VANS is pleased to announce the start of the fourth New Grad Program with ten amazing emerging artists! This year participants will get weekly professional development workshops, mentorship from artist Michael McCormack, studio visits from curator Julie Hollenbach, and studio space in the new Wonder’neath Studios in North End Halifax. The New Grad Program participants this year are Mary Brantnall, Katelynne Cagliostro, Elise Campbell, Holly Clark, Belle DeMont, Ace Duguid, Emma Jordan, Annie MacDonald, Monique Silver and Cydnee Sparrow.

Read more about the participants here:

Mary Brantnall is an Illustrator/Interdisciplinary artist from Kjipuktuk (Halifax) Nova Scotia. She primarily focuses on digital illustration, but experiments with a variety of traditional mediums such as gouache, watercolour, ink, and most recently, embroidery. While the majority of her illustrations focus on more narrative subject matter, Mary enjoys creating work that reflects on experiences in her own life in the context of mental well-being. Most recently, Mary has been exploring the transition back to the social lives that many of us had before the COVID-19 pandemic and the mix of emotions that many are experiencing as they are reunited with their loved ones (with a focus on the social anxiety/awkwardness that many of us are now feeling after isolation).

Katelynne Cagliostro (she/her) is an illustrator and educator currently residing in Kjiputuk/Halifax. She is an obsessive doodler whose work primarily focuses on self-love and personal growth through drawings, comics and zines. Her work aims to spread messages of self-kindness through stories of her personal life and imagery of blossoms. She believes that self-kindness is a radical expression of self-love. A notion that feels particularly important to hear during the pandemic.

Elise Campbell is a felting fibre artist and educator who works with wool and other natural fibres to create sculptural and wearable art. Her work is a conversation of opposing forces such as drape paired with structure, lightweight and warming, or impenetrable softness. She uses dye and resists to create patterns and movement, typically finding inspiration from the sea. She is interested in outerwear as a canvas to showcase texture upon texture. Her work is primarily no-sew, or seamless, but she is currently experimenting with stitching as an added textural element.

Holly Clark (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her creative practice is vibrant and varied; often exploring the material potential of paint. By utilizing the subject of flowers, felines, and domestic spaces, her work discusses difficult personal histories through a language of approachable, uplifting imagery. Decidedly hopeful, these artworks are a celebration of life and those which we cherish along the way – thorns and all. Lush, abundant, and messy.

Belle DeMont is an interdisciplinary artist based in Halifax, NS. She graduated from NSCAD in 2009 with a BFA and went on to Concordia to explore digital art. Belle wrote the children’s book I Love my Purse and illustrated the children’s book Little Tree By the Sea. Belle recently graduated from MSVU with a specialized Visual Arts Education degree. Her work includes children’s book  illustrations, charcoal portraiture, contemporary landscape paintings and traditional nude paintings. Belle is currently working on combining storytelling with traditional landscapes of rural Nova Scotia.

Ace Duguid (they/them) is a queer nonbinary artist, and settler who was born and raised in Calgary, AB (Mohkínstsis).  They are currently located in Halifax, NS (Kjipuktuk). Their focus is mainly on their queer-trans identity and mental illness; While exploring themes of intimacy, relationships, memory, and connection. Ace uses performance as a tool to confront the viewer. Often they perform for the camera while working through difficult topics and themes, as a way of creating a safe space to perform and engage with vulnerability. Other mediums they work with include, but are not limited to: sculpture, text, sound, collage and printed matter.

Emma Jordan is an interdisciplinary artist, who uses the relationship of perception and reality as a point of exploration in her work. Presented as large black and white abstracted drawings, charcoals, graphite and other dark, dry media are used. She allows for music and instinct to be influential in the work as a whole. An important aspect of the practice is using the entire body to create and experience art as both process and outcome. This combines the act of creation, interpersonal communication, and reflection/interpretation in one experience, to be acknowledged all at once.

Annie MacDonald is an artist born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, with a BFA from NSCAD University in 2020. Through painting and drawing, she engages notions of documentation, narrative, nostalgia, and change with her interest in natural history. Plants, animals, and objects are often depicted in dreamlike spaces that portray intimacy with one’s environment. Her paintings inform experiential moments by often layering and removing paint, linking the way memory and physical surroundings change over time. Annie is interested in how things are preserved in the mind as a sort of artifact based on personal encounters.

Monique Silver is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Kjipuktuk (Halifax) exploring contemporary experiences of the human mind and body, as well as the power of societal pressures and their effects on our mental stability. She is a graduate of Mount Allison University where she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in painting and printmaking. Her practice manifests itself as mixed-media based work through drawing and various printmaking methods with a sculptural quality using textiles and manipulated paper. Monique’s work is driven by a personal exposure to mental health disorders and influenced by the practice of art therapy.

Cydnee Sparrow is originally from Alberta (Treaty 6 and 7 Territory) but moved to Halifax (Kjipuktuk) to continue their visual arts education at NSCAD University. They have stayed here since graduating in 2020 as an uninvited guest totally infatuated with living close to the ocean. Sparrow is interested in translating ambivalent environments that interpret feelings of transient-ness to aid in centering personal queer experience, and dysphoric connections to societal gender roles. To interpret these spaces, they often reference a blend of organic, sci fi, and anthropomorphic elements based on walking and experiencing physical environment. They have had a focus in painting, as well as ceramics. Although, their work now encompasses embroidery, fabric and paper elements.

VANS is grateful for support for the New Grad Program from the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage’s Cultural and Youth Activities Program and the RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artists Project.