ArtsLink NB is announcing the call for artists for the second iteration of Introspect: a nature residency. The two-week residency is being held in collaboration with Parks NB, and will bring together five artists in Mount Carleton Provincial Park to work on a personal project and a community creation. The artists will have the experience of having two dedicated weeks without distraction to work on their art, taking inspiration from the beautiful, picturesque setting of the park.
In October of 2022, Craft NB brought 20 remarkable artists to spend a week in Fundy National Park for a fully immersive experience in the wilds of New Brunswick. Since that time, the artists have been working on pieces inspired by their time in the park, which will soon be installed in the place that inspired the work. Beneath the Surface will open in Fundy National Park on June 24th.
Stay tuned for more details about the opening reception.
We want to acknowledge the support of Fundy National Park, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of New Brunswick for making this project a reality.
The first part of the session will be an overview of the overall Harm to Harmony program, an introduction to the artists and their work, and examples of past community engage art programming. The second part of the session will be an open question-and-answer period.
Are you in interested in applying for this year’s Cross-Cultural Creation Residency?
Potential applicants are invited to join Jericho Knopp, Programming Director with ArtsLink NB, for a short presentation about the residency followed by Q&A session.
The 10-day residency will take place at Metepenagiag Heritage Park and Outdoor Lodge, and artists will have the opportunity to work on a personal project as well as exchange creative energy and cultural wisdom with eight other artists.
With her whimsical, baby-like creatures, Sophie Angbao aims to break out of the classical notions of what constitutes fine art.
Sopie Angbao
Angbao is an international student from United States studying textiles at New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. She has a passion for needle felting with wool. From this, she has managed to design and create distinctive sculptures.
“I find it interesting to let my hands create a character that has not been seen before,” she said. As a one-of-a-kind doll maker, Angbao is interested in exploring different forms of dolls and working with a new style of artistic work. She wants to push the boundaries of what dolls are and how they can be considered fine art.
“I’m going to define fine art in my own way in order to break out from traditional views of what it is,” she said. “I’ll add conceptual images to the body of my whimsical creatures.”
Angbao was hired for a summer job in the isolated community of Knowlesville. She will share her experience of breaking out of her comfort zone during her residency, July 25-31. She will make five whimsical dolls in an effort to convey what she is feeling in this new lifestyle.
The dolls are unique characters with different appearances and personalities. They represent a reflection of her emotions.
“Dolls are like my own personal journal describing where I was, how I was feeling in the time I was making them,” she said. “It’s a physical reminder of where I’ve been and where I am in my journey of life.”
She will have five of her own dolls in her pop-up, which will be in the woods behind Knowlesville Art and Nature Centre, a not-for-profit rural learning centre based in South Knowlesville. She will make the dolls’ bodies out of colourful wool felt and their heads and arms out of baked clay and acrylic paint. Later announcements will have more details about her pop-up.
The Fredericton Arts Alliance is grateful for the support of the City of Fredericton and Downtown Fredericton in making these residencies possible.
The resident artists of Introspect: a Nature Residency have completed their group project, a series of natural frames along a trail in Herring Cove Provincial Park on Campobello Island, New Brunswick.
During Introspect: a Nature Residency in 2022, the five selected artists stayed in the park’s rustic shelters, taking inspiration from the beautiful, picturesque setting from 6th until June 17th, 2022.
The resident artists — Tomo Ingalls, Melissa Kennedy, Leah Wilton, Danielle Smith, and Jesse Mea — in a addition to completing a personal art project, were tasked with envisioning and completing a group project, and the public is now invited to discover and engage with it along a trail in Herring Cove Provincial park.
The resident artists explain the project this way:
“So often, we hurry through life on our way to a destination. We see things along the way, but how many more do we unintentionally overlook? Some are not noticed automatically; they require an effort or intention to observe, and stillness to absorb.”
“We have created a series of frames from found materials and placed them along the Yellow Trail. The frames we put together provide focal points throughout the trail. An opportunity to stop, look, and reflect at scenes that often go unnoticed.”
A video of the installations in situ along the trail in Herring Cove Provincial Park.
“From tiny fungi to a gigantic birch, nature is full of wonders to discover. But what will be revealed is personal to each individual, a reflection of our inner selves influenced by the possibilities provided in our environment.”
“And beware – with longing and time your brain may piece together more frames from your natural surroundings. Your mind is making new connections and viewpoints for you! For you to refocus, re-project, reset. Introspect.”
You can download the brochure, which has a trail map of where to find the installations, below:
Karen LeBlanc, who created the “Hang-a-Heart” project in 2021 to honour Indigenous children who never returned home from a residential school, is back as an artist-in-residence at the Fredericton Arts Alliance with weavings from a series of small, shaped tapestries and fibre sculptures. LeBlanc is a fibre artist and weaver with more than 40 years of experience. Her passion for fibre arts began early.
“I taught myself to sew doll clothes when I was 6 or 7, and then learned to sew clothes for myself on a sewing machine when I was 12,” she said.
Weaving means a lot for LeBlanc. Her first experience was on a backstrap loom during her teens. Since hen, she has worked on many looms. Currently one of the ones she uses is an 8-harness loom.
With her residency from July 18-24, LeBlanc will use a smaller tapestry loom. She will use a 10” wide cotton warp to create a shaped weaving. She is ready to “break out” of her normal weaving routine and try new forms.“I want to test my boundaries of tapestry weaving through shaped weaving,” she said. “I will probably use a coloured warp, since I love colours and the warp may become part of the final piece, or it may be pulled and woven into the piece to hide the warp threads.”
For her pop-up event, she will be at the Fredericton Public Library on Saturday, July 23 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. She will weave and invite visitors to collaborate with her on a piece or create their own small tapestry.
The Fredericton Arts Alliance is grateful for the support of the City of Fredericton and Downtown Fredericton in making these residencies possible, and the Fredericton Public Library for hosting Karen’s pop-up.
Wild Oneness will be a mixed media series inspired by Slade’s meditative involvements with nature. She is trying to demonstrate that all living things are interconnected. It comes out of her experience in residence at the Kingsbrae International Residence for the Arts in St. Andrews, N.B.
Slade, who will be working on the series June 20-26, is drawn to organic shapes and patterns that are visible in her work. She is inspired by nature when she creates art, and it often influences her painting process.
The Fredericton-based artist holds a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in Teaching. Now devoting herself full time to her art, she is ready to break down barriers and push her own limits.
Slade plans a public demonstration of her plein air drawing technique near the lodge in Odell Park, weather permitting, Sunday, June 26, from 3-4 p.m.
“My technique involves laying the partially completed painting onto the ground underneath some trees,” she said. “This captures the silhouettes of the foliage and the dappled light well, which I then trace onto the piece.”
Materials will be available so visitors can experiment with the technique.
“Breaking Out” means working bigger, using fibre art for sculpture, healing from an abusive situation, using non-traditional media, or shunning classical notions of fine art.Twelve local artists have been selected to participate in the 21st year of the Fredericton Arts Alliance’s artist in residence program producing art on the theme of Breaking Out.
From June 20 to Sept. 11, one per week, they will be working on personal projects on the theme, suggested by the relaxing of COVID19 restrictions and the ability to connect more readily with a wider world.The artists – painters, textile artists, a dollmaker and a photographer – each have a week to be featured in the FAA’s social media feed, as well as their own social media networks. Each artist is asked to have some kind of “pop-up” event where they can present their work in a more public and interactive forum. The pop-up could be during the week of the residency, or in days following it, with weather being a limiting factor. If a residency occurred during tight COVID controls or during a week of unremitting rain, the pop-up could be arranged later when the forces affecting the virus and the skies are more amenable.
The FAA pays each artist $450 for their residency and promotes their work. Until COVID struck, the FAA residencies were located in the Garrison district, but the lockdown forced them into a virtual realm for the last two years. This year is a hybrid residency with much of it virtual but the public pop-up element added.The Fredericton Arts Alliance will mount an exhibition of work produced over the summer at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre in the fall.
Participants are asked to designate a piece for this exhibition.This year’s artists, in the order of their residencies, are: Katrina Slade, Bailey Hanson, Ranmeet Kalra, Sophie Angbao, Karen LeBlanc, Emily Dow, Cheryl Lavigne, Luanna Dugas, Connie Wheaton, Ysabelle Vautour, Meg Clark and Cat Candow. They are a mix of established and emerging artists.The residency program is generously supported by the City of Fredericton and Downtown Fredericton.
