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Connexion ARC announces the second mentorship of Connexion Exchange: Janice Wright Cheney and Reuben Mark Stewart
Janice Wright Cheney and Reuben Mark Stewart, the second mentorship pair of Connexion Exchange, will be working together from July 26th to October 26th.
Connexion Exchange is a 3-month mentorship program pairing nine emerging and mid-career New Brunswick artists with established Canadian art mentors for one-on-one mentorship. This program will run from June 2021 – June 2022. Mentorships will be completed online or in person, if possible. This program will culminate in a joint artist talk and the creation of an artwork. Over the course of each mentorship, updates of the pairs’ work will be shared. The gallery exhibition will take place after all the mentorships have been completed in the Fall of 2022.
Reuben Mark Stewart is a New Brunswick-born artist whose work focuses on flower arranging and the photography of his compositions in a celebration of nature. He has worked in a variety of locations, from Canada’s east coast to New York and Sydney. To see more of his work, visit his Instagram @reubenmarkstewart.
Janice Wright Cheney is a Fredericton, NB artist whose main medium is textile, used to create sculptures and installations which “consider the fragility of our present state, examine loss of wilderness, and imagine ecological life in the future.” Her work is displayed across Canada and the USA. She is widely celebrated, having been elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and received awards of excellence and achievement. She currently teaches at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.
Stay tuned for dates of the mentorships, talks and other special events at connexionarc.org.
Janice Wright Cheney
Janice Wright Cheney’s textile-based sculptures and installations consider the fragility of our present state, examine loss of wilderness, and imagine ecological life in the future. Her work reflects an ongoing interest in constructed distinctions between the cultural and the natural, as well as between the safe/domestic and the wild/disorderly. Depicting animal transgressions into the human world, she challenges our presumed detachment from nature.
Wright Cheney’s work is featured in the collections of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the New Brunswick Museum, the Glenbow Museum, and Telus Canada at Telus Garden, Vancouver. Widow, her iconic sculpture of a grizzly bear swathed in roses, appeared in Oh Canada, a survey of contemporary Canadian art, held at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts in 2012. Her solo exhibition Cellar was presented at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (2012), the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (2014), and at Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge (2015). Most recently, her work Spectre was installed at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. She has been elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and is a recipient of the Strathbutler Award for Excellence in the Arts as well as the New Brunswick Lieutenant Governor’s Award for High Achievement in Visual Arts.
Wright Cheney graduated from Mount Allison University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983, and completed an M.Ed. in Critical Studies at UNB (2003). She lives Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, where she teaches at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design.
Reuben Mark Stewart
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 centered 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 .