ON AiR
2021-2022
Thank you to Rach Derrah, Christian McGinty-Steele, 4 emerging/mid-career artists who had participated in provincial residency programs with community components; 4 arts administration representatives with experience coordinating/managing/supporting artists in residence progams. With Ryan Veltmeyer
REIMAGINING ACCESS
2021-2022
Reimagining Access Project is a series of small group artmaking sessions with Covid adaptations for members of several disability communities and their support networks. The studio facility and programming will adapt to welcome and support new and returning participants who may be additionally vulnerable because of Covid and its effects. By working with smaller groups, and incorporating feedback to create understanding about various needs, and establishing important accessibility guidelines for further opening of our studio programs to broader audiences.
Thank you to Sarah Mosher, Rae Rezwell, and Ayoka Junaid.
AFTERNOON SHIFT
2019 - 2022
In partnership with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Wonder’neath ran a free, drop-in pilot program, Afternoon Shift, that was open to youth, their families, friends, and support networks. The atmosphere of the program was relaxed and supportive, with several artist facilitators on hand to guide participants through specific techniques or help them get started on an independent project.
Materials were aplenty with a range of drawing and watercolour painting supplies in one area, textile supplies including hand sewing, embroidery and needle felting in another area, and a third table with a changing focus from mixed media collage to printmaking to painting.
Healthy snacks including veggies and cookies were supplied by Pavia Galleria.
This program was fully physically accessible and multi-stall washrooms are all for all genders.
Thank you to Artists: Elyse Moir, Charvel Rappos, Eric Diolola, Undine Foulds, LaMeia Reddick, Evie Dunville, Tayla Fern Paul, Coordinator: Melissa Marr, Administrator: Dale Sheppard.
Generously funded by Medavie Foundation, an organization prioritizing child and youth mental health.
This program was in partnership with the AGNS
SOW THREAD UNFOLD
April 2021 - October 2021
Introduction
SOW THREAD UNFOLD is a project of Wonder’neath Art Society with support from the Canada Council of the Arts. In the summer of 2021, three artists were commissioned to create socially engaged art, using their particular media as a vehicle to expand community narratives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). They were asked to approach the work as an artist and a field researcher, visually documenting their collaboration process.
When this project was conceived it was a hands-on project that would have artists engaging with the community face to face. Due to COVID-19 restrictions the entire project needed to move to remote and digital delivery. Each of the artists had to alter their projects significantly, experiment with new delivery platforms and work in new mediums.
The artist team met weekly from May through August with Project Coordinator, Leesa Hamilton and Christian McGinty, Media Consultant and Website Designer, to share research, discuss processes and present work in progress.
We are happy to share the culmination of the work, research and creative process of SOW THREAD UNFOLD.
Commissioned Artists
Shaya Ishaq
Along the Coast is a podcast that centers the stories of dynamic educators based in Kjipuktuk, unceded Mi'kmaq territory also known as Halifax. In this miniseries, you will hear three conversations between myself and some incredibly inspiring, multifaceted, heart-centred people who share the thread of pedagogy. Along the Coast explores how African Nova Scotian and Afro-diasporan educators in this part of the Maritimes are approaching their teaching practices in response to this world-shifting event and other factors. This series explores how folks have been adapting, coping, shaping change, and making due in today’s quote-unquote classroom over the last two years.
Jenny Yujia Shi
What We Will Not Leave Behind is a 6- month research creation project supported by Wonder’neath Art Society with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. This project focuses on collecting individual experiences of the Nova Scotian Chinese diaspora for the development of an animated short film.
My intention behind this research is two-fold: first, maritime Chinese voices in historical records and current dialogues across Canada are relatively scarce. I want to document the rich array of experiences here in Nova Scotia. Secondly, over the last twelve years, I have time and again found myself as a token of the ‘chinese experience” or a stereotype in mainstream imagination. I want to highlight the ordinary yet precious experiences that make us human.
My process unfolded from individual conversations with four community members of Chinese descent who reside in Halifax. The conversations began from their experiences adapting and/or modifying versions of themselves as they navigate identity, culture and everything in between in a small maritime province. Each conversation evolved in vastly different ways: from railroad workers searching for their “Gold Mountain” (金山), to watching the coastline of Shanghai from the SS President Wilson, to compromised communication between parent and child, to spending the first year in Nova Scotia during COVID-19. Following each conversation, field notes, drawings and readings were documented in a research roadmap that informed the short animations.
This presents the visual outcomes and research process up to October 2021. I plan to continue this research beyond the time frame of this project.
Renée Forestall
The Birds Love You, is a multimedia projection compilation/ slide show- based on unmoderated art making sessions with Team Possibles members during lockdown. While creating collaborative art together online through zoom annotation and screen-desktop-sharing using photoshop we recorded and created a series of screenshot videos of our art-making process. This series
of virtual collaborative drawings clips are drawn on the Blue Building where the images will be projected during Nocturne. We have gathered together to make art every week for over 15 years. Over the last year we have existed in this liminal virtual space, where we have met and created art together via zoom calls. We have done this while waiting to re-group. Unmoderated Projections: aims to make visual the connections and culture of people with Down syndrome (Ds) and the extraordinary spirit that this community brings to others. Covid and Lockdown have been particularly difficult on the Ds community. We are creating a series of monumental collaborative drawings that are site specific but very much experimental and low tech - that reflect a stream of consciousness. Unmoderated Projections: aims to meet and share our drawings while waiting to get back to our regular studio times together.
With Special Thanks to Heather Wilkinson, Melissa Marr, Morgan Bath, Sol Nagler, Wonder’neath Art Society and the Canada Council for the Arts.
APERTURE OPEN
June 2021 - September 2021
Artists of the community with lived experience of mental health and other challenges will develop skills in photography, silkscreen, Cyanotype printing, and collaborative artmaking, over 8 hands-on virtual sessions, to create a large-scale mixed media artwork, that shares their unique experience of looking and responding to their environment, for exhibition and celebration at Wonder’neath in the Fall of 2021. The practice of opening -- to let in light, to others, and to possibilities -- is a practice that takes trust. This project is intended to offer social and artistic support to encourage artistic exploration and participation for those whose challenges may isolate them. Aperture Open: a Collaborative Exploration of Light and Possibilities recognizes the benefits of reciprocity, welcoming spaces, peer support, and confidence building through hands-on artmaking.
THE BIN
November 2020
THE BIN was open for three weeks in November 2020. It had over 100 visitors who either donated or took materials for creative reuse. exchange, visitors filled out In worksheets to generate ideas about how the materials could be used (ie. what does this material remind you of? Describe it with your eyes closed...)
This zine compiles some of those ideas. Hopefully, you will get some ideas of your own and consider new and unexpected uses for materials you come across in your daily life!
This project was supported by Wonder'neath and artists at 2482 Maynard who saw potential in raw materials, held onto them, and donated generously to THE BIN.
ANCHORED ART/CREATIVE GATHERINGS
2017-2018
The Anchored Art/Creative Gatherings project continued a previous pilot with Veith Street Gallery Studio Association/Creative Spirit East to support artistic engagement and exploration, and welcome into an artistic community, adults artists with lived experience of mental health challenges. Openness in approaching new tasks, building confidence in their own expressive ideas, and problem solving abilities were all developed within this project. Peer support from other artists helped create a feeling of belonging and eased social isolation. For one participant, feeling part of the community at Wonder’neath allowed him to participate in other Wonder’neath programming afterwards, taking advantage of resources that offered social interaction and access to artmaking. Anchored Art/Creative Gatherings provided supportive programming with a lower facilitator/participant ratio and a quieter environment than our other public programming, necessary for the participation of those attending. The facilitating artists provided thorough debrief notes to assess and modify activities to the needs and interests of the participants with an enhanced coordinator role being central to creating trust, and working with facilitators to ensure a sensitive response to participating artists. Both participants (primarily older adults) and facilitators (younger emerging artists) were initially apprehensive about engagement across differences including age, identity, etc. Several facilitators identified as queer and/or trans and wondered about how participants would respond. In the end, both facilitators and participants were appreciative of the kinds of non-judgemental dialogue that they shared in the process of making art together. Some of our facilitators also have lived mental health experiences and recognized that most programming they encounter in support of mental health challenges was for youth, and they saw the participants as role models of people aging with mental health and communicating about challenges
CREATIVE SPIRIT EAST
January 2017 - April 2018
This program provided artists who are facing challenges, barriers to success, or mental illness and disability space to receive educational workshops, create artworks, collaborate and take part in art shows and markets, and show and sell their works.
This program was a partnership with Veith Street Gallery Studio Association
FIELD NOTES
October 2017 - April 2018
Wonder’neath developed a six-month series of artist presentations consisting of a free public talk, followed by an expanded, hands-on workshop at a nominal fee. This series will support the artistic professional development of the selected presenters and develop the organizational infrastructure in order to present professional artistic/creative processes to the communities Wonder’neath serves.
See more details about each individual talk: Jeighk Koyote, Jenny Yujia Shi, Raven Davis, Leesa Hamilton, Brad Jones, and Jessica Winton.
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY
June 2017 - December 2017
North End Halifax: A People's History brought people of different ages and artistic experiences together to create artwork that celebrated people they identified as significant in their community, including a family members who was a pillar in the community, an activist whose passion for homemade an impression on a teenager, and a man whose simple daily act of feeding pigeons was noted by an observant neighbour. We highlighted the North End’s rapidly changing landscape and it is noteworthy that a participant highlighted man who had lived in one North End house from his birth to his death (which occurred during our project) as development occurred all around his home. His stories made an impression on her and her children during research visits for the project. Starting with a small group format, then offering individual creation sessions, the facilitators supported a high level od artistic exploration. Wonder’neath had an extended period to use new equipment/troubleshoot with the support of Inkstorm Screenprinting Collective and more experienced screenprinters in the field. A pilot is an important tool to evaluate the potential of a project idea-participants cherished the opportunity to share and celebrate big and small ways that their chosen people contributed to their neighbourhood. Participants included first-time visitors to Wonder’neath as well as current participants of Open Studio who were able to invest more time to achieve greater artistic/technical expression. This project resonated with community members and will continue to have impact with scheduled upcoming exhibitions at Wooden Hills Gallery and Eyelevel Gallery.
WOODEN HILLS GALLERY
2017 - 2020
Wooden Hills was an exhibition space initiated by Renée Forrestall in the front entrance/stairway of Wonder'neath’s former Isleville location.
