Workshop in upstate New York and with Cecil Day, a Nova Scotian printmaker.  In addition to drawing and printmaking,  she has worked with textiles from 1984 to 2007.

Jan Peacock is an experimental media artist and writer and Professor Emerita of Expanded Media at NSCAD. In video and installation work she uses narrated, animated and performed elements in essay-shaped constructions, often involving landscape and text. Her work is in public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Ludwig Museum in Köln, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Fukui Museum in Japan. Retrospective screenings and exhibitions of her work have been organized at the Festival International du Film sur l’Art, La Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montréal), Dalhousie Art Gallery (Halifax) and TIFF Bell Lightbox (Toronto). Her video work has won awards at the Atlantic Film Festival, the Chicago International Film & Video Festival, and the Atlanta Film & Video Festival. In 2012 she became a Governor General of Canada Award laureate in Visual and Media Arts.

Duane Jones is a Bermuda born multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Kjipuktuk. His work blurs the lines between commercial and fine art – jumping between paintings, drawings and digital tools. Duane holds an Associates Degree in Art and Design from Bermuda College, a Communication Design (Honours) Degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and a Master’s Degree in Information Management from Dalhousie University. Duane’s work challenges commonly held beliefs around race, culture, gender and sexual orientation. Recently, Duane’s explored his Bermudian roots in the form of paintings and apparel designs that reference Bermuda’s landscape and slavery abolitionist, Mary Prince.

Duane is most known as the founder of Art Pays Me, a lifestyle brand rooted in the belief that artists can achieve the dream of financial and creative independence. Art Pays Me was nominated for Most Innovative Business of the Year by The Halifax Chamber of Commerce in 2021. Duane was also named one of the most inspiring immigrants in the Maritimes in 2021 by My East Coast Experience and has been nominated for The Coast’s Best of Halifax Reader’s Choice award twice for fashion design, once for podcasting and has appeared in a number of media outlets.