The Comox Valley Art Gallery Curated Residency Program was established out of a desire to provide extended research and site-specific production opportunities for artists, collaborators and curators presenting within the gallery’s convergent programs. This program supports deep and sustained artistic practice by facilitating meaningful relationships between artists and the local community for site-specific research, providing working and living spaces, and by exhibition of developed work.
CVAG has cultivated an array of community partnerships to develop this program:
- Technical and artistic production support is provided to the artists through an ongoing collaboration with the Department of Fine Arts and Design at North Island College.
- Collaborative partnerships with local independent businesses Spaces VR (virtual reality lounge) and Make It Zone (digital fabrication technologies) offer artists expanded resources for research and development.
- Accommodations are provided for participating artists at CVAG’s artist residence CVAG Next Door and through collaborative relationship with the McLoughlin Gardens Society. McLoughlin Gardens Society
CURRENT RESIDENCIES
May 5 – June 30, 2024 – Tricia Wasney
Tricia Wasney – Artist-In-Residence
“Six Pack Yoke”. Image courtesy of Tricia Wasney.
I am grateful to the Comox Valley Art Gallery for the opportunity to return to the McLoughlin Gardens for a residency. Last May at the cottage was a prolific time of gathering and making work from organic, waste and thrifted materials. My jewellery and craft based art practice is deeply influenced by place and I’m especially interested in finding stories in the forgotten and in the cast aside. This year, I want to learn more about the cultural history of the Comox Valley using maps and hearing the stories of others. My partner, artist Richard Dyck, and I were hugely impacted by the landscape and ocean-side and look forward to exploring more ideas together.
– Tricia Wasney
PAST RESIDENCIES
June 22 – July 2, 2023 – Lori Weidenhammer | Lois Klassen
Images courtesy of Lori Weidenhammer.
Thanks to the Comox Valley Art Gallery, I am currently the artist in residence at the cottage in McLoughlin Gardens near Merville, BC. I am doing a deep dive into local keystone plants for native bees using photography, writing and creating botanical cyanotypes. I’m also working on costumes inspired by insects such as leaf miners, caddis flies, lacewing larvae and bagworm moth caterpillars. Finally, as a board member of the BC Native Bee Society, I am networking with other artists, naturalists and scientists who live in the area in order to create future events merging art, science, and the conservation and celebration of local native bees. My longtime dear friend and collaborator Lois Klassen is in the Comox Valley Artist residence in Courtenay and we are supporting each other with food, conversation, feedback, and inspiration. We are also here to see the show in the gallery with wonderful art by our colleagues from Winnipeg. I am also grateful to HCMA in Victoria for financial support for this project as part of my residency with them.
– Lori Weidenhammer
Victory Gardens for Bees (Lori’s Blog)
May 9 – 31, 2023 – Tricia Wasney + Richard Dyck
Millions and millions
Township
Images courtesy of Tricia Wasney.
Biography:
My work is informed by landscape, geography, cartography, scientific research, and forgotten or hidden histories. My studies in landscape architecture, literature and film impact my artwork, telling stories and investigating ideas through narrative jewellery and craft practices, metallurgy, and incorporation of recycled materials. I explore hidden histories through detritus left behind – in city streets, thrift stores, in quarries, on beaches, in wilderness, everywhere – and use these elements from the past to re-imagine histories through contemporary projects. I have participated in residencies in Northern Ireland, Riding Mountain National Park and Churchill, Manitoba and know the incredible opportunity presented by situating myself in a new environment. My visual work has been exhibited in Canadian and European galleries. I am also a writer and the same themes run through. My written work has been published in several journals and most recently in the collaborative book created with Doug Melnyk entitled KITTY GIRL.
– Tricia Wasney
Residency:
I am a prairie girl and the thought of spending three weeks at the sea is bewitching. My artwork takes it’s lead from the land it finds itself in. I will explore all around me to research a work specific to the Comox Valley. I know the residency will have a powerful impact on my art practice.
– Tricia Wasney
Jan Furi’s Tic-Tac-Noooooo!
Strewn
Images courtesy of Richard Dyck.
Art Practice:
Art Practice:
Digital artist Richard Dyck explores the uncertainty of knowledge, drawing on human limitations and biased cognitive processes. He creates interactive experiences using apps, games, and unconventional hardware manipulation. His work challenges notions of intellectual certainty, and suggests practicality and biological necessity/limitations filter everything for a species’ survival.Bio:
Richard Dyck is an informally-taught digital artist with a background in literature, psychology, and religion. His work garnered support from the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Richard has collaborated with artists such as Aganetha Dyck, William Eakin, and Reva Stone. His work made in collaboration with Aganetha Dyck, is in the Canada Council Art Bank, and the National Gallery of Canada. His work has exhibited in artist-run centres and major galleries locally, nationally, and internationally.
January 17 – February 27, 2023 – The Source – Nina Wedberg Thulin
Nina Wedberg Thulin – Artist-In-Residence
During her residency for The Source Project Installation artist Nina Wedberg Thulin carried all her ‘questions from former works’ while becoming ‘a beginner starting from zero’.
This residency incorporates: collaborations between the artist and the community / site-responsive making / installations of new work / works that have travelled with the artist.
Nina was housed at the gallery’s residence CVAG Next Door during her curated residency. She engaged with the community and developed new place-responsive work that opened to the public on February 24, 2023. As she worked to develop work, Nina visited North Island College to collaborate with NIC Sculpture and Integrated Practices fine art student in production for their installation at CVAG.
As she collates her place-based research and develops new work Nina is onsite at CVAG in GATHER:PLACE, where she is available for visits from the public.
Biography:
American contemporary art, the music scene with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and others opened new doors for Nina as she attended San Francisco Art institute as a fellow. She painted big abstract acrylic paintings. Back in Europe studying art history, Joseph Beuys’ work got her absolute attention and interest; she then wrote to Das Freie Universität, read everything within reach, and travelled in his footsteps. Finally, the travels led to Beuys’ studio in Düsseldorf, and a meeting took place. Nina made her debut exhibiting in Japan, moved towards working more with sculpture, made a couple of trips to Beijing, and worked with bronze, fibreglass, and stainless steel. In her artistic practice, Nina does installations: sculpture, painting, film, sound, and combinations of these. Alongside art, she has worked with theatre and opera, and freelanced as a film editor. This is all part of her toolbox.
Nina Working with NIC Students (Facebook Album)
June 4 – 26, 2022 – Marlene Creates: Works from Blast Hole Pond Road, Newfoundland 2002–2021
Œuvres réalisées au chemin Blast Hole Pond, Terre-Neuve 2002–2021 – Marlene Creates
Marlene Creates – Artist-In-Residence
An installation / community engagement / site specific research residency while staying at the Mcloughlin Gardens.
The Comox Valley Art Gallery continues it’s place-based programming with land/lens/text-based artist Marlene Creates (pronounced “Kreets”) whose practice has been an exploration of the relationship between human experience, memory, language and the land, and the impact they have on each other. Creates is an environmental artist and poet, whose art practice includes photography, video, scientific and vernacular knowledge, walking and collaborative site-specific performance with the more-than-human world that surrounds her. Creates lives and works in the six-acre patch of old-growth boreal forest where she lives at the edge of the 920-acre Blast Hole Pond Conservation Area in Portugal Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
January 9 – 19, 2020 – SINGING TO THE WATER – KC Adams
Singing to the Water – a community and production residency during which KC Adams is preparing new work and embellishing existing work that embraces past and contemporary technologies. The artist’s creative practice engages the local community through traditional and ceremonial making to whet “blood memory” of our fundamental relationship to the land and to water. The work developed will be presented in the exhibition Birchbark Technology opening January 18, 2020.
November 27 – December 11, 2019 – PROJECT HOMESICK / ROOF (OVER MY HEAD) – Connie Michele Morey
I have been travelling to ‘abandoned’ village sites on the east and west coasts of Canada to document myself with a portable collapsible Roof(OvermyHead). Many of these sites include displaced working – class towns, union towns and resettlement projects that are being returned to the earth due to primary resource mismanagement, where human labour itself has been an exploited primary resource. Carrying a Roof (Over my Head) and on my shoulders, into past fishing, coal mining and milling villages has been a way for me to acknowledge the lived weight of exploitation, while holding space for conversations about the interdependence of resource management, labour and housing. Roof(OverMyHead) is part of a larger series of performative sculptures made primarily of reclaimed wood and repurposed wool blankets for Canada Council funded Project Homesick, which explores what it means to be ecologically displaced from the self-community-earth as home.
– Connie Michele Morey
Connie Michele Morey is an artist whose studio practice explores the experience of home as ecological interdependence. Through performative sculptures made primarily of reclaimed wood and repurposed wool blankets, her recent work Project Homesick and Roof (Over My Head) questions the relationships between displacement, primary resource mis/management, labour and housing. Her work is influenced by childhood experiences living rurally off the land, while being surrounded by family traditions of masonry, construction and textiles. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Lethbridge, an M.Ed. in Community-Based Art Education and a Studio-Based PhD from the University of Victoria. She teaches at the University of Victoria and Camosun College and facilitates an artist mentorship program in collaboration with arc.hive gallery and Errant artSpace. She has exhibited and performed across Canada, Europe and Southeast Asia.
August 7 – September 28, 2019 – PHYSICA – Clea Minaker
Clea Minaker is currently developing work during her residency with the Comox Valley Art Gallery which is part of the thematic program Uncover. Her installation and performance work will be presented during the upcoming exhibition of the same title, opening September 28 2019. During her residency, the artist is housed and is working on site at the McLoughlin Gardens Society artist residence.
Physica is an installation and a time-based performance producing ephemeral projections from the live manipulation of objects, light and phenomena. Using shadow puppetry techniques, movement and manipulation, pure light and objects, this research uncovers synergistic relationships between material, gesture, and image.
For many years I have been exploring, experimenting and creating through the language of light. Light, along with its’ partner Shadow, shows us the shape of the world through its’ contours, its’ empty spaces, its’ shimmering affects. The shadows themselves, stand as proof of our existence on the planet and under the sun.
Our experience of light, both conscious and unconscious, speaks to fragile and magnanimous sensations, of being human in an omnipotent universe. Our perception of light, underlines our relationships to both the natural and man-made worlds. How do we thrive, or simply survive, in these dimensions? From the sun’s rays filtered through trees, to the blueish glow of ever-present screens, light can tell us who, where, and how we are.
In my creative works, I have found infinite utility for the expressive qualities of light: for its’ mythological and phenomenological importance, and for the metaphors it evokes. Through the use of light and other visual performance mediums, I have expressed my interest for the emotional dimension of our perceptual experiences. How do our encounters with phenomena, and with the environments we are immersed in, make us feel? What of the perceiver, and what of the perceived?
My formal artistic training is in puppetry (both traditional and experimental). Puppetry is an ancient interdisciplinary language. It employs image and enactment to create a syntax built of symbol, metaphor, aesthetics and action. It has been said that puppetry is to theatre what poetry is to literature. It also finds its’ home within the landscape of the visual arts (though in both fields it may be viewed as an outlier, if it is viewed at all). Importantly, puppetry connects the artist and the spectator through a third party, that of the animated image, or the fictional presence. When we agree to suspend our disbelief -in real time- to make dead things alive, there is a special sort of complicity that develops. As our imaginations unite in the presence of one another, there is apparent to me, both playfulness and optimism.
In an age of constant acceleration towards unknown and possibly catastrophic destinations, I am not alone in feeling an urgency to be present in the here and now. How can an art which convokes presence, serve to connect us, to enliven us, and to assist us in imagining new realities together? In Physica I wish to offer to the spectator a visceral experience of having a hand in the action. These works are a small ode to the possibilities of uncovering agency, resistance, beauty, and hope.
– Clea Minaker
Clea Minaker is a puppeteer, designer, director, and interdisciplinary creator who graduated from the sixth promotion (2002-2005) of L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville‐Mézières, France located at the International Institute of Puppetry Arts. Through her personal creations, Clea has explored an interest for shadow, light, live video projections, object creation, as well as the poetics of manipulation, presence, and corporeal gesture.
She has created and collaborated across artistic disciplines including; theatre, live music, opera, dance, film, visual arts, and community arts. Clea created and performed The Reminder Tour Shadow Show for Feist which received international acclaim and was featured in the documentary, Look at What the Light Did Now. She has worked with Atom Egoyan, So-called, Kid Koala, Hajra Waheed, Clyde-Henry Productions and many other esteemed artists, companies and collaborators.
She has created commissioned works for: the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Convergence: an International Summit on Art and Technology at the Banff Centre, IF! Istanbul, The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Festival Casteliers, and Youtheatre. Clea premiered her full-length solo performance The Book of Thel, at Théâtre Lachapelle, Scènes Contemporains in Montreal.
In 2009 Clea was awarded the Siminovitch Protégé Prize for Theatre Design by prize Siminovitch Laureate and puppeteer Ronnie Burkett.
Clea has directed productions, taught puppetry, shadow puppetry, and interdisciplinary creation at; Université du Quebec à Montréal, Concordia University (as artist-in-residence from 2014-2019), The National Theatre School of Canada, Playwright’s Workshop Montreal, U.B.C.O, McGill University, The Banff Centre, and Nunavik Theatre Arts. She is currently co-director of the Banff Centre Puppet Intensive offered by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop.
Clea holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women’s Studies from McGill University. She grew up in Merville B.C and has been based in Montreal for the past 20 years.
Clea’s Residency (Facebook Album)
May 14 – July 5, 2019 – Rachel Grenon
Cermacist, Rachel Grenon, participated in a Comox Valley Art Gallery Creative Residency in the spring and early summer of 2019 to develop new site specific clay based works. The McLoughlin Gardens Society artist residence is well situated to provide the artist with experience of the ocean, shorelines, forests, mountains, ever changing sky, and weather patterns of the west coast. Grenon developed her work in the Shadbolt studio spaces of the North Island College Fine Art and Design Department, another of CVAG’s Creative Residency community partners. Grenon presented an artist talk at NIC in late June. Two CVAG student intern had the opportunity to work as a tech along side Grenon during her residency. The artist’s developed work were presented in the exhibition Hold Being Held opening at CVAG June 27, 2019. Grenon will also facilitate a community make art workshop during the residency.
Rachel Grenon is from Saguenay and has studied in western Canada with famous potters from British Columbia and at Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver and Université Bishop’s in Sherbrooke, Quebec. In March 2004, Grenon set up her studio in Bromont in the Eastern Townships where mountains and valleys juxtapose to feed her inspiration to create using open and generous forms. Grenon has exhibited across Canada and was the 2009 Canadian Selection – Biennale Internationale of CHEONGJU, South Korea. Her work is presented in private and public galleries and public spaces in Canada and internationally.
Virtual Reality / Constant Change / Creative Research
February – June, 2019 – Virtual Reality / Constant Change / Creative Research with Spaces VR
Spaces VR and the Comox Valley Art Gallery collaborated to develop a creative research project that offers participating artists the opportunity to explore virtual reality applications as a creative medium. The opportunity provided immersive explorations of new technology and traditional art practices within the contexts of discovery, constancy and change.
Spaces VR approached the Comox Valley Art Gallery to offer creative residencies for artists who have little or no experience in this medium. Five artists: Angela Bedard, Cassidy Gehmlich, Clive Powsey, Emma Heitzmann, and Roxane Fortin engaged in new projects on site at Spaces VR.
Spaces VR owner, Matt Adamson, believes that “virtual reality offers limitless potential for expression, but this is difficult to grasp without experiencing it firsthand.”
The VR creative research residency was part of Constant Change, a thematic program at the Comox Valley Art Gallery. The artists’ creative explorations will were presented at CVAG during the Constant Change exhibition and in an off-site presentation at Spaces VR during May 2019.
June, 2018 – OVERTONES AND UNDERSTORIES / A Lens + Sound-based Creative Research Residency – Sandra Semchuk
Human stories are contextualized by the wider-than-human. Forest. The rhythms and cycles of seasons, waters, skies, flora, fauna, growth, birth and death, violence, predation, love, generosity, co-operation, domination, sexuality and sharing are constants in forest ecosystems of this planet. Each species, each sentience, has its own struggles. That is our surround. As humans we are profoundly shaped by where on this planet we go, which forests we breath with, which streams we drink from. Barry Lopez writes that one is influenced by “what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature, the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, the wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known.” We are immersed in dialogue with two landscapes, an inner and an outer.
During this residency I will focus on being and presence. I will listen with my eyes and see with my ears the myriad shifts and nuances of sound, sights and light of the ocean- side McLoughin Park. I will work with a sound recorder, stereographic video, performance and overtone singing in response to the wider-than-human to integrate the senses, discover reciprocity and hopefully, experience reconciliation.
Collaborators will include First Nations performance artist and sacred clown, Skeena Reese, songscape artist and overtone singer, Jerry DesVoignes, specific winds and trees and unexpected stories that emerge.
– Sandra Semchuk
May, 2018 – Toby Lawrence / Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde / Valerie Salez
A creative residency related to the individual and collaborative art practices of guest curator Toby Lawrence (Kelowna/Gabriola Island) and Victoria-based artists Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde and Valerie Salez.
Concurrent with their creative residency, was a thematically related exhibition, artist talks, and community outreach programming: Touching Earth Bodies.
October 4 – 13, 2017 – France Trépanier
Artist, curator and educator, France Trépanier, conducted a creative residency prior to the opening and exhibition of her mixed media installation Offerings / Offrandes.
During the residency, France collaborated with local artists, the Kumugwe Cultural Society, and elder Mary Everson to develop work that expanded the touring exhibition to “establish a connection to specific artists and their communities—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous—that inhabit this land.” Kirk Swartz (MediaNet), Guylaine Langlois (Vaste et Vague), and CVAG’s community partner, North Island College Department of Fine Arts and Design provided technical support as France developed work for her solo exhibition at CVAG that followed her creative residency.
May 23 – July 31, 2017 – Rita McKeough
Inter-disciplinary artist Rita McKeough undertook a creative residency that involved collaboration with local and visiting artists as she undertook art-based research and the development of new site responsive work in the Shadbolt Studios at the Department of Fine Arts and Design, North Island College. Rita resided at Mcloughlin Gardens Society’s seaside artist residence.
The community was given opportunities to share, experience and discuss Rita’s work through a Make Art Event, artist talks, and an art opening. Following the creative residency, a solo exhibition of Rita’s multi-media installation Veins / Listen / Cul-de-sac remained at CVAG until the fall.
…I am so grateful to have received so much support and help from everyone at CVAG especially Angela Somerset who has invited me to this residency and given me this amazing opportunity to show my work Veins and to develop these new works. My thanks to everyone at CVAG and to and the Faculty and technicians at NIC Fine Arts program who have assisted with the production of this work. And to Linda Perron and Sara Vipond for their support of this project. I have also been assisted in the production of these new works by Deanna Burnett, Denise Lawson, Jeff Brett, Gordon Ross, Cassidy Gehmlich, Brandon St-Laurent, Krista McAllister, Sharon Karsten, and Lenore Lowe.
– Rita McKeough
March 1 – 25, 2017 – CARRIED AWAY- Vida Simon / Jack Stanley
The artists deepened their arts-based research for the ongoing evolution of their collaborative work Carried Away. Community engagement through a solo exhibition at CVAG, performances, a Make Art Project event, and Artist Talks at the gallery and North Island College provided opportunities for the public to be involved in the artists’ process during their residency. The work developed during their site-responsive creative research remained on exhibition at CVAG until the middle of April. The artists resided at Creekside Commons Cohousing Community in Courtenay.
July, 2016 – Barbara Menely | Joanne Bristol | Clive Powsey
Unmapping the Last Best West – Barbara Meneley
Untitled (Sweepers) – Joanne Bristol
Terrain Traps and Other Delightful Terrors – Clive Powsey
July marked CVAG’s first creative residency collaboration with the McLoughlin Garden Society and North Island College. The residency was connected to the exhibition MAP: Make Art Place, that featured the work of visiting artists Barbara Meneley and Joanne Bristol and local artist Clive Powsey. The visiting artists resided at the McLoughlin Gardens Society seaside artist residence in Merville, while they installed their work, conducted artistic research, and interacted with the community. The visiting artists and Clive made use of production and technical support facilities at both North Island College Department of Fine Arts and Design and CVAG.
Artist residencies and exhibitions were part of MAP: Make Art Place – summer convergent program.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Comox Valley Art Gallery is honoured and privileged to be present on the Unceded Territory of the K’ómoks First Nation. CVAG recognizes the enduring presence of First Nations people on this land.
CVAG is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with artists, guest curators, writers, cultural advisors, community partners, our volunteers, donors + members. CVAG’s convergent programming is made possible through the support of our funders: Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Government of Canada, Province of BC, City of Courtenay, Town of Comox, Village of Cumberland, Comox Valley Regional District, BC Gaming, The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council / local support: ABC Printing, SD71 Print Shop, Sherwin-Williams Paint Store, Muir Engineering Ltd., Izco Technology Solutions, Shine-Eze, Cumberland Village Works, Sid Williams Theatre Society, School District 71 Indigenous Education, McLoughlin Gardens Society.