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 artists in Nova Scotia. AGLENNCO, Sonia Chow, Gabrielle Theano, and Julie Rosvall, have been individually paired with established artists and mentors Andrea Dorfman, Leesa Hamilton, Frances Dorsey, and Melanie Colosimo.

EMERGING ARTISTS

AGLENNCO is a queer multimedia artist who fabricates science fiction fables using printmaking, textiles, and comics. AGLENNCO has a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design and an MFA in Craft Media from Alberta University of the Arts. They work and write in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Sonia Chow is an interdisciplinary artist/designer/maker based in Halifax. Her work explores the cross-pollination of communication, codes, craft, connection, critique, identity, observation, and storytelling. By playing with language and subverting communication with shrouding layers, she creates a material multilingualism which is organic, intuitive, and ever-evolving. She challenges herself with transforming what is salvaged or overlooked, and coaxing meaning from the undervalued. Whether investigating materials, processes, function, or form – she lets the work inform her, both as mentor and muse.

A lifelong learner, she gravitates toward the unknown. In part, this led her to 16 years of work and studies in Japan and Hong Kong where she ultimately worked as creative director, event curator and organizer. She returned to Canada in 2018 and completed her MFA in spring 2022 at NSCAD, where she has also taught interdisciplinary design and art as a sessional instructor. In December 2022, she will be 200km north of the Arctic Circle, for the design/build of her third art suite at the ephemeral Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden.

Gabrielle Theano (she/her) is a self-taught textile artist, with a focus on machine and hand stitch, both in 2-D and 3-D.  She works in layers, finding joy in texture, transparency, and shadow, using, but not limited to, sheer fabrics, clear plastic, or free motion stitched ‘lace’. 

Her original background is in Computational Neuroscience (mathematical modelling).  As a scientist, her role has been the establishment of the veracity or ‘truth’ of the data collected – both objective and subjective.  Lack of truth – lies, falsehoods abound in our human society, whether it is the denial of the existence of abuse, denial of the roles of many in human history, denial of injury, denial or distortion of science, denial of the real and urgent dangers our planet faces.  As a person of colour, and a female scientist, she has seen denial even of her existence. The establishment of truth has always driven her work, both in science and art.   She uses the fine lines and entanglement of threads to recreate the complexity of our brains and nerves as well as the beauty of mathematics and geometry.  Fabric, images, and stitch provide the canvas for her factual narratives of science history, gender, and race.

Born in New Brunswick, Julie Rosvall moved to Wolfville, Nova Scotia in 1998 and began her career as a textile artist. In 2010, she began experimenting with printmaking, exploring transferring the patterns & textures of textiles to paper.

She have started & moved on from two satisfying fine craft businesses. The 1st a farm wool shop which she is pleased to say is still a vibrant part of the fibre arts community. The 2nd was with her husband & partner Peter, where we produced custom architectural concrete, garnering international attention for design & quality. 

From 2003-22 She worked with Craft Nova Scotia until her recent departure from the position as Program Director due to the evolution of a genetic condition that impacts her day-to-day mobility & health. She a juried member of Craft Nova Scotia and Craft New Brunswick for spinning, dyeing, knitting, printmaking & architectural concrete.

MENTORS

Andrea Dorfman is a Halifax-based filmmaker, animator, and artist. Her award-winning feature films include Parsley Days (2000), a Canadian TIFF top ten, Love That Boy (2003), Heartbeat (2014), and Spinster (2020). Her short film There’s A Flower in my Pedal (2005) was runner-up to Best Short at TIFF and her documentary, Sluts (2006) won Best Documentary at the Atlantic Film Festival. She wrote and directed the National Film Board animated films, Emmy nominated, Flawed (2009), and Big Mouth (2012). Flawed was also adapted into a graphic novel by Dorfman, published by Firefly Books.  Her NFB feature doc, The Girls of Meru (2018) followed a precedent-setting international human rights team as it made legal history in Kenya. Dorfman’s short live-action/animated video collaboration with Halifax poet-musician Tanya Davis, How to Be Alone (2010), has garnered millions of YouTube hits and was adapted into a book published by HarperCollins – illustrated by Dorfman. Their follow-up collaboration, the NFB animated ode to pandemic times, How to Be at Home (2020), became another viral hit.  Dorfman is currently in production with a short animated NFB film, Hairy Legs.

Leesa Hamilton is a K’jipuktuk/Halifax-based sewist, pattern maker, costume designer, educator, and community arts facilitator. Although she wears many hats, she is most excited when her love of fabric, form, and design intersects with community-engaged art practices.  She has over 20 years of experience in community arts program development in Toronto and Halifax.  She studied costume and fashion at Dalhousie University and George Brown College and holds a master’s in Adult Education/Community Development from OISE/University of Toronto.  As a freelance costume designer, she has designed over 30 theatre productions and has been recognized with 3 Merritt Awards for Outstanding Costume and Set Design.  In the past year, she has prioritized mentoring emerging BIPOC costume designers.  Leesa works at NSCAD University coordinating the NSCAD Art Factory, a project that partners with community organizations to provide accessible arts programming while supporting NSCAD students in program development and delivery.  Leesa is also a Part-Time Faculty with the Fashion/Textile Department.  Leesa is honoured to participate in VANS Mentorship Program and particularly excited to work with Sonia Chow.  

Frances Dorsey lives near Halifax, working in her studio and teaching at NSCAD until her retirement in 2016. A growing appreciation for the fragility of the natural world has led to a renewed study of local natural dyes and miraculous plant life. For some time she has been working with local plants, clays, ferrous rocks, etc to see how broad a palette of local colour might be. Through experimentation, some kind of sensibility about terroir colour begins to emerge. 

Recent work for the exhibition Plant Kingdom investigates the seed as a metaphor as well as object, and the woods as subject as well as idea. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and is in private and public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Nova Scotia Art Bank, the Cambridge Galleries Contemporary Fibre Collection, the Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery Collection.

Born and based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, Melanie Colosimo creates drawings, soft sculptures and installations that are shaped by the resourcefulness and legacy of labour in Atlantic Canada. These works address themes of collectivity, power, and care. She received a BFA from Mount Allison University (2006) and an MFA from the University of Windsor (2011). Her work has been presented nationally and internationally in venues such as the Art Gallery of Windsor (ON), Bonavista Biennale (NL), the Guangdong Museum of Art, (Guangzhou) and the He Xiangning Art Museum, (Shenzhen). She has participated in multiple residencies that include the Banff Centre for the Arts and at the Vermont Studio Centre in Johnson, Vermont. She represented Atlantic Canada on the 2017 and 2020 Sobey Art Award long-list. Colosimo is also the Director/Curator of the Anna Leonowens Gallery Systems at NSCAD University where she facilitates over 200 exhibitions & events annually.