Chrystene Ells
Chrystene Ells (MFA Interdisciplinary) is a Saskatchewan based visual artist. Raised on an Alberta cattle ranch, she spent twenty years in San Francisco working in film and animation, including on Nightmare Before Christmas. Her 40+ year art practice includes paint ing, puppetry, film, and theatre, with several exhibitions, screenings and performances. Three of her paintings were recently acquired by the SK Arts Permanent Collection, and she is a recipient of the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal and a Lieutenant Governor’s Arts Award. Current projects include directing an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest with an all Deaf cast, and Amor Fati, an interdisciplinary installation for Regina’s Dunlop Art Gallery (2029).
Laura Hargrave
Laura Hargrave is a drawing-based artist, now residing on Vancouver Island, having taught at Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops) for 20 years and TRU Open Learning for an additional 7 years. She obtained her BFA from University of Victoria and her MFA from University of Regina. While at TRU, she was an active member of CURA (Community University Research Alliance) and the TRU Walking Lab. She was also a member of Lane Level Artist’s Cooperative in Regina. In the past her works have concentrated on walking as a form of artistic research, memory and reflection, a highlight being the Walking and Art Residency in Banff. She has several works in the Kamloops Art Gallery Permanent Collection and has shown in public galleries in BC. Laura is interested in experimental ways of generating drawn images, such as drawing behind her back or blindfolded from memory. Both body and mind are engaged. She struggles to maintain contact through a singular line, often aware that the image of a figure in motion must be falling apart. Since she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2019, the layered figures have taken on new meaning in attempts to keep her symptoms at bay through walking, while balancing back issues. Loss of balance, freezing and falling are all dangers associated with the movement disorder. Recently, she has begun mixing her experimental methods with more traditional drawing techniques using transfers, collage and textural grounds.
Sheila Nourse
Sheila Nourse lives and works in Regina, Saskatchewan, Treaty Four territory. Working from a strong feminist perspective, she uses found objects and mixed media materials to create sculptural assemblage and collage work that addresses themes of domesticity the family, the body and the unconscious. Over her career as an artist, her studio practice has been informed by collective models of discourse and production.
Loretta Paoli
Loretta Paoli (she/her) is a contemporary visual artist and educator who lives and works on the traditional unceded territory of the Quw'utsun people in the Cowichan Valley, BC, Canada. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies: Visua l Art & Linguistics (U of Regina), B.Ed. (Western U), and B.A., Specialized Honours in Fine Arts (U of Guelph). Working with video projections on painted plexi panels, Paoli’s recent collaborative and interactive media installations engage constructed boundaries between people, communities, languages, and cultures, and the transformative spaces between them. Running through this work and a parallel series of oil portraits runs an ongoing concern with history and the contributions of women in society. In her 40 years as a practicing artist, her work has been exhibited in Duncan, Regina, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, Guelph, and Regina Beach, Canada.
Anne Vaasjo
Anne Vaasjo (she/her) is a settler contemporary visual artist on Vancouver Island. She has an honours diploma from Emily Carr and had 2 stints in Banff as well as a curiosity that keeps her engaged in higher education, immersive travel, and constant questioning. Over her 50-year career chasing ideas has resulted in a multidisciplinary, seemingly arbitrary approach that is nevertheless underlined by projects about our existence and the ground we stand on. The earth itself is her anchor. Her search has led her from Banff to Churches, to salmon rivers, to territoriality and inclusion, to the High Arctic, to a 9-year global work over three continents. She is presently working on a 75-piece self-portrait/glacial erratic project.