We are pleased to announce the start of the third New Grad Program! It’s going to be an interesting year navigating this new pandemic reality, but we are so pleased to be running this program again with ten amazing artists! This year participants will get weekly professional development workshops, mentorship from artist Eryn Foster, studio visits from MSVU Art Gallery Curator Laura Ritchie, and studio space in the new Wonder’neath Studios (starting in October). The New Grad Program participants this year are Andrew Thorne, Anna Lisa Shandro, Emily May, Fern Pellerin, Jessica MacDonald, Kiera Sitzer, Maddie Alexander, Molly MacLellan, Nick Chapman, and Sydney Wreaks.

You can check out the 2020 New Grad Program’s Online Exhibition (that we created in lieu of an in-person Open Studio event) to see more of the participants’ work.

Read more about the participants here:

Maddie Alexander is a trans artist, arts facilitator, archivist, and educator. They hold a BFA in Photography from OCAD University, an MFA from NSCAD University, and are currently a guest on the unceded territory of Miꞌkmaꞌki. Their work examines representations of queer and trans experience in pop culture and mass media. They approach this through a community-oriented practice and utilize DIY techniques to produce environmental experiences. Their work pulls from sourced materials, as well as personal narrative to explore themes of desire, failure, connection, and dissonance.

Nicholas Chapman is an arts worker originally from Lower Sackville NS, and currently living in Halifax. He is interested in sociopolitical theory,  internet archiving , psychogeography , treasure hunts , organizing and pranks .  Nicholas uses a variety of media art tools to create and install games for viewers to play, with a focus on individual experience, and curiosity driven exploration of the work.

Jessica MacDonald is an interdisciplinary artist working in new media, film, theatre, music, performance and community arts. A graduate of NSCAD University, she works with Wonder’neath open studio and sits on the boards of various local arts societies. Their art practice centres on themes of identity, sexuality and gender, invisible illness, consumerism and obsolescence, often using humour to examine the relationships between people, technology, the environment, and permanence versus ephemerality within society at large. Through the use of reclaimed materials, interactivity and immersion, Jess works with the subversion of expectations towards a radical reimagining of what art can mean.

Molly MacLellan is a sculptress who works with mixed media, bringing together combinations of abstract forms into a single work. Her work represents complexities of relationships and she has recently begun working with the formal attributes of product design and logos to subvert them from their original use. MacLellan is from Nova Scotia but has been living in Europe over the last five years where she has completed a Bachelor of Fine Art and Design and a Masters in Visual Arts. MacLellan has exhibited artwork and attended residencies in multiple countries such as Iceland, The Netherlands and Germany.

Emily May feels most at home when she is in the studio, where she often works until she is starving. Originally from Vancouver, BC, May received a Fine Arts Diploma with accolades in ceramics from Langara College in 2016. In 2019, she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in ceramics at NSCAD University in Halifax, NS. Although May primarily communicates her ideas through ceramics, her multidisciplinary practice also includes photography, painting, and sculpture. May has displayed work across Canada in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Alberta.

Fern Pellerin is a nonbinary lesbian interdisciplinary artist from McKinney Texas, land of the Wichita, Tawakoni and Kiikaapoi Indigenous peoples. They are currently based in K’jipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki (Halifax, Nova Scotia). They are a graduate of NSCAD University with a major in interdisciplinary arts and a minor in illustration and art history. Fern’s illustration and textile art practice is currently influenced by past experiences growing up LGBTQ+ and overcoming past hardships. They are inspired by comics and cartoons, nostalgia, dreams, memory and their own queer Romani identity.

Anna Lisa Shandro is a self-described expanded field painter but can probably be more aptly described as a whirlwind of diverging ideas. She uses the inbetweens of ideas and mediums to break down the doors of how we collectively see the past, present and future. Over the next several months Anna Lisa will be exploring experimental short films incorporating the use of costume design, virtual reality, animation, 3d rendering, and whatever she comes across along the way. Anna Lisa’s practice invites you to imagine and reimagine the world around you and the future we all share.

Kiera Sitzer (she/her) is a queer painter, printmaker and digital artist in K’jiputuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her artistic practice focuses on exposing underlying biases in the hopes of illuminating the roots of sexual suppression, relative to Western societal shame surrounding sexuality created by sexism, homophobia, and their intersections with Christianity. Her work aims to deconstruct the stigmas regarding female pleasure, queer pleasure, and sexual self-expression. A crucial aspect of her work is personally gathering her reference photos through collaborative efforts to ensure consent is the main priority when depicting vulnerable bodies.

Andrew Thorne is an interdisciplinary artist and a recent NSCAD graduate. Woodcut, intaglio and screen-print are all vital components to the world of word and image scattered throughout the artist’s work. However, Thorne is not limited by these materials. Whether the medium is sound, installation or otherwise, the interrogation of the Canadian media complex and the performance of mass media is always given the hotseat. Thorne is also focused on materials that hold the capacity to share. His practice is one of recording, and collecting the bits and pieces of our lives that make up the magic of our day to day.

Sydney Wreaks is an Interdisciplinary Kanien’keha`:ka – settler Artist, who has been long-term located on unceded and unsurrendered Mi’kma’gi. “I’ve always been interested in the act of looking. Taking the time to think critically about the narratives that have been constructed around us, who is benefiting from these narratives, and who is meant to feel represented by them. With the focus on who and what is left out”. They work within Archives, field note taking, moments of ephemera, printed matter, painting, and beading. Their present practice focuses on applied actions of critically thinking and decolonial methodologies.