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Connexion ARC introduces a 3-month mentorship program pairing emerging and mid-career artists with established art mentors. This program will culminate in a joint artist talk and the creation of a collaborative artwork.
The Connexion Exchange program will run from June 2021 – June 2022. Mentorships will be completed online or in person, if possible, and take place over the course of three months, during which time the pair will share updates on their work. The gallery exhibition will take place after all the mentorships have been completed in the Fall of 2022.
Connexion Exchange fosters peer feedback, community building, and an opportunity to collaborate with an established artist. The participating mentees are, Alana Morouney, Amy Ash, Emily Kennedy, KC Wilcox, Laura De Decker, Lee McLean, Lucy Koshan, Rachel Macgillivray, and Reuben Stewart.
Stay tuned for dates of the mentorships, talks and other special events at connexionarc.org.
Xiuting Shi will be our program assistant for Connexion Exchange from June to August 2021. If you have any questions, email Xiuting at info@connexionarc.org.
Meet our Mentees:
Alana Morouney (she, they) is an emerging textiles artist living in Sackville, New Brunswick. The repetitive processes of weaving and knitting lend their meditative qualities to her practice, while the warm tactility of her work welcomes the hand. Her interactive sculptures are playful and affectionate, and like all good jokes they are meant to be shared. She has given workshops and artist talks in participation with A Handmade Assembly and the Owens Art Gallery Maker Maker series.
Amy Ash is an interdisciplinary artist engaged with collective care through processes of shared meaning-making. Her practice flows from curatorial projects and writing to teaching, socially engaged action, and hands-on making. Blurring the lines between disciplines, she traces connectivity through the intersections and overlaps between memory, learning, and wonder, to incite curiosity.
Amy has exhibited and curated programmes internationally, with projects commissioned by National Gallery London (UK), The NB International Sculpture Symposium (NB), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (NB), and Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts (MB).
Of settler ancestry, she lives in Menahqesk/Menagoesg/Saint John, New Brunswick, with her wife Alex, along with their dog and cat.
Emily Kennedy is a cellist and composer based in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Often seen collaborating with electronic musicians, dancers, visual artists, and songwriting projects, her personal practice is an opportunity to synthesize her classical training with her interests in improvisation, minimalism, field recordings, and pop music. She mulls over translation, repetition, self reflection, and time in her work, using loop and effect pedals to expand the possibilities of her instrument.
She is a graduate of the performance program at the University of Ottawa and Wilfrid Laurier University. Her interest in performing and writing new music has brought her to Banff’s Concert in the 21st Century residency, the Britten-Pears: CAPPA program in Aldeburgh, UK, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, RE:FLUX Festival in Moncton, NB with improv trio Terre Wa, and suddenlyLISTEN in Halifax, NS. She frequently performs with the Elm City String Quartet, and writes and sings for the duo Pallmer.
KC Wilcox is an artist, designer and shopkeeper based in Menagoesg / Menahqesk (a.k.a. Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada). She graduated from NSCAD in 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in Design. She works in drawing, sculpture, and new media, and collaborates with people to create books and other types of experiences. Her most recent collaborations were with Amy Ash, for designing Harbour: A Compendium (2020), and hostproject.net (2021). KC’s studio work was presented at THIRD SHIFT (2020 & 2019), the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (2018), and Unlovable Gallery (2017). Her project Shedding was featured on the CBC program The Exhibitionists. In 2018, KC embarked upon a life-changing collaboration with her longtime friend, Emily Saab. Together, they established Visitors, a clothing exchange and an art+design shop, all in one space. KC is a former Executive Director of Connexion, an artist-run centre in Sitansisk (Fredericton, NB). She is a descendant of European settlers from the French and New England settlements. She lives and works 111 km from where she was born, on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq and Passamaquoddy Peoples.
Laura De Decker is a graduate of the Art and Art History program between the University of Toronto and Sheridan College and MFA program in Visual Arts, University of Victoria where she started to write computer programs to have control over the colours in her artworks. She is a former member of the Red Head Gallery. She was a panelist at Banff New Media Institute, at ISEA2014 in Dubai, and at OCADU. She was artist-in-residence for CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum for Kitchener + Area)/Christie Digital and for Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo. She has been the recipient of numerous Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants. She published an article in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts called Quantum Catwalk about her 50-foot by 7-foot laser-cut vinyl installation at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. She lives in Moncton, NB.
Textile artist Lee McLean creates contemporary art works in fabric and thread. She is currently interested in the increasing invisibility in society as we age and the shrinking of the individual’s world. Emphasis on strong line, negative space, and asymmetry appeals to her, as does improvisational piecing with intent to create a particular mood or convey an idea. Her practice honours traditional craft techniques while exploring innovative composition.
Based in New Maryland, New Brunswick, McLean holds certificates in Foundation Visual Arts and Advanced Studio Practice from the New Brunswick College of Craft & Design. She is an active member of Studio Art Quilt Associates, an international organization that is dedicated to bringing thought-provoking, cutting-edge artwork to venues across the globe. Excited that she is proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks, one of her recently completed works, which was supported by an artsnb creation grant, is travelling across Canada as part of Crossroads: Grand National Fibre Art Exhibition.
She shares her process on Instagram @mclean.lee and can be found at leemclean.ca
Lucy Koshan is a visual artist and farmhand living in Sackville, New Brunswick. Her practice centers on figurative painting and drawing, and uses personal narrative to explore the alienation that comes with surveillance capitalism and impending climate catastrophe.Lucy holds a foundation year certificate from the Yukon School of Visual Arts and a BFA from Mount Allison University, and has been the recipient of the BMO 1st! Art Award for the Yukon Territory (2014), the John P. Asimakos prize in painting (Mount Allison University, 2018), and a New Brunswick Art Board Creation Grant. She was the Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s Studio Watch: Painting artist in 2020.
Rachel A. MacGillivray is a multi-disciplinary textile artist whose practice focuses on wool and other natural materials. Like many, the pandemic experience has greatly affected her work and she’s now breaking out of the boundaries of her studio and leaning into gardening as artistic exploration. She’s an instructor and Studio Head of Textile Design at NBCCD, and her writings about textiles have been published in PLY Magazine and Created Here.
Reuben Mark Stewart is a New Brunswick born multidisciplinary artist drawing on the practices of flower arranging and photography. His still life arrangements span from modest compositions on a table, to sweeping atmospheric installations that cover walls, fill rooms and explore the boundaries of imagination. Reuben uses photography alongside physical compositions to curate and celebrate nature, both in 3D and through the lens. He gathers materials from the land, forages for wild plants and flowers, grows his own and picks when allowed from private gardens. His work is centred in the Canadian east coast landscape, but he has travelled across Canada with his flower work and spent extended times working with flowers in New York and in Sydney, Australia. You can follow his flower adventures on Instagram @reubenmarkstewart .