ERRING AT KING GEORGE TAKES PLACE MAY 6-8 & 13-15, 2022

Join a panel of Erring artists who’ve taken over the school at an interesting moment in the history of this land on  which it stands. The current generation of students, many of whom began their institutional education at King  George Public School, will graduate from Kaawaate. What is in a name? What has changed and what has stayed  the same as a new school was physically and conceptually rebuilt in Nogojiwanong on the traditional territory of  the Anishinaabe? We come together to examine the juxtaposition of these two buildings and consider how we can  continue to work toward decolonization as artists, educators and treaty people.

Moderator: Angela Connors 

Speakers: Alice Williams, Kelli Marshall, others tba 

Created/Directed by Kate Story 

The audience meets at the main entrance box office for this immersive travelling theatre work. Led through the building by a charming and mysterious custodian, audiences encounter scenarios inspired by actual events and people who worked and studied at King George. Spirit Week was developed through research and collaboration with diverse artists working in dance, theatre, circus, spoken word, music, and film.

Featuring original works by:

Nora Von Bieberstein, Ziysah Von Bieberstein, Jenn Cole, Rob Fortin, Ryan Kerr, Nicole Malbeuf, Kelli Marshall, Susan Newman, Sahira Q, Daniel Smith, with music by the McDonell Street Gospel Quartet – Colin MacAdam, Kristine Fisher (Rose), Dianne Latchford, Curtis Drieger – and stage management by Shannon McKenzie.

Bios:

Kate Story is a genderqueer writer and theatre artist. Kate works in multiple genres: devised theatre and dance, as well as literary and speculative fiction. She is artistic director of Precarious Festival, and loves to support the creation of new regional performance work. Kate is a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s K.M. Hunter Award for theatre.

Norah von Bieberstein, 9, enjoys musical theatre and has performed in Nut.Cracker (The Theatre on King) and Virtual Canada Day (Trellis Arts), both with her mentor Dreda Blow. She has studied at Studio 505, Stagecoach, Toronto Arts Academy, and Showmakers. Norah, who is also an artist, writer, and choreographer, lives in Nogojiwanong with her adorable puppy, Panda.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Sahira Q is a quirky, yet lovable, drag queen who has performed at various stages, backyards, and local watering holes across southern Ontario. Sahira emigrated to Canada from Zanzibar, Tanzania more than twenty years ago but misses the island sun every day.

Jenn Cole (Mixed Ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe) is a performer, Associate Artistic Producer at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space and an Indigenous Feminist Performance scholar in Gender and Social Justice at Trent University. She has performed in dance, film and installation work in Nogojiwanong, Minneapolis, Washington DC, and Toronto.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Ryan Kerr is the artistic director of The Theatre on King. Since moving to Peterborough in 1993, he has been involved in the local performance scene as a playwright, actor, dancer, lighting designer, and many other things.

Nicole Malbeuf is a theatrical aerialist based in Peterborough. A graduate of OCAD University (material art) and Fleming College (agriculture), Nicole is naturally interested in art-making and the environment. She operates under Trellis Arts, an aerial-dance-theatre company producing shows and learning experiences.

Kelli Marshall  (Anishinaabe {Ojibway} from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation) is an indigenous dancer, activist and storyteller. She is an Ojibway from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation. She was born and raised in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough). She has been dancing since she could walk, and enjoys sharing, learning and teaching her culture with others.

Daniel Smith is an actor and improviser from Peterborough. Amidst the lockdowns Daniel appeared online in The Cut and Paste Macbeth and Testing… Recently Daniel appeared in The Theatre on King’s production of The Bald Soprano. Daniel also runs improv classes for children and teens through PAPA.

The McDonell Street Gospel Quartet is a quartet featuring authentic vintage/roots gospel songs from the 1930s and ‘40s era. Tight harmony vocals and a cool acoustic sound. Colin MacAdam has been singing in community choirs for many years. He’s a member of Old Men Dancing. He carries the bass line in the McDonnell Street Gospel Quartet. Kristine Fisher (Rose), a life long dancer, choreographer, and teacher is MSGQ’s soprano voice. Presently, she enjoys performing music and fulfilling people’s Real Estate dreams.  Kristine has toured extensively as a singer and Mandolin player with Washboard Hank’s band, and treasures performing with the gospel quartet. Dianne Latchford has been acting for 40+ years, appearing on stages from Shaw Festival to Rainbow Stage, locally at New Stages, TTOK, 4th Line and more; on screen in Murdoch Mysteries, Queer As Folk and SCTV. She is also a musician, singer-songwriter and visual artist. Curtis Driedger is the leader of the Mcdonnel Street Gospel Quartet, formed in 2018. Before the pandemic, he directed the Zippity Doo Dah Community Soul Chorus, as well as the Mandolin Society of Peterborough. He has been a musician for too long.

The Pocket Collective: Brian Nichols, John Marris, Jane Lowbeer, Patrick Moore and Ann Jaeger will conduct a series of art-making workshops for the public to participate in. The range of activities to which the public is invited includes making masks and puppets, storytelling and poetry, flag making, sculpture, collage, printmaking and exploring three dimensional objects and new responses to the materials of our everyday lives. Reflecting the repurposing theme that is at the heart of Erring’s occupation of an empty school, the ‘Circus’ will contribute a creative, spontaneous art-making energy to the festival.

Bios:

Brian Nichols is a retired expressive arts therapist who hangs out in our community making all kinds of art with others. Marginalized people have become his mainstream as he learns more about empathy, our shared humanity and collective inner spaces. He has never been happier.

John Marris is an artist and community activist who has a passion for bringing art making and creativity to members of our community who do not normally have access to the arts. His art practise includes ceramics, photography, print-making, collage and pen and ink work.

Jane Lowbeer is a mixed media visual artist. She has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Visual Arts Clarington (VAC) and the AH Centre in Warkworth. She was a member of the now defunct Loop Gallery in Toronto. These last few months of Covid, Jane has really enjoyed making things for Circus Repurpose.

Patrick Moore is an artist with a long exhibition history of landscape paintings and prints. Patrick is also an accomplished, in-demand arts educator. He’s currently in his 4th year as Artist-in-Residence at Toronto’s Beverley School, where he facilitates large-scale art works with students with multiple disabilities.

Ann Jaeger is a multidisciplinary artist whose work intersects literary, theatre and visual arts. She has designed sets for The Theatre on King and participated in arts festivals such as Erring on the Mount, Precarious Festival, ReFrame Film Festival and Artsweek. She writes the local arts blog Trout in Plaid.

Presented by Artspace

As a hard of hearing and disabled-identified media artist my creative practice evolves around researching and developing multi-sensory and vibrotactile technology as a creative medium and as a path of access into experiencing art in its many forms. My multi-location installation draws attention to language, communication, accessibility, sensory immersion, memory, and perceived magic.

Employing vibrotactile technology, sound, photography, projection, voice recordings and familiar objects the installation aims to provide immersive and surprising experiences for people of all ages and abilities. 

Bios:

David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled media artist whose creative practice is researching and developing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. He established the creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario in 2014. He has had 18 solo and over 30 group exhibitions in Canada, the US and the UK.

By Kaawaate East City P.S Art Teacher Jenny Pink’s Homeroom Class
The theme guiding our work is “DO BETTER”. Specific areas within the Erring at KG classroom are dedicated to designs by grade 7 & 8 Kaawaate students. Students are recognizing current global issues that matter to them and bring awareness through art, with the intention of visitors reflecting on how they can ‘DO BETTER’.  Issues around school waste, plastic use and disposal in the ocean, devastation of ecosystems and finally the reconciliation that needs to happen to restore our relationship with Indigenous Peoples. The art installation of eyes, made of mixed materials, represents the personal reflection that needs to take place for us to DO BETTER now and in the future. DO BETTER: for our earth, our animals, our oceans, our forests and for our children.

Curated as part of The Boards

Portrait session with Casandra Lee

*Drop in, stop by any time from 3:oopm-6:00pm*

Bios:

Casandra Lee is a mixed Asian-American multimedia artist, based in Peterborough. She has written and illustrated two children’s books, The Sun Dance and Building a Home. Casandra also works as a Montessori educator at Kawartha Montessori School. She is passionate about storytelling and capturing feelings better expressed through art.

Presented by the Peterborough Museum and Archives

The Peterborough Museum & Archives (PMA) is proud to celebrate our neighbourhood with two new digital presentations. The first features portraits of WWI soldiers – former students of the Ashburnham School whose names have been commemorated in the entryway of King George Public School for more than 100 years. This exhibition was researched and curated by Bo Pickett during his recent placement from the University of Ottawa and financially supported by Ontario’s CMOG Digital Capacity Grant. The second presentation takes a look at the broader area surrounding the King George P.S. property with images selected from the PMA’s vast collection of historic photographs.

Through a series of brainstorming sessions, Laurel Paluck worked with the Kaawaate East City P.S. art class to come up with ideas for an “Ideal School”. From the practical to the fantastical, these students explored and shared their thoughts on where, how and what they wanted to learn. They recorded some of these ideas as “school announcements” to be played over the PA system during Erring at King George.

Bios:

Laurel Paluck is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages professional artists, students and community members towards creating visually charged performances, exhibitions and curriculum-based classroom art projects. She is the artistic producer of Atelier Ludmila Gallery, featuring regional female artists in monthly solo exhibits, and is trained as an Artist-Educator through the Royal Conservatory.

Presented by Artspace

Kelly O’Neill, Leslie Menagh 

Factory schooling, a public education model developed in the 18th/early 19th centuries, is an approach to education emphasizing impersonal, standardized teachings to produce a literate, compliant workforce. The neat rows of desks in today’s classrooms echo these origins. Youthful, but deflated stick-figure forms present themselves in fleshy, ordered formation while a wall-to-wall curve-stitching looms overhead. Weaving together symbols of formative school experience, these familiar and uncanny additions to the classroom prompt reflections on one’s experiences within the factory school system. Education comes with a rulebook. Emerging out of rich discussions about their own experiences, Kelly and Leslie’s material interventions explore the exacting conditions informing moral, social, and cultural imperatives entangled within curriculum. In their installation, in·form Leslie Menagh and Kelly O’Neill liken the classroom to a loom – one that threads us into the fabric of society and ties learning to production.

Bios:

Leslie Menagh is an interdisciplinary artist, craftsperson, community organizer, and curator with a BFA from NSCAD. Her work explores belonging and intimacy through story-telling, screen printing and sewing construction, installation, video, sound, and performance. She is the founder of Madderhouse Textile Studios in Peterborough. 

Kelly O’Neill is a multidisciplinary artist and curator living in Selwyn, Ontario. Working with assemblage and text, video and projection, and incorporating traditional textile methods with unconventional materials, Kelly creates objects and experiences that explore the fluidity and impermeability of embodied experience. She has a BFA/Sculpture and Installation (OCADU).

Old time folk music

In the decades that bookended the turn of our century, Lotus Wight travelled the world, searching for music that inspired him. As a teacher of instruments and dance to the families in the royal Danish court, he became a highly in-demand performer and clinician across Europe. Lotus relocated to Canada in 2020.

Presented by Reframe Film Festival

Kelly Egan

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective…Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the beginning was the word.” – Stan Brakhage

A swallow’s eye is longer than other birds. Their visual acuity is said to resemble raptors. For sailors, swallows are good omens signifying a close shore. My father loved birds. Since his passing, I’ve felt afloat. Lost and unanchored. At sea in overwhelming emotions, I look for swallows, as metaphors for moulting oppressive epistemologies and (re)visioning the world. 

Bios:

Kelly Egan is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Trent University whose work focuses on materiality and obsolescence, looking beyond hierarchical, canonical and linear histories. Her award-winning films have screened internationally, including at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, amongst others.

Presented by the Art Gallery of Peterborough

Alice Williams, Brad Copping

Anishinaabe artist Alice Williams (Curve Lake First Nation) and glass and sculpture artist Brad Copping have created an immersive installation of blown glass, textile, sound, and projection. The vibrant greens of springtime frame envelop the ceiling, light catches a cascade of glass droplets suspended in their fall towards blown vessels full of water, atop quilted medicine wheels. The sound of rain through trees plays as voices speak the names of water in its various forms in Anishinaabemowin and English. By bringing the outside in to this space originally constructed for educating the next generation acknowledges the long tradition of King George Public School’s work to provide specialized environmental and nature-based programs and the intention of Erring itself, bringing unoccupied spaces to life. 

Bios:

Alice Williams is an Anishinaabe artist (Curve Lake First Nation) who holds a BA from Trent University. Her quilts and wall-hangings have been exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian (the Smithsonian), Michigan State University, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Wanuskewin Heritage Park and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Brad Copping is a sculptor and functional glass blower whose work has been exhibited broadly. He has been reviewed in the New Glass Review, received support from the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council, and is in the permanent collection of many museums, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Chalkboards and Bulletin Boards line the walls of every school. Over time, lessons, graphs, chalk drawings and rebellious scribblings all find their place on these reusable surfaces, and then succumb to erasure and removal, slipping into a long history of text and image-based communication. The Boards Project contributes to this fleeting exchange of information at King George Public School. 16 artists present a combination of thoughtful, site-responsive work and poetic, personal work inspired by lived experience, on boards throughout the school. Each piece imparts an idea that materializes briefly for two weeks and then is erased, becoming part of the school’s rich history.

Artists: Kim Beavis Sanderson 3Hall, Bennett Bedoukian & Justin Million & Ireni Stamou 2F, C.M. Duffy 3E, Laura Fedynyszynn 3E, Garrett Gilbart 2G, Lesley Givens 2F, Miguel Hernandez 2B, Beth LeBlonc  1East Hall, Casandra Lee 2Hall, Josh Morley 3Hall, Brian Nichols 2G, Janette Platana 3E, Laura Thompson, Gillian Turnham 3D, Ziysah von Bieberstein 2E, Charlie Watson 2Hall

Bios:

Kim Beavis Sanderson is a new media, animator and installation artist. They are educated in AutoCAD/AutoDESK and many Animation and Graphics Programs. Beavis has participated in the Toronto Animated Image Society Showcase. They have shown installations in Peterborough at First Friday, and instruct workshops on computer animation and graphics. 

Bennett Bedoukian is a drummer, primarily playing in the duo Horseman, Pass By, and runs a letterpress printshop, O Underworld! Press, focusing on fine press books and broadsides. He lives outside of Havelock, Ontario, in Treaty 20.

Irèni Stamou is a choreographer and dance artist based in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong. Recent projects include Inside the Sculpture and Bone Stories as part of the Public Energy Performing Arts Pivot Festival and an Artist Residency in 2020-2021. Irèni is passionate about somatic movement research, yoga and leads programs with Irèni Movement Arts.

Justin Million is a print and digital media poet, a performance artist, the founder of the Show and Tell Poetry Series, a co-founder and poetry editor at bird, buried press, and is the author of EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems (2020) from Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.

C.M. Duffy is a visual artist working in Toronto, Canada. He holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In 2021 he collaborated with the Department of Canadian Heritage to bring a large installation of his work to Ottawa’s Confederation Park and Frankfurt, Germany to celebrate Canada’s Guest of Honour status in the Frankfurt International Book Fair.

Laura Fedynyszyn is a printmaker from Toronto. She completed her BFA in the OCAD University Printmaking Program and went on to study Art Conservation at Fleming College. Her artistic practice blends these two fields of study through reuse and reimagining of old materials, with themes related to nature conservancy.

Initially trained as a welder, Garrett Gilbart received his BFA Intermedia from NSCAD in Halifax before studying at the Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam.

Lesley Givens holds a BFA, Sculpture from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, BA, Cultural Studies from Trent University, and BEd, Artist in Community Education from Queen’s University. Her site-specific installation work honours a tradition of remembrance and directly responds to the surrounding environment, drawing on everyday experiences.

Miguel Hernandez is a Venezuelan artist and designer living in Peterborough, Canada. Miguel creates oil paintings, pencil drawings and murals. He’s inspired by events and emotions that changed his life. Miguel has participated in multiple juried shows and created multiple public pieces in downtown Peterborough and surrounding areas.

Bethany LeBlonc is an emerging artist, currently working in Peterborough. She is a self taught painter, with a background education from the Haliburton School of Art & Design. Using primarily acrylic paint & ink, her paintings are a reflection of life in her community, through various perspectives.

Casandra Lee is a mixed Asian-American multimedia artist, based in Peterborough. She has written and illustrated two children’s books, The Sun Dance and Building a Home. Casandra also works as a Montessori educator at Kawartha Montessori School. She is passionate about storytelling and capturing feelings better expressed through art.

Josh Morley is a self-taught illustrator and screen printer based in Peterborough. He has always had a love of illustration and enjoys the tactility of printing his designs by hand. Lately his work has focused on people, nature, and the connection between the two.

Brian Nichols is a retired expressive arts therapist who hangs out in our community making all kinds of art with others. Marginalized people have become his mainstream as he learns more about empathy, our shared humanity and collective inner spaces. He has never been happier.

Janette Platana’s writing has been long and shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards (four times), the PRISM International Award, the Disquiet Award, and the Ontario Trillium Book Award, and won This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. She has taught kindergarteners and undergraduates, and has studied at schools from Saskatoon to Southern France.

Laura Thompson is a media artist working with computer programming to develop immersive experiences. Laura is in the early stages of her professional career but has already built a diverse portfolio of traditional graphic design work, video projections as well as live interactive digital media.

Gillian Turnham is a Peterborough artist working within the tradition of Islamic geometric art. She studied sculpture and metalsmithing at NSCAD University, before honing her practice in Andalusia, Spain. Alongside her commissioned works, Gillian has published writings on Islamic geometry, and produced a radio series about Islamic art.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Charlie Watson is a young local artist who loves reading, drawing, playing music, and making radio.  She is currently obsessed with fabric arts. She drives her mother bonkers with the incessant clicking of her knitting needles, so has recently learned to crochet and is experimenting with sewing and embroidery.

Curated by Kelly O’Neill and Leslie Menagh

William Kingfisher 3C, Sheldon Storey 1C, Karyn Recollet 3C, Phuong Nguygen 2D, Elizabeth Fennel 1B

Indicating pathways through lineages, histories, and geographies, traces are clues; they are carriers of stories and of memory. Responding to the school setting on their own terms, five artists employ narrative strategies both speculative and autobiographical. They inhabit offices, closets and display cases guiding passage to pasts, to the present, and to futures.

Bios:

Drawing from the Anishinaabe blood from of his mother, William Kingfisher sees through his own mixed-blood eyes, possibilities for connections and bringing different worlds together. His work with gitigaans, stories, and images gathered tell him how important it is to think of life in terms of relationships, rather than as isolated individuals. Art is possibility; it can show us the way.

Sheldon Storey is a queer multidisciplinary artist working primarily in found material installations. Using traditional and experimental techniques he bridges a system of wonder through experiences of grief, gender, and the environment. His studio practice focuses on the familiar pull of familial objects, conjuring subjective notions of home, sexuality, mental health, and relationships.

Karyn Recollet is a Cree diasporic maker and academic. Contemplating Nazbah Tom’s provocation ‘what are the shapes of our gatherings’; Peter Morin’s invitation to consider time travel technologies of land-ing and Tiffani King’s question ‘how do we land into relation’, Recollet embodies and activates a durational practice of thinking with land-ing, and falling into relation.

Phuong Nguyen is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Toronto. Much of her work explores the complexities of her position as a first generation Canadian. A  graduate of OCADU (2014), she has shown her work in Toronto, around Turtle Island, the UK, and an aunt owns a painting in Vietnam.

Born in Montreal, raised in Ontario, descendent of settlers, home-children, and a war bride, Elizabeth Fennell traces the Trent-Severn waterway travelling between the Kawarthas and ‘The County’. Artist, curator and archivist, she returned to painting in 2021, focusing on local landscape, regionalism, and the traces of settler-colonialism.

6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins

Bios:

Saleem Ansari is a Hip-Hop Emcee and Spoken Word Poet, hailing from Windsor, Ontario and currently residing in Cambridge. His writings touch upon world issues, spirituality and social “norms”. Since 2011 Saleem has pursued his art professionally, performing across Canada in countless venues for shows, conferences, and festivals.

A performance installation exploring parallels between dance and sport. Created by Deanna Peters and Katie Lowen, the project is a community-building exercise for dancers to gather, play and learn together. Peters and Lowen are Vancouver-based dance artists who have previously created Dancers Playing Basketball for Dance in Vancouver and the Vancouver International Dance Festival. The basketball playing dancers are Amelia Ehrhardt, Lia Grainger, Kerith Paul, Becca Partington, Deanna Peters, Christy Stoeten, Oriah Wiersma, and apprentices Abigail Parsons, Sam Wotten.

Bios:

Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject is an artist working in and around dance for the past 18 years. Incorporating improvisation, House dance, somatics and everyday gestures, Mutable’s live worx subvert distinctions between so-called “high” and “low” art. They present a fluidity of persona, within ourselves and with other bodies and things. Embodied practice informs all of their work.

Katie Lowen was a national level gymnast before pursuing an NCAA university basketball career at Simon Fraser University. In Vancouver Katie co-founded and continues to coo-direct, the alternative performance space Boombox (in a semi-truck trailer) which has hosted the research and creation of over forty multi-generational artists in a variety of presentation formats.

More than 120 16mm films are available for viewing, from a collection of over 2,000 films amassed by former school teacher, Dan Fewings and now being looked after by his son Josh Fewings. The films were acquired from the region’s school systems when they converted to digital in the 1990s. They span the gamut from NFB art films to adolescent puberty lessons and outdated documentaries revealing dramatic shifts in societal attitudes. There will be two sessions daily: 1) Selections From the Collection. Josh will screen a group of films selected around a different theme each day. Drop in any time during the session. 2) Audience Choice. Drop in, browse the list of films and choose one that sounds intriguing. Josh looks after the collection but has not had a chance to screen all the films, so he is hoping to discover some hidden gems with your help. Drop in any time during the session.

Bios:

Josh Buster Fewings is the owner and curator of The Fewings 16mm Education Film Collection. Besides working with old films, Josh is completing his B.Ed. at Queen’s University in 2022 and has been a member of Peterborough-based alternative-folk duo Mayhemingways since 2013. He is happy to bring the films and projectors back to life for Erring at King George.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards. 

By Jennifer Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA)

An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.

Bios:

Jennifer Elchuk (Opal) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is circus and inter-art performance. Her art often explores human connection to landscape and relationships between bodies, in site specific work. She enjoys working with the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts as a coach, performer, and studio manager.

Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?

Bios:

Peyton Le Barr has been a theatre creator/performer for almost 20 years working in the United Kingdom and across Canada. She specializes in trauma-informed storytelling workshops designed to empower marginalized voices within communities.  Peyton holds a Masters in Acting with Merit from East 15 Acting School, UK.

Morgan Brie Johnson is a theatre creator, clown, and co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective. She has been performing in mask and clown for many years; she studied at the Clown Farm and holds a BFA from the University of Windsor. She is also working on her doctorate at York University.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist and actor with a background in physical theatre, mask (building, performance and facilitating), directing and playwriting. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.

A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.

Bios:

L.A. Alfonso is an artist/academic known for his films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography, and large-scale video projection mapping events. His work has established him as a genre-defying multi-media maverick. In 2021, he staged a nine-week live performance called Agent Sunless. His documentary Circus Boy is now available on AppleTV.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards.

6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins

Bios:

Saleem Ansari is a Hip-Hop Emcee and Spoken Word Poet, hailing from Windsor, Ontario and currently residing in Cambridge. His writings touch upon world issues, spirituality and social “norms”. Since 2011 Saleem has pursued his art professionally, performing across Canada in countless venues for shows, conferences, and festivals.

A performance installation exploring parallels between dance and sport. Created by Deanna Peters and Katie Lowen, the project is a community-building exercise for dancers to gather, play and learn together. Peters and Lowen are Vancouver-based dance artists who have previously created Dancers Playing Basketball for Dance in Vancouver and the Vancouver International Dance Festival. The basketball playing dancers are Amelia Ehrhardt, Lia Grainger, Kerith Paul, Becca Partington, Deanna Peters, Christy Stoeten, Oriah Wiersma, and apprentices Abigail Parsons, Sam Wotten.

Bios:

Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject is an artist working in and around dance for the past 18 years. Incorporating improvisation, House dance, somatics and everyday gestures, Mutable’s live worx subvert distinctions between so-called “high” and “low” art. They present a fluidity of persona, within ourselves and with other bodies and things. Embodied practice informs all of their work.

Katie Lowen was a national level gymnast before pursuing an NCAA university basketball career at Simon Fraser University. In Vancouver Katie co-founded and continues to coo-direct, the alternative performance space Boombox (in a semi-truck trailer) which has hosted the research and creation of over forty multi-generational artists in a variety of presentation formats.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards. 

By Jennifer Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA)

An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.

Bios:

Jennifer Elchuk (Opal) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is circus and inter-art performance. Her art often explores human connection to landscape and relationships between bodies, in site specific work. She enjoys working with the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts as a coach, performer, and studio manager.

More than 120 16mm films are available for viewing, from a collection of over 2,000 films amassed by former school teacher, Dan Fewings and now being looked after by his son Josh Fewings. The films were acquired from the region’s school systems when they converted to digital in the 1990s. They span the gamut from NFB art films to adolescent puberty lessons and outdated documentaries revealing dramatic shifts in societal attitudes. There will be two sessions daily: 1) Selections From the Collection. Josh will screen a group of films selected around a different theme each day. Drop in any time during the session. 2) Audience Choice. Drop in, browse the list of films and choose one that sounds intriguing. Josh looks after the collection but has not had a chance to screen all the films, so he is hoping to discover some hidden gems with your help. Drop in any time during the session.

Bios:

Josh Buster Fewings is the owner and curator of The Fewings 16mm Education Film Collection. Besides working with old films, Josh is completing his B.Ed. at Queen’s University in 2022 and has been a member of Peterborough-based alternative-folk duo Mayhemingways since 2013. He is happy to bring the films and projectors back to life for Erring at King George.

Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?

Bios:

Peyton Le Barr has been a theatre creator/performer for almost 20 years working in the United Kingdom and across Canada. She specializes in trauma-informed storytelling workshops designed to empower marginalized voices within communities.  Peyton holds a Masters in Acting with Merit from East 15 Acting School, UK.

Morgan Brie Johnson is a theatre creator, clown, and co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective. She has been performing in mask and clown for many years; she studied at the Clown Farm and holds a BFA from the University of Windsor. She is also working on her doctorate at York University.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist and actor with a background in physical theatre, mask (building, performance and facilitating), directing and playwriting. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.

A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.

Bios:

L.A. Alfonso is an artist/academic known for his films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography, and large-scale video projection mapping events. His work has established him as a genre-defying multi-media maverick. In 2021, he staged a nine-week live performance called Agent Sunless. His documentary Circus Boy is now available on AppleTV.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards.

Created/Directed by Kate Story 

The audience meets at the main entrance box office for this immersive travelling theatre work. Led through the building by a charming and mysterious custodian, audiences encounter scenarios inspired by actual events and people who worked and studied at King George. Spirit Week was developed through research and collaboration with diverse artists working in dance, theatre, circus, spoken word, music, and film.

Featuring original works by:

Nora Von Bieberstein, Ziysah Von Bieberstein, Jenn Cole, Rob Fortin, Ryan Kerr, Nicole Malbeuf, Kelli Marshall, Susan Newman, Sahira Q, Daniel Smith, with music by the McDonell Street Gospel Quartet – Colin MacAdam, Kristine Fisher (Rose), Dianne Latchford, Curtis Drieger – and stage management by Shannon McKenzie.

Bios:

Kate Story is a genderqueer writer and theatre artist. Kate works in multiple genres: devised theatre and dance, as well as literary and speculative fiction. She is artistic director of Precarious Festival, and loves to support the creation of new regional performance work. Kate is a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s K.M. Hunter Award for theatre.

Norah von Bieberstein, 9, enjoys musical theatre and has performed in Nut.Cracker (The Theatre on King) and Virtual Canada Day (Trellis Arts), both with her mentor Dreda Blow. She has studied at Studio 505, Stagecoach, Toronto Arts Academy, and Showmakers. Norah, who is also an artist, writer, and choreographer, lives in Nogojiwanong with her adorable puppy, Panda.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Sahira Q is a quirky, yet lovable, drag queen who has performed at various stages, backyards, and local watering holes across southern Ontario. Sahira emigrated to Canada from Zanzibar, Tanzania more than twenty years ago but misses the island sun every day.

Jenn Cole (Mixed Ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe) is a performer, Associate Artistic Producer at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space and an Indigenous Feminist Performance scholar in Gender and Social Justice at Trent University. She has performed in dance, film and installation work in Nogojiwanong, Minneapolis, Washington DC, and Toronto.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Ryan Kerr is the artistic director of The Theatre on King. Since moving to Peterborough in 1993, he has been involved in the local performance scene as a playwright, actor, dancer, lighting designer, and many other things.

Nicole Malbeuf is a theatrical aerialist based in Peterborough. A graduate of OCAD University (material art) and Fleming College (agriculture), Nicole is naturally interested in art-making and the environment. She operates under Trellis Arts, an aerial-dance-theatre company producing shows and learning experiences.

Kelli Marshall  (Anishinaabe {Ojibway} from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation) is an indigenous dancer, activist and storyteller. She is an Ojibway from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation. She was born and raised in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough). She has been dancing since she could walk, and enjoys sharing, learning and teaching her culture with others.

Daniel Smith is an actor and improviser from Peterborough. Amidst the lockdowns Daniel appeared online in The Cut and Paste Macbeth and Testing… Recently Daniel appeared in The Theatre on King’s production of The Bald Soprano. Daniel also runs improv classes for children and teens through PAPA.

The McDonell Street Gospel Quartet is a quartet featuring authentic vintage/roots gospel songs from the 1930s and ‘40s era. Tight harmony vocals and a cool acoustic sound. Colin MacAdam has been singing in community choirs for many years. He’s a member of Old Men Dancing. He carries the bass line in the McDonnell Street Gospel Quartet. Kristine Fisher (Rose), a life long dancer, choreographer, and teacher is MSGQ’s soprano voice. Presently, she enjoys performing music and fulfilling people’s Real Estate dreams.  Kristine has toured extensively as a singer and Mandolin player with Washboard Hank’s band, and treasures performing with the gospel quartet. Dianne Latchford has been acting for 40+ years, appearing on stages from Shaw Festival to Rainbow Stage, locally at New Stages, TTOK, 4th Line and more; on screen in Murdoch Mysteries, Queer As Folk and SCTV. She is also a musician, singer-songwriter and visual artist. Curtis Driedger is the leader of the Mcdonnel Street Gospel Quartet, formed in 2018. Before the pandemic, he directed the Zippity Doo Dah Community Soul Chorus, as well as the Mandolin Society of Peterborough. He has been a musician for too long.

The Pocket Collective: Brian Nichols, John Marris, Jane Lowbeer, Patrick Moore and Ann Jaeger will conduct a series of art-making workshops for the public to participate in. The range of activities to which the public is invited includes making masks and puppets, storytelling and poetry, flag making, sculpture, collage, printmaking and exploring three dimensional objects and new responses to the materials of our everyday lives. Reflecting the repurposing theme that is at the heart of Erring’s occupation of an empty school, the ‘Circus’ will contribute a creative, spontaneous art-making energy to the festival.

Bios:

Brian Nichols is a retired expressive arts therapist who hangs out in our community making all kinds of art with others. Marginalized people have become his mainstream as he learns more about empathy, our shared humanity and collective inner spaces. He has never been happier.

John Marris is an artist and community activist who has a passion for bringing art making and creativity to members of our community who do not normally have access to the arts. His art practise includes ceramics, photography, print-making, collage and pen and ink work.

Jane Lowbeer is a mixed media visual artist. She has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Visual Arts Clarington (VAC) and the AH Centre in Warkworth. She was a member of the now defunct Loop Gallery in Toronto. These last few months of Covid, Jane has really enjoyed making things for Circus Repurpose.

Patrick Moore is an artist with a long exhibition history of landscape paintings and prints. Patrick is also an accomplished, in-demand arts educator. He’s currently in his 4th year as Artist-in-Residence at Toronto’s Beverley School, where he facilitates large-scale art works with students with multiple disabilities.

Ann Jaeger is a multidisciplinary artist whose work intersects literary, theatre and visual arts. She has designed sets for The Theatre on King and participated in arts festivals such as Erring on the Mount, Precarious Festival, ReFrame Film Festival and Artsweek. She writes the local arts blog Trout in Plaid.

Presented by Artspace

As a hard of hearing and disabled-identified media artist my creative practice evolves around researching and developing multi-sensory and vibrotactile technology as a creative medium and as a path of access into experiencing art in its many forms. My multi-location installation draws attention to language, communication, accessibility, sensory immersion, memory, and perceived magic.

Employing vibrotactile technology, sound, photography, projection, voice recordings and familiar objects the installation aims to provide immersive and surprising experiences for people of all ages and abilities. 

Bios:

David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled media artist whose creative practice is researching and developing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. He established the creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario in 2014. He has had 18 solo and over 30 group exhibitions in Canada, the US and the UK.

By Kaawaate East City P.S Art Teacher Jenny Pink’s Homeroom Class
The theme guiding our work is “DO BETTER”. Specific areas within the Erring at KG classroom are dedicated to designs by grade 7 & 8 Kaawaate students. Students are recognizing current global issues that matter to them and bring awareness through art, with the intention of visitors reflecting on how they can ‘DO BETTER’.  Issues around school waste, plastic use and disposal in the ocean, devastation of ecosystems and finally the reconciliation that needs to happen to restore our relationship with Indigenous Peoples. The art installation of eyes, made of mixed materials, represents the personal reflection that needs to take place for us to DO BETTER now and in the future. DO BETTER: for our earth, our animals, our oceans, our forests and for our children.

Presented by the Peterborough Museum and Archives

The Peterborough Museum & Archives (PMA) is proud to celebrate our neighbourhood with two new digital presentations. The first features portraits of WWI soldiers – former students of the Ashburnham School whose names have been commemorated in the entryway of King George Public School for more than 100 years. This exhibition was researched and curated by Bo Pickett during his recent placement from the University of Ottawa and financially supported by Ontario’s CMOG Digital Capacity Grant. The second presentation takes a look at the broader area surrounding the King George P.S. property with images selected from the PMA’s vast collection of historic photographs.

Through a series of brainstorming sessions, Laurel Paluck worked with the Kaawaate East City P.S. art class to come up with ideas for an “Ideal School”. From the practical to the fantastical, these students explored and shared their thoughts on where, how and what they wanted to learn. They recorded some of these ideas as “school announcements” to be played over the PA system during Erring at King George.

Bios:

Laurel Paluck is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages professional artists, students and community members towards creating visually charged performances, exhibitions and curriculum-based classroom art projects. She is the artistic producer of Atelier Ludmila Gallery, featuring regional female artists in monthly solo exhibits, and is trained as an Artist-Educator through the Royal Conservatory.

Presented by Artspace

Kelly O’Neill, Leslie Menagh 

Factory schooling, a public education model developed in the 18th/early 19th centuries, is an approach to education emphasizing impersonal, standardized teachings to produce a literate, compliant workforce. The neat rows of desks in today’s classrooms echo these origins. Youthful, but deflated stick-figure forms present themselves in fleshy, ordered formation while a wall-to-wall curve-stitching looms overhead. Weaving together symbols of formative school experience, these familiar and uncanny additions to the classroom prompt reflections on one’s experiences within the factory school system. Education comes with a rulebook. Emerging out of rich discussions about their own experiences, Kelly and Leslie’s material interventions explore the exacting conditions informing moral, social, and cultural imperatives entangled within curriculum. In their installation, in·form Leslie Menagh and Kelly O’Neill liken the classroom to a loom – one that threads us into the fabric of society and ties learning to production.

Bios:

Leslie Menagh is an interdisciplinary artist, craftsperson, community organizer, and curator with a BFA from NSCAD. Her work explores belonging and intimacy through story-telling, screen printing and sewing construction, installation, video, sound, and performance. She is the founder of Madderhouse Textile Studios in Peterborough. 

Kelly O’Neill is a multidisciplinary artist and curator living in Selwyn, Ontario. Working with assemblage and text, video and projection, and incorporating traditional textile methods with unconventional materials, Kelly creates objects and experiences that explore the fluidity and impermeability of embodied experience. She has a BFA/Sculpture and Installation (OCADU).

Jazz

Lighthearted and fun, this trio transports their audience to a European café with their unique take on classic jazz standards. Excited to be back performing live again, Marsala and the Imports tell the old tales of love and loss- getting your toes tapping and your faces smiling…or perhaps even singing along! This trio loves the music they play, love performing with each other, and love bringing audiences beautiful and joyful entertainment.

Presented by Reframe Film Festival

Kelly Egan

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective…Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the beginning was the word.” – Stan Brakhage

A swallow’s eye is longer than other birds. Their visual acuity is said to resemble raptors. For sailors, swallows are good omens signifying a close shore. My father loved birds. Since his passing, I’ve felt afloat. Lost and unanchored. At sea in overwhelming emotions, I look for swallows, as metaphors for moulting oppressive epistemologies and (re)visioning the world. 

Bios:

Kelly Egan is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Trent University whose work focuses on materiality and obsolescence, looking beyond hierarchical, canonical and linear histories. Her award-winning films have screened internationally, including at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, amongst others.

Presented by the Art Gallery of Peterborough

Alice Williams, Brad Copping

Anishinaabe artist Alice Williams (Curve Lake First Nation) and glass and sculpture artist Brad Copping have created an immersive installation of blown glass, textile, sound, and projection. The vibrant greens of springtime frame envelop the ceiling, light catches a cascade of glass droplets suspended in their fall towards blown vessels full of water, atop quilted medicine wheels. The sound of rain through trees plays as voices speak the names of water in its various forms in Anishinaabemowin and English. By bringing the outside in to this space originally constructed for educating the next generation acknowledges the long tradition of King George Public School’s work to provide specialized environmental and nature-based programs and the intention of Erring itself, bringing unoccupied spaces to life. 

Bios:

Alice Williams is an Anishinaabe artist (Curve Lake First Nation) who holds a BA from Trent University. Her quilts and wall-hangings have been exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian (the Smithsonian), Michigan State University, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Wanuskewin Heritage Park and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Brad Copping is a sculptor and functional glass blower whose work has been exhibited broadly. He has been reviewed in the New Glass Review, received support from the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council, and is in the permanent collection of many museums, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Chalkboards and Bulletin Boards line the walls of every school. Over time, lessons, graphs, chalk drawings and rebellious scribblings all find their place on these reusable surfaces, and then succumb to erasure and removal, slipping into a long history of text and image-based communication. The Boards Project contributes to this fleeting exchange of information at King George Public School. 16 artists present a combination of thoughtful, site-responsive work and poetic, personal work inspired by lived experience, on boards throughout the school. Each piece imparts an idea that materializes briefly for two weeks and then is erased, becoming part of the school’s rich history.

Artists: Kim Beavis Sanderson 3Hall, Bennett Bedoukian & Justin Million & Ireni Stamou 2F, C.M. Duffy 3E, Laura Fedynyszynn 3E, Garrett Gilbart 2G, Lesley Givens 2F, Miguel Hernandez 2B, Beth LeBlonc  1East Hall, Casandra Lee 2Hall, Josh Morley 3Hall, Brian Nichols 2G, Janette Platana 3E, Laura Thompson, Gillian Turnham 3D, Ziysah von Bieberstein 2E, Charlie Watson 2Hall

Bios:

Kim Beavis Sanderson is a new media, animator and installation artist. They are educated in AutoCAD/AutoDESK and many Animation and Graphics Programs. Beavis has participated in the Toronto Animated Image Society Showcase. They have shown installations in Peterborough at First Friday, and instruct workshops on computer animation and graphics. 

Bennett Bedoukian is a drummer, primarily playing in the duo Horseman, Pass By, and runs a letterpress printshop, O Underworld! Press, focusing on fine press books and broadsides. He lives outside of Havelock, Ontario, in Treaty 20.

Irèni Stamou is a choreographer and dance artist based in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong. Recent projects include Inside the Sculpture and Bone Stories as part of the Public Energy Performing Arts Pivot Festival and an Artist Residency in 2020-2021. Irèni is passionate about somatic movement research, yoga and leads programs with Irèni Movement Arts.

Justin Million is a print and digital media poet, a performance artist, the founder of the Show and Tell Poetry Series, a co-founder and poetry editor at bird, buried press, and is the author of EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems (2020) from Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.

C.M. Duffy is a visual artist working in Toronto, Canada. He holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In 2021 he collaborated with the Department of Canadian Heritage to bring a large installation of his work to Ottawa’s Confederation Park and Frankfurt, Germany to celebrate Canada’s Guest of Honour status in the Frankfurt International Book Fair.

Laura Fedynyszyn is a printmaker from Toronto. She completed her BFA in the OCAD University Printmaking Program and went on to study Art Conservation at Fleming College. Her artistic practice blends these two fields of study through reuse and reimagining of old materials, with themes related to nature conservancy.

Initially trained as a welder, Garrett Gilbart received his BFA Intermedia from NSCAD in Halifax before studying at the Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam.

Lesley Givens holds a BFA, Sculpture from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, BA, Cultural Studies from Trent University, and BEd, Artist in Community Education from Queen’s University. Her site-specific installation work honours a tradition of remembrance and directly responds to the surrounding environment, drawing on everyday experiences.

Miguel Hernandez is a Venezuelan artist and designer living in Peterborough, Canada. Miguel creates oil paintings, pencil drawings and murals. He’s inspired by events and emotions that changed his life. Miguel has participated in multiple juried shows and created multiple public pieces in downtown Peterborough and surrounding areas.

Bethany LeBlonc is an emerging artist, currently working in Peterborough. She is a self taught painter, with a background education from the Haliburton School of Art & Design. Using primarily acrylic paint & ink, her paintings are a reflection of life in her community, through various perspectives.

Casandra Lee is a mixed Asian-American multimedia artist, based in Peterborough. She has written and illustrated two children’s books, The Sun Dance and Building a Home. Casandra also works as a Montessori educator at Kawartha Montessori School. She is passionate about storytelling and capturing feelings better expressed through art.

Josh Morley is a self-taught illustrator and screen printer based in Peterborough. He has always had a love of illustration and enjoys the tactility of printing his designs by hand. Lately his work has focused on people, nature, and the connection between the two.

Brian Nichols is a retired expressive arts therapist who hangs out in our community making all kinds of art with others. Marginalized people have become his mainstream as he learns more about empathy, our shared humanity and collective inner spaces. He has never been happier.

Janette Platana’s writing has been long and shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards (four times), the PRISM International Award, the Disquiet Award, and the Ontario Trillium Book Award, and won This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. She has taught kindergarteners and undergraduates, and has studied at schools from Saskatoon to Southern France.

Laura Thompson is a media artist working with computer programming to develop immersive experiences. Laura is in the early stages of her professional career but has already built a diverse portfolio of traditional graphic design work, video projections as well as live interactive digital media.

Gillian Turnham is a Peterborough artist working within the tradition of Islamic geometric art. She studied sculpture and metalsmithing at NSCAD University, before honing her practice in Andalusia, Spain. Alongside her commissioned works, Gillian has published writings on Islamic geometry, and produced a radio series about Islamic art.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Charlie Watson is a young local artist who loves reading, drawing, playing music, and making radio.  She is currently obsessed with fabric arts. She drives her mother bonkers with the incessant clicking of her knitting needles, so has recently learned to crochet and is experimenting with sewing and embroidery.

Curated by Kelly O’Neill and Leslie Menagh

William Kingfisher 3C, Sheldon Storey 1C, Karyn Recollet 3C, Phuong Nguygen 2D, Elizabeth Fennel 1B

Indicating pathways through lineages, histories, and geographies, traces are clues; they are carriers of stories and of memory. Responding to the school setting on their own terms, five artists employ narrative strategies both speculative and autobiographical. They inhabit offices, closets and display cases guiding passage to pasts, to the present, and to futures.

Bios:

Drawing from the Anishinaabe blood from of his mother, William Kingfisher sees through his own mixed-blood eyes, possibilities for connections and bringing different worlds together. His work with gitigaans, stories, and images gathered tell him how important it is to think of life in terms of relationships, rather than as isolated individuals. Art is possibility; it can show us the way.

Sheldon Storey is a queer multidisciplinary artist working primarily in found material installations. Using traditional and experimental techniques he bridges a system of wonder through experiences of grief, gender, and the environment. His studio practice focuses on the familiar pull of familial objects, conjuring subjective notions of home, sexuality, mental health, and relationships.

Karyn Recollet is a Cree diasporic maker and academic. Contemplating Nazbah Tom’s provocation ‘what are the shapes of our gatherings’; Peter Morin’s invitation to consider time travel technologies of land-ing and Tiffani King’s question ‘how do we land into relation’, Recollet embodies and activates a durational practice of thinking with land-ing, and falling into relation.

Phuong Nguyen is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Toronto. Much of her work explores the complexities of her position as a first generation Canadian. A  graduate of OCADU (2014), she has shown her work in Toronto, around Turtle Island, the UK, and an aunt owns a painting in Vietnam.

Born in Montreal, raised in Ontario, descendent of settlers, home-children, and a war bride, Elizabeth Fennell traces the Trent-Severn waterway travelling between the Kawarthas and ‘The County’. Artist, curator and archivist, she returned to painting in 2021, focusing on local landscape, regionalism, and the traces of settler-colonialism.

6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins

Bios:

Born and raised in Jamaica, Niambi Tree spent her formative years in Peterborough. She is a poet, jewellery-maker, and tarot reader. Her spoken word poetry explores the intersectionality between race, self-worth and mental illnesses. Niambi is a two-time Peterborough Grand Slam Champion and a past Peterborough Poetry Slam Teams performer.

A performance installation exploring parallels between dance and sport. Created by Deanna Peters and Katie Lowen, the project is a community-building exercise for dancers to gather, play and learn together. Peters and Lowen are Vancouver-based dance artists who have previously created Dancers Playing Basketball for Dance in Vancouver and the Vancouver International Dance Festival. The basketball playing dancers are Amelia Ehrhardt, Lia Grainger, Kerith Paul, Becca Partington, Deanna Peters, Christy Stoeten, Oriah Wiersma, and apprentices Abigail Parsons, Sam Wotten.

Bios:

Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject is an artist working in and around dance for the past 18 years. Incorporating improvisation, House dance, somatics and everyday gestures, Mutable’s live worx subvert distinctions between so-called “high” and “low” art. They present a fluidity of persona, within ourselves and with other bodies and things. Embodied practice informs all of their work.

Katie Lowen was a national level gymnast before pursuing an NCAA university basketball career at Simon Fraser University. In Vancouver Katie co-founded and continues to coo-direct, the alternative performance space Boombox (in a semi-truck trailer) which has hosted the research and creation of over forty multi-generational artists in a variety of presentation formats.

More than 120 16mm films are available for viewing, from a collection of over 2,000 films amassed by former school teacher, Dan Fewings and now being looked after by his son Josh Fewings. The films were acquired from the region’s school systems when they converted to digital in the 1990s. They span the gamut from NFB art films to adolescent puberty lessons and outdated documentaries revealing dramatic shifts in societal attitudes. There will be two sessions daily: 1) Selections From the Collection. Josh will screen a group of films selected around a different theme each day. Drop in any time during the session. 2) Audience Choice. Drop in, browse the list of films and choose one that sounds intriguing. Josh looks after the collection but has not had a chance to screen all the films, so he is hoping to discover some hidden gems with your help. Drop in any time during the session.

Bios:

Josh Buster Fewings is the owner and curator of The Fewings 16mm Education Film Collection. Besides working with old films, Josh is completing his B.Ed. at Queen’s University in 2022 and has been a member of Peterborough-based alternative-folk duo Mayhemingways since 2013. He is happy to bring the films and projectors back to life for Erring at King George.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards. 

A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.

Bios:

L.A. Alfonso is an artist/academic known for his films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography, and large-scale video projection mapping events. His work has established him as a genre-defying multi-media maverick. In 2021, he staged a nine-week live performance called Agent Sunless. His documentary Circus Boy is now available on AppleTV.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?

Bios:

Peyton Le Barr has been a theatre creator/performer for almost 20 years working in the United Kingdom and across Canada. She specializes in trauma-informed storytelling workshops designed to empower marginalized voices within communities.  Peyton holds a Masters in Acting with Merit from East 15 Acting School, UK.

Morgan Brie Johnson is a theatre creator, clown, and co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective. She has been performing in mask and clown for many years; she studied at the Clown Farm and holds a BFA from the University of Windsor. She is also working on her doctorate at York University.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist and actor with a background in physical theatre, mask (building, performance and facilitating), directing and playwriting. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.

By Jennifer Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA)

An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.

Bios:

Jennifer Elchuk (Opal) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is circus and inter-art performance. Her art often explores human connection to landscape and relationships between bodies, in site specific work. She enjoys working with the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts as a coach, performer, and studio manager.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards.

6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins

Bios:

Born and raised in Jamaica, Niambi Tree spent her formative years in Peterborough. She is a poet, jewellery-maker, and tarot reader. Her spoken word poetry explores the intersectionality between race, self-worth and mental illnesses. Niambi is a two-time Peterborough Grand Slam Champion and a past Peterborough Poetry Slam Teams performer.

A performance installation exploring parallels between dance and sport. Created by Deanna Peters and Katie Lowen, the project is a community-building exercise for dancers to gather, play and learn together. Peters and Lowen are Vancouver-based dance artists who have previously created Dancers Playing Basketball for Dance in Vancouver and the Vancouver International Dance Festival. The basketball playing dancers are Amelia Ehrhardt, Lia Grainger, Kerith Paul, Becca Partington, Deanna Peters, Christy Stoeten, Oriah Wiersma, and apprentices Abigail Parsons, Sam Wotten.

Bios:

Deanna Peters/Mutable Subject is an artist working in and around dance for the past 18 years. Incorporating improvisation, House dance, somatics and everyday gestures, Mutable’s live worx subvert distinctions between so-called “high” and “low” art. They present a fluidity of persona, within ourselves and with other bodies and things. Embodied practice informs all of their work.

Katie Lowen was a national level gymnast before pursuing an NCAA university basketball career at Simon Fraser University. In Vancouver Katie co-founded and continues to coo-direct, the alternative performance space Boombox (in a semi-truck trailer) which has hosted the research and creation of over forty multi-generational artists in a variety of presentation formats.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards. 

Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?

Bios:

Peyton Le Barr has been a theatre creator/performer for almost 20 years working in the United Kingdom and across Canada. She specializes in trauma-informed storytelling workshops designed to empower marginalized voices within communities.  Peyton holds a Masters in Acting with Merit from East 15 Acting School, UK.

Morgan Brie Johnson is a theatre creator, clown, and co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective. She has been performing in mask and clown for many years; she studied at the Clown Farm and holds a BFA from the University of Windsor. She is also working on her doctorate at York University.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist and actor with a background in physical theatre, mask (building, performance and facilitating), directing and playwriting. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.

A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.

Bios:

L.A. Alfonso is an artist/academic known for his films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography, and large-scale video projection mapping events. His work has established him as a genre-defying multi-media maverick. In 2021, he staged a nine-week live performance called Agent Sunless. His documentary Circus Boy is now available on AppleTV.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

More than 120 16mm films are available for viewing, from a collection of over 2,000 films amassed by former school teacher, Dan Fewings and now being looked after by his son Josh Fewings. The films were acquired from the region’s school systems when they converted to digital in the 1990s. They span the gamut from NFB art films to adolescent puberty lessons and outdated documentaries revealing dramatic shifts in societal attitudes. There will be two sessions daily: 1) Selections From the Collection. Josh will screen a group of films selected around a different theme each day. Drop in any time during the session. 2) Audience Choice. Drop in, browse the list of films and choose one that sounds intriguing. Josh looks after the collection but has not had a chance to screen all the films, so he is hoping to discover some hidden gems with your help. Drop in any time during the session.

Bios:

Josh Buster Fewings is the owner and curator of The Fewings 16mm Education Film Collection. Besides working with old films, Josh is completing his B.Ed. at Queen’s University in 2022 and has been a member of Peterborough-based alternative-folk duo Mayhemingways since 2013. He is happy to bring the films and projectors back to life for Erring at King George.

By Jennifer Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA)

An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.

Bios:

Jennifer Elchuk (Opal) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is circus and inter-art performance. Her art often explores human connection to landscape and relationships between bodies, in site specific work. She enjoys working with the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts as a coach, performer, and studio manager.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards.

Created/Directed by Kate Story 

The audience meets at the main entrance box office for this immersive travelling theatre work. Led through the building by a charming and mysterious custodian, audiences encounter scenarios inspired by actual events and people who worked and studied at King George. Spirit Week was developed through research and collaboration with diverse artists working in dance, theatre, circus, spoken word, music, and film.

Featuring original works by:

Nora Von Bieberstein, Ziysah Von Bieberstein, Jenn Cole, Rob Fortin, Ryan Kerr, Nicole Malbeuf, Kelli Marshall, Susan Newman, Sahira Q, Daniel Smith, with music by the McDonell Street Gospel Quartet – Colin MacAdam, Kristine Fisher (Rose), Dianne Latchford, Curtis Drieger – and stage management by Shannon McKenzie.

Bios:

Kate Story is a genderqueer writer and theatre artist. Kate works in multiple genres: devised theatre and dance, as well as literary and speculative fiction. She is artistic director of Precarious Festival, and loves to support the creation of new regional performance work. Kate is a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s K.M. Hunter Award for theatre.

Norah von Bieberstein, 9, enjoys musical theatre and has performed in Nut.Cracker (The Theatre on King) and Virtual Canada Day (Trellis Arts), both with her mentor Dreda Blow. She has studied at Studio 505, Stagecoach, Toronto Arts Academy, and Showmakers. Norah, who is also an artist, writer, and choreographer, lives in Nogojiwanong with her adorable puppy, Panda.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Sahira Q is a quirky, yet lovable, drag queen who has performed at various stages, backyards, and local watering holes across southern Ontario. Sahira emigrated to Canada from Zanzibar, Tanzania more than twenty years ago but misses the island sun every day.

Jenn Cole (Mixed Ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe) is a performer, Associate Artistic Producer at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space and an Indigenous Feminist Performance scholar in Gender and Social Justice at Trent University. She has performed in dance, film and installation work in Nogojiwanong, Minneapolis, Washington DC, and Toronto.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Ryan Kerr is the artistic director of The Theatre on King. Since moving to Peterborough in 1993, he has been involved in the local performance scene as a playwright, actor, dancer, lighting designer, and many other things.

Nicole Malbeuf is a theatrical aerialist based in Peterborough. A graduate of OCAD University (material art) and Fleming College (agriculture), Nicole is naturally interested in art-making and the environment. She operates under Trellis Arts, an aerial-dance-theatre company producing shows and learning experiences.

Kelli Marshall  (Anishinaabe {Ojibway} from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation) is an indigenous dancer, activist and storyteller. She is an Ojibway from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation. She was born and raised in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough). She has been dancing since she could walk, and enjoys sharing, learning and teaching her culture with others.

Daniel Smith is an actor and improviser from Peterborough. Amidst the lockdowns Daniel appeared online in The Cut and Paste Macbeth and Testing… Recently Daniel appeared in The Theatre on King’s production of The Bald Soprano. Daniel also runs improv classes for children and teens through PAPA.

The McDonell Street Gospel Quartet is a quartet featuring authentic vintage/roots gospel songs from the 1930s and ‘40s era. Tight harmony vocals and a cool acoustic sound. Colin MacAdam has been singing in community choirs for many years. He’s a member of Old Men Dancing. He carries the bass line in the McDonnell Street Gospel Quartet. Kristine Fisher (Rose), a life long dancer, choreographer, and teacher is MSGQ’s soprano voice. Presently, she enjoys performing music and fulfilling people’s Real Estate dreams.  Kristine has toured extensively as a singer and Mandolin player with Washboard Hank’s band, and treasures performing with the gospel quartet. Dianne Latchford has been acting for 40+ years, appearing on stages from Shaw Festival to Rainbow Stage, locally at New Stages, TTOK, 4th Line and more; on screen in Murdoch Mysteries, Queer As Folk and SCTV. She is also a musician, singer-songwriter and visual artist. Curtis Driedger is the leader of the Mcdonnel Street Gospel Quartet, formed in 2018. Before the pandemic, he directed the Zippity Doo Dah Community Soul Chorus, as well as the Mandolin Society of Peterborough. He has been a musician for too long.

The Pocket Collective: Brian Nichols, John Marris, Jane Lowbeer, Patrick Moore and Ann Jaeger will conduct a series of art-making workshops for the public to participate in. The range of activities to which the public is invited includes making masks and puppets, storytelling and poetry, flag making, sculpture, collage, printmaking and exploring three dimensional objects and new responses to the materials of our everyday lives. Reflecting the repurposing theme that is at the heart of Erring’s occupation of an empty school, the ‘Circus’ will contribute a creative, spontaneous art-making energy to the festival.

Bios:

Brian Nichols is a retired expressive arts therapist who hangs out in our community making all kinds of art with others. Marginalized people have become his mainstream as he learns more about empathy, our shared humanity and collective inner spaces. He has never been happier.

John Marris is an artist and community activist who has a passion for bringing art making and creativity to members of our community who do not normally have access to the arts. His art practise includes ceramics, photography, print-making, collage and pen and ink work.

Jane Lowbeer is a mixed media visual artist. She has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Visual Arts Clarington (VAC) and the AH Centre in Warkworth. She was a member of the now defunct Loop Gallery in Toronto. These last few months of Covid, Jane has really enjoyed making things for Circus Repurpose.

Patrick Moore is an artist with a long exhibition history of landscape paintings and prints. Patrick is also an accomplished, in-demand arts educator. He’s currently in his 4th year as Artist-in-Residence at Toronto’s Beverley School, where he facilitates large-scale art works with students with multiple disabilities.

Ann Jaeger is a multidisciplinary artist whose work intersects literary, theatre and visual arts. She has designed sets for The Theatre on King and participated in arts festivals such as Erring on the Mount, Precarious Festival, ReFrame Film Festival and Artsweek. She writes the local arts blog Trout in Plaid.

Presented by Artspace

As a hard of hearing and disabled-identified media artist my creative practice evolves around researching and developing multi-sensory and vibrotactile technology as a creative medium and as a path of access into experiencing art in its many forms. My multi-location installation draws attention to language, communication, accessibility, sensory immersion, memory, and perceived magic.

Employing vibrotactile technology, sound, photography, projection, voice recordings and familiar objects the installation aims to provide immersive and surprising experiences for people of all ages and abilities. 

Bios:

David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled media artist whose creative practice is researching and developing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. He established the creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario in 2014. He has had 18 solo and over 30 group exhibitions in Canada, the US and the UK.

By Kaawaate East City P.S Art Teacher Jenny Pink’s Homeroom Class
The theme guiding our work is “DO BETTER”. Specific areas within the Erring at KG classroom are dedicated to designs by grade 7 & 8 Kaawaate students. Students are recognizing current global issues that matter to them and bring awareness through art, with the intention of visitors reflecting on how they can ‘DO BETTER’.  Issues around school waste, plastic use and disposal in the ocean, devastation of ecosystems and finally the reconciliation that needs to happen to restore our relationship with Indigenous Peoples. The art installation of eyes, made of mixed materials, represents the personal reflection that needs to take place for us to DO BETTER now and in the future. DO BETTER: for our earth, our animals, our oceans, our forests and for our children.

With guidance from the Canadian Images in Conversation (CIIC) collective, explore experimental filmmaking techniques during this interactive drop-in event. Turn a section of 16mm found film footage into your own creation. Scratch, draw, colour, cut, splice and watch your film play back on our 16mm projectors. Presented in partnership with the Reframe Film Festival 

Presented by the Peterborough Museum and Archives

The Peterborough Museum & Archives (PMA) is proud to celebrate our neighbourhood with two new digital presentations. The first features portraits of WWI soldiers – former students of the Ashburnham School whose names have been commemorated in the entryway of King George Public School for more than 100 years. This exhibition was researched and curated by Bo Pickett during his recent placement from the University of Ottawa and financially supported by Ontario’s CMOG Digital Capacity Grant. The second presentation takes a look at the broader area surrounding the King George P.S. property with images selected from the PMA’s vast collection of historic photographs.

Through a series of brainstorming sessions, Laurel Paluck worked with the Kaawaate East City P.S. art class to come up with ideas for an “Ideal School”. From the practical to the fantastical, these students explored and shared their thoughts on where, how and what they wanted to learn. They recorded some of these ideas as “school announcements” to be played over the PA system during Erring at King George.

Bios:

Laurel Paluck is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages professional artists, students and community members towards creating visually charged performances, exhibitions and curriculum-based classroom art projects. She is the artistic producer of Atelier Ludmila Gallery, featuring regional female artists in monthly solo exhibits, and is trained as an Artist-Educator through the Royal Conservatory.

Presented by Artspace

Kelly O’Neill, Leslie Menagh 

Factory schooling, a public education model developed in the 18th/early 19th centuries, is an approach to education emphasizing impersonal, standardized teachings to produce a literate, compliant workforce. The neat rows of desks in today’s classrooms echo these origins. Youthful, but deflated stick-figure forms present themselves in fleshy, ordered formation while a wall-to-wall curve-stitching looms overhead. Weaving together symbols of formative school experience, these familiar and uncanny additions to the classroom prompt reflections on one’s experiences within the factory school system. Education comes with a rulebook. Emerging out of rich discussions about their own experiences, Kelly and Leslie’s material interventions explore the exacting conditions informing moral, social, and cultural imperatives entangled within curriculum. In their installation, in·form Leslie Menagh and Kelly O’Neill liken the classroom to a loom – one that threads us into the fabric of society and ties learning to production.

Bios:

Leslie Menagh is an interdisciplinary artist, craftsperson, community organizer, and curator with a BFA from NSCAD. Her work explores belonging and intimacy through story-telling, screen printing and sewing construction, installation, video, sound, and performance. She is the founder of Madderhouse Textile Studios in Peterborough. 

Kelly O’Neill is a multidisciplinary artist and curator living in Selwyn, Ontario. Working with assemblage and text, video and projection, and incorporating traditional textile methods with unconventional materials, Kelly creates objects and experiences that explore the fluidity and impermeability of embodied experience. She has a BFA/Sculpture and Installation (OCADU).

Presented by Reframe Film Festival

Kelly Egan

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective…Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the beginning was the word.” – Stan Brakhage

A swallow’s eye is longer than other birds. Their visual acuity is said to resemble raptors. For sailors, swallows are good omens signifying a close shore. My father loved birds. Since his passing, I’ve felt afloat. Lost and unanchored. At sea in overwhelming emotions, I look for swallows, as metaphors for moulting oppressive epistemologies and (re)visioning the world. 

Bios:

Kelly Egan is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Trent University whose work focuses on materiality and obsolescence, looking beyond hierarchical, canonical and linear histories. Her award-winning films have screened internationally, including at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, amongst others.

Presented by the Art Gallery of Peterborough

Alice Williams, Brad Copping

Anishinaabe artist Alice Williams (Curve Lake First Nation) and glass and sculpture artist Brad Copping have created an immersive installation of blown glass, textile, sound, and projection. The vibrant greens of springtime frame envelop the ceiling, light catches a cascade of glass droplets suspended in their fall towards blown vessels full of water, atop quilted medicine wheels. The sound of rain through trees plays as voices speak the names of water in its various forms in Anishinaabemowin and English. By bringing the outside in to this space originally constructed for educating the next generation acknowledges the long tradition of King George Public School’s work to provide specialized environmental and nature-based programs and the intention of Erring itself, bringing unoccupied spaces to life. 

Bios:

Alice Williams is an Anishinaabe artist (Curve Lake First Nation) who holds a BA from Trent University. Her quilts and wall-hangings have been exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian (the Smithsonian), Michigan State University, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Wanuskewin Heritage Park and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Brad Copping is a sculptor and functional glass blower whose work has been exhibited broadly. He has been reviewed in the New Glass Review, received support from the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council, and is in the permanent collection of many museums, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Dreamy moody soulful cinematic music

Sara O. Shahsavari (Shahrazi) (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, performer, and cross cultural community-builder. Born to a family of migrants who came to Canada as refugees from Iran and Poland, Sara uses art to express and explore themes of gender, culture, self, home, nature, spirituality, freedoms, dreams, borders, traumas, destruction, migration, change, creation, and growth.

Chalkboards and Bulletin Boards line the walls of every school. Over time, lessons, graphs, chalk drawings and rebellious scribblings all find their place on these reusable surfaces, and then succumb to erasure and removal, slipping into a long history of text and image-based communication. The Boards Project contributes to this fleeting exchange of information at King George Public School. 16 artists present a combination of thoughtful, site-responsive work and poetic, personal work inspired by lived experience, on boards throughout the school. Each piece imparts an idea that materializes briefly for two weeks and then is erased, becoming part of the school’s rich history.

Artists: Kim Beavis Sanderson 3Hall, Bennett Bedoukian & Justin Million & Ireni Stamou 2F, C.M. Duffy 3E, Laura Fedynyszynn 3E, Garrett Gilbart 2G, Lesley Givens 2F, Miguel Hernandez 2B, Beth LeBlonc  1East Hall, Casandra Lee 2Hall, Josh Morley 3Hall, Brian Nichols 2G, Janette Platana 3E, Laura Thompson, Gillian Turnham 3D, Ziysah von Bieberstein 2E, Charlie Watson 2Hall

Bios:

Kim Beavis Sanderson is a new media, animator and installation artist. They are educated in AutoCAD/AutoDESK and many Animation and Graphics Programs. Beavis has participated in the Toronto Animated Image Society Showcase. They have shown installations in Peterborough at First Friday, and instruct workshops on computer animation and graphics. 

Bennett Bedoukian is a drummer, primarily playing in the duo Horseman, Pass By, and runs a letterpress printshop, O Underworld! Press, focusing on fine press books and broadsides. He lives outside of Havelock, Ontario, in Treaty 20.

Irèni Stamou is a choreographer and dance artist based in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong. Recent projects include Inside the Sculpture and Bone Stories as part of the Public Energy Performing Arts Pivot Festival and an Artist Residency in 2020-2021. Irèni is passionate about somatic movement research, yoga and leads programs with Irèni Movement Arts.

Justin Million is a print and digital media poet, a performance artist, the founder of the Show and Tell Poetry Series, a co-founder and poetry editor at bird, buried press, and is the author of EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems (2020) from Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.

C.M. Duffy is a visual artist working in Toronto, Canada. He holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. In 2021 he collaborated with the Department of Canadian Heritage to bring a large installation of his work to Ottawa’s Confederation Park and Frankfurt, Germany to celebrate Canada’s Guest of Honour status in the Frankfurt International Book Fair.

Laura Fedynyszyn is a printmaker from Toronto. She completed her BFA in the OCAD University Printmaking Program and went on to study Art Conservation at Fleming College. Her artistic practice blends these two fields of study through reuse and reimagining of old materials, with themes related to nature conservancy.

Initially trained as a welder, Garrett Gilbart received his BFA Intermedia from NSCAD in Halifax before studying at the Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam.

Lesley Givens holds a BFA, Sculpture from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, BA, Cultural Studies from Trent University, and BEd, Artist in Community Education from Queen’s University. Her site-specific installation work honours a tradition of remembrance and directly responds to the surrounding environment, drawing on everyday experiences.

Miguel Hernandez is a Venezuelan artist and designer living in Peterborough, Canada. Miguel creates oil paintings, pencil drawings and murals. He’s inspired by events and emotions that changed his life. Miguel has participated in multiple juried shows and created multiple public pieces in downtown Peterborough and surrounding areas.

Bethany LeBlonc is an emerging artist, currently working in Peterborough. She is a self taught painter, with a background education from the Haliburton School of Art & Design. Using primarily acrylic paint & ink, her paintings are a reflection of life in her community, through various perspectives.

Casandra Lee is a mixed Asian-American multimedia artist, based in Peterborough. She has written and illustrated two children’s books, The Sun Dance and Building a Home. Casandra also works as a Montessori educator at Kawartha Montessori School. She is passionate about storytelling and capturing feelings better expressed through art.

Josh Morley is a self-taught illustrator and screen printer based in Peterborough. He has always had a love of illustration and enjoys the tactility of printing his designs by hand. Lately his work has focused on people, nature, and the connection between the two.

Brian Nichols is a retired expressive arts therapist who hangs out in our community making all kinds of art with others. Marginalized people have become his mainstream as he learns more about empathy, our shared humanity and collective inner spaces. He has never been happier.

Janette Platana’s writing has been long and shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards (four times), the PRISM International Award, the Disquiet Award, and the Ontario Trillium Book Award, and won This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. She has taught kindergarteners and undergraduates, and has studied at schools from Saskatoon to Southern France.

Laura Thompson is a media artist working with computer programming to develop immersive experiences. Laura is in the early stages of her professional career but has already built a diverse portfolio of traditional graphic design work, video projections as well as live interactive digital media.

Gillian Turnham is a Peterborough artist working within the tradition of Islamic geometric art. She studied sculpture and metalsmithing at NSCAD University, before honing her practice in Andalusia, Spain. Alongside her commissioned works, Gillian has published writings on Islamic geometry, and produced a radio series about Islamic art.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Charlie Watson is a young local artist who loves reading, drawing, playing music, and making radio.  She is currently obsessed with fabric arts. She drives her mother bonkers with the incessant clicking of her knitting needles, so has recently learned to crochet and is experimenting with sewing and embroidery.

Curated by Kelly O’Neill and Leslie Menagh

William Kingfisher 3C, Sheldon Storey 1C, Karyn Recollet 3C, Phuong Nguygen 2D, Elizabeth Fennel 1B

Indicating pathways through lineages, histories, and geographies, traces are clues; they are carriers of stories and of memory. Responding to the school setting on their own terms, five artists employ narrative strategies both speculative and autobiographical. They inhabit offices, closets and display cases guiding passage to pasts, to the present, and to futures.

Bios:

Drawing from the Anishinaabe blood from of his mother, William Kingfisher sees through his own mixed-blood eyes, possibilities for connections and bringing different worlds together. His work with gitigaans, stories, and images gathered tell him how important it is to think of life in terms of relationships, rather than as isolated individuals. Art is possibility; it can show us the way.

Sheldon Storey is a queer multidisciplinary artist working primarily in found material installations. Using traditional and experimental techniques he bridges a system of wonder through experiences of grief, gender, and the environment. His studio practice focuses on the familiar pull of familial objects, conjuring subjective notions of home, sexuality, mental health, and relationships.

Karyn Recollet is a Cree diasporic maker and academic. Contemplating Nazbah Tom’s provocation ‘what are the shapes of our gatherings’; Peter Morin’s invitation to consider time travel technologies of land-ing and Tiffani King’s question ‘how do we land into relation’, Recollet embodies and activates a durational practice of thinking with land-ing, and falling into relation.

Phuong Nguyen is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Toronto. Much of her work explores the complexities of her position as a first generation Canadian. A  graduate of OCADU (2014), she has shown her work in Toronto, around Turtle Island, the UK, and an aunt owns a painting in Vietnam.

Born in Montreal, raised in Ontario, descendent of settlers, home-children, and a war bride, Elizabeth Fennell traces the Trent-Severn waterway travelling between the Kawarthas and ‘The County’. Artist, curator and archivist, she returned to painting in 2021, focusing on local landscape, regionalism, and the traces of settler-colonialism.

6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins

Bios:

D’Scribe the poet, is a national champion indigi-queer spoken word artist. They have had the honour to perform on stages across Turtle island and are excited to spend time with y’all.

Justin Million, Bennett Bedoukian, Irèni Stamou

Curated as part of The Boards

Anatomy of a Trio sees local artists Bennett Bedoukian (drums), Irèni Stamou (dance), and Justin Million (poetry) create a unified artistic experience, intuitively working off each other’s tones, movements, and moods. The result is an event that celebrates collaboration and trust among artists of different backgrounds, and practices.

Bios:

Justin Million is a print and digital media poet, a performance artist, the founder of the Show and Tell Poetry Series, a co-founder and poetry editor at bird, buried press, and is the author of EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems (2020) from Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.

Bennett Bedoukian is a drummer, primarily playing in the duo Horseman, Pass By, and runs a letterpress printshop, O Underworld! Press, focusing on fine press books and broadsides. He lives outside of Havelock, Ontario, in Treaty 20.

Irèni Stamou is a choreographer and dance artist based in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong. Recent projects include Inside the Sculpture and Bone Stories as part of the Public Energy Performing Arts Pivot Festival and an Artist Residency in 2020-2021. Irèni is passionate about somatic movement research, yoga and leads programs with Irèni Movement Arts.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards. 

By Jennifer Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA)

An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.

Bios:

Jennifer Elchuk (Opal) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is circus and inter-art performance. Her art often explores human connection to landscape and relationships between bodies, in site specific work. She enjoys working with the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts as a coach, performer, and studio manager.

Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?

Bios:

Peyton Le Barr has been a theatre creator/performer for almost 20 years working in the United Kingdom and across Canada. She specializes in trauma-informed storytelling workshops designed to empower marginalized voices within communities.  Peyton holds a Masters in Acting with Merit from East 15 Acting School, UK.

Morgan Brie Johnson is a theatre creator, clown, and co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective. She has been performing in mask and clown for many years; she studied at the Clown Farm and holds a BFA from the University of Windsor. She is also working on her doctorate at York University.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist and actor with a background in physical theatre, mask (building, performance and facilitating), directing and playwriting. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.

A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.

Bios:

L.A. Alfonso is an artist/academic known for his films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography, and large-scale video projection mapping events. His work has established him as a genre-defying multi-media maverick. In 2021, he staged a nine-week live performance called Agent Sunless. His documentary Circus Boy is now available on AppleTV.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards. 

6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins

Bios:

D’Scribe the poet, is a national champion indigi-queer spoken word artist. They have had the honour to perform on stages across Turtle island and are excited to spend time with y’all.

Justin Million, Bennett Bedoukian, Irèni Stamou

Curated as part of The Boards

Anatomy of a Trio sees local artists Bennett Bedoukian (drums), Irèni Stamou (dance), and Justin Million (poetry) create a unified artistic experience, intuitively working off each other’s tones, movements, and moods. The result is an event that celebrates collaboration and trust among artists of different backgrounds, and practices.

Bios:

Justin Million is a print and digital media poet, a performance artist, the founder of the Show and Tell Poetry Series, a co-founder and poetry editor at bird, buried press, and is the author of EJECTA: The Uncollected KEYBOARDS! Poems (2020) from Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press.

Bennett Bedoukian is a drummer, primarily playing in the duo Horseman, Pass By, and runs a letterpress printshop, O Underworld! Press, focusing on fine press books and broadsides. He lives outside of Havelock, Ontario, in Treaty 20.

Irèni Stamou is a choreographer and dance artist based in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong. Recent projects include Inside the Sculpture and Bone Stories as part of the Public Energy Performing Arts Pivot Festival and an Artist Residency in 2020-2021. Irèni is passionate about somatic movement research, yoga and leads programs with Irèni Movement Arts.

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards.

By Jennifer Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA)

An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.

Bios:

Jennifer Elchuk (Opal) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose focus is circus and inter-art performance. Her art often explores human connection to landscape and relationships between bodies, in site specific work. She enjoys working with the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts as a coach, performer, and studio manager.

More than 120 16mm films are available for viewing, from a collection of over 2,000 films amassed by former school teacher, Dan Fewings and now being looked after by his son Josh Fewings. The films were acquired from the region’s school systems when they converted to digital in the 1990s. They span the gamut from NFB art films to adolescent puberty lessons and outdated documentaries revealing dramatic shifts in societal attitudes. There will be two sessions daily: 1) Selections From the Collection. Josh will screen a group of films selected around a different theme each day. Drop in any time during the session. 2) Audience Choice. Drop in, browse the list of films and choose one that sounds intriguing. Josh looks after the collection but has not had a chance to screen all the films, so he is hoping to discover some hidden gems with your help. Drop in any time during the session.

Bios:

Josh Buster Fewings is the owner and curator of The Fewings 16mm Education Film Collection. Besides working with old films, Josh is completing his B.Ed. at Queen’s University in 2022 and has been a member of Peterborough-based alternative-folk duo Mayhemingways since 2013. He is happy to bring the films and projectors back to life for Erring at King George.

Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?

Bios:

Peyton Le Barr has been a theatre creator/performer for almost 20 years working in the United Kingdom and across Canada. She specializes in trauma-informed storytelling workshops designed to empower marginalized voices within communities.  Peyton holds a Masters in Acting with Merit from East 15 Acting School, UK.

Morgan Brie Johnson is a theatre creator, clown, and co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective. She has been performing in mask and clown for many years; she studied at the Clown Farm and holds a BFA from the University of Windsor. She is also working on her doctorate at York University.

Alexandra Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist and actor with a background in physical theatre, mask (building, performance and facilitating), directing and playwriting. She is co-artistic leader of Animacy Theatre Collective and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University.

A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.

Bios:

L.A. Alfonso is an artist/academic known for his films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography, and large-scale video projection mapping events. His work has established him as a genre-defying multi-media maverick. In 2021, he staged a nine-week live performance called Agent Sunless. His documentary Circus Boy is now available on AppleTV.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.

Bios:

Dreda Blow is a dancer, choreographer, and arts educator who moved to Nogojiwanong in 2018 after a 14-year ballet career in Europe. With Northern Ballet in Leeds, U.K. she danced principal roles including Juliet, Jane Eyre, and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and co-choreographed two full productions- Ugly Duckling and Tortoise and the Hare.

Brad Brackenridge has been performing and designing for theatre and film for 30 years. The Shaw Festival, 4^th Line Theatre and Old Trout Puppet Workshop to name a few. In 2009 he created The Nervous System, a puppet-based theatre company. In 2018 he was recognized as Outstanding Mid-Career Artist at the inaugural Peterborough Arts Awards.

Let’s celebrate the bravery it takes to disrupt the status quo and make change for diversity, equality and  accessibility. Join a panel of Erring artists and organizers for a conversation about the art of accessibility. Erring  embraces the power of making mistakes out loud in contrast to an education in being quiet and sitting still. Have  you ever gotten detention for breaking the rules? How does our education system and the culture it serves create  barriers and how can we open the door?

Moderator: Dr. Nadine Changfoot 

Speakers: Erin Ball, Jen Elchuk, Elizabeth Jenkins, Ian Guest

Created/Directed by Kate Story 

The audience meets at the main entrance box office for this immersive travelling theatre work. Led through the building by a charming and mysterious custodian, audiences encounter scenarios inspired by actual events and people who worked and studied at King George. Spirit Week was developed through research and collaboration with diverse artists working in dance, theatre, circus, spoken word, music, and film.

Featuring original works by:

Nora Von Bieberstein, Ziysah Von Bieberstein, Jenn Cole, Rob Fortin, Ryan Kerr, Nicole Malbeuf, Kelli Marshall, Susan Newman, Sahira Q, Daniel Smith, with music by the McDonell Street Gospel Quartet – Colin MacAdam, Kristine Fisher (Rose), Dianne Latchford, Curtis Drieger – and stage management by Shannon McKenzie.

Bios:

Kate Story is a genderqueer writer and theatre artist. Kate works in multiple genres: devised theatre and dance, as well as literary and speculative fiction. She is artistic director of Precarious Festival, and loves to support the creation of new regional performance work. Kate is a recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s K.M. Hunter Award for theatre.

Norah von Bieberstein, 9, enjoys musical theatre and has performed in Nut.Cracker (The Theatre on King) and Virtual Canada Day (Trellis Arts), both with her mentor Dreda Blow. She has studied at Studio 505, Stagecoach, Toronto Arts Academy, and Showmakers. Norah, who is also an artist, writer, and choreographer, lives in Nogojiwanong with her adorable puppy, Panda.

Ziysah von Bieberstein is a parent, poet, editor, community cultivator, and unsettled settler on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory. Their work seeks to connect us to our imaginations, our responsibilities, and each other. Co-founder of Take-out Poetry and the Peterborough Poetry Slam, Ziy’s writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies as well as in their most recent collection, Consents+/=/- Severances.

Sahira Q is a quirky, yet lovable, drag queen who has performed at various stages, backyards, and local watering holes across southern Ontario. Sahira emigrated to Canada from Zanzibar, Tanzania more than twenty years ago but misses the island sun every day.

Jenn Cole (Mixed Ancestry Algonquin Anishinaabe) is a performer, Associate Artistic Producer at Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space and an Indigenous Feminist Performance scholar in Gender and Social Justice at Trent University. She has performed in dance, film and installation work in Nogojiwanong, Minneapolis, Washington DC, and Toronto.

Susan Newman and Rob Fortin have spent decades together writing songs for theatre including Cavan Casanova (book by Robert Winslow, 4th Line Theatre, 2003), Hungry (book by Kate Story, Public Energy, 2008) and Beneath Springhill (book by Beau Dixon, Firebrand Theatre, 2015 Dora Mavor Moore Award winner).

Ryan Kerr is the artistic director of The Theatre on King. Since moving to Peterborough in 1993, he has been involved in the local performance scene as a playwright, actor, dancer, lighting designer, and many other things.

Nicole Malbeuf is a theatrical aerialist based in Peterborough. A graduate of OCAD University (material art) and Fleming College (agriculture), Nicole is naturally interested in art-making and the environment. She operates under Trellis Arts, an aerial-dance-theatre company producing shows and learning experiences.

Kelli Marshall  (Anishinaabe {Ojibway} from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation) is an indigenous dancer, activist and storyteller. She is an Ojibway from the Mississauga territory of Hiawatha First Nation. She was born and raised in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough). She has been dancing since she could walk, and enjoys sharing, learning and teaching her culture with others.

Daniel Smith is an actor and improviser from Peterborough. Amidst the lockdowns Daniel appeared online in The Cut and Paste Macbeth and Testing… Recently Daniel appeared in The Theatre on King’s production of The Bald Soprano. Daniel also runs improv classes for children and teens through PAPA.

The McDonell Street Gospel Quartet is a quartet featuring authentic vintage/roots gospel songs from the 1930s and ‘40s era. Tight harmony vocals and a cool acoustic sound. Colin MacAdam has been singing in community choirs for many years. He’s a member of Old Men Dancing. He carries the bass line in the McDonnell Street Gospel Quartet. Kristine Fisher (Rose), a life long dancer, choreographer, and teacher is MSGQ’s soprano voice. Presently, she enjoys performing music and fulfilling people’s Real Estate dreams.  Kristine has toured extensively as a singer and Mandolin player with Washboard Hank’s band, and treasures performing with the gospel quartet. Dianne Latchford has been acting for 40+ years, appearing on stages from Shaw Festival to Rainbow Stage, locally at New Stages, TTOK, 4th Line and more; on screen in Murdoch Mysteries, Queer As Folk and SCTV. She is also a musician, singer-songwriter and visual artist. Curtis Driedger is the leader of the Mcdonnel Street Gospel Quartet, formed in 2018. Before the pandemic, he directed the Zippity Doo Dah Community Soul Chorus, as well as the Mandolin Society of Peterborough. He has been a musician for too long.

Singer songwriter/Latin/folk/soul

Ále Suárez is a queer, trans, non-binary, Venezuelan-American, Canadian immigrant, multi-instrumentalist, Expressive Arts Therapist and singer songwriter. They are currently a Masters of Divinity student at Luther Seminary. Their dream is to create a safe space for the LGBTQI2SA+ community to dwell and commune with the divine and spirituality. They believe the arts speak the language of our souls, which gives us direct access to our most authentic self.

Presented by Artspace

As a hard of hearing and disabled-identified media artist my creative practice evolves around researching and developing multi-sensory and vibrotactile technology as a creative medium and as a path of access into experiencing art in its many forms. My multi-location installation draws attention to language, communication, accessibility, sensory immersion, memory, and perceived magic.

Employing vibrotactile technology, sound, photography, projection, voice recordings and familiar objects the installation aims to provide immersive and surprising experiences for people of all ages and abilities. 

Bios:

David Bobier is a hard of hearing and disabled media artist whose creative practice is researching and developing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. He established the creative multi-media, multi-sensory centre VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario in 2014. He has had 18 solo and over 30 group exhibitions in Canada, the US and the UK.

By Kaawaate East City P.S Art Teacher Jenny Pink’s Homeroom Class
The theme guiding our work is “DO BETTER”. Specific areas within the Erring at KG classroom are dedicated to designs by grade 7 & 8 Kaawaate students. Students are recognizing current global issues that matter to them and bring awareness through art, with the intention of visitors reflecting on how they can ‘DO BETTER’.  Issues around school waste, plastic use and disposal in the ocean, devastation of ecosystems and finally the reconciliation that needs to happen to restore our relationship with Indigenous Peoples. The art installation of eyes, made of mixed materials, represents the personal reflection that needs to take place for us to DO BETTER now and in the future. DO BETTER: for our earth, our animals, our oceans, our forests and for our children.

Presented by the Peterborough Museum and Archives

The Peterborough Museum & Archives (PMA) is proud to celebrate our neighbourhood with two new digital presentations. The first features portraits of WWI soldiers – former students of the Ashburnham School whose names have been commemorated in the entryway of King George Public School for more than 100 years. This exhibition was researched and curated by Bo Pickett during his recent placement from the University of Ottawa and financially supported by Ontario’s CMOG Digital Capacity Grant. The second presentation takes a look at the broader area surrounding the King George P.S. property with images selected from the PMA’s vast collection of historic photographs.

Through a series of brainstorming sessions, Laurel Paluck worked with the Kaawaate East City P.S. art class to come up with ideas for an “Ideal School”. From the practical to the fantastical, these students explored and shared their thoughts on where, how and what they wanted to learn. They recorded some of these ideas as “school announcements” to be played over the PA system during Erring at King George.

Bios:

Laurel Paluck is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages professional artists, students and community members towards creating visually charged performances, exhibitions and curriculum-based classroom art projects. She is the artistic producer of Atelier Ludmila Gallery, featuring regional female artists in monthly solo exhibits, and is trained as an Artist-Educator through the Royal Conservatory.

Presented by Artspace

Kelly O’Neill, Leslie Menagh 

Factory schooling, a public education model developed in the 18th/early 19th centuries, is an approach to education emphasizing impersonal, standardized teachings to produce a literate, compliant workforce. The neat rows of desks in today’s classrooms echo these origins. Youthful, but deflated stick-figure forms present themselves in fleshy, ordered formation while a wall-to-wall curve-stitching looms overhead. Weaving together symbols of formative school experience, these familiar and uncanny additions to the classroom prompt reflections on one’s experiences within the factory school system. Education comes with a rulebook. Emerging out of rich discussions about their own experiences, Kelly and Leslie’s material interventions explore the exacting conditions informing moral, social, and cultural imperatives entangled within curriculum. In their installation, in·form Leslie Menagh and Kelly O’Neill liken the classroom to a loom – one that threads us into the fabric of society and ties learning to production.

Bios:

Leslie Menagh is an interdisciplinary artist, craftsperson, community organizer, and curator with a BFA from NSCAD. Her work explores belonging and intimacy through story-telling, screen printing and sewing construction, installation, video, sound, and performance. She is the founder of Madderhouse Textile Studios in Peterborough. 

Kelly O’Neill is a multidisciplinary artist and curator living in Selwyn, Ontario. Working with assemblage and text, video and projection, and incorporating traditional textile methods with unconventional materials, Kelly creates objects and experiences that explore the fluidity and impermeability of embodied experience. She has a BFA/Sculpture and Installation (OCADU).

Presented by Reframe Film Festival

Kelly Egan

“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective…Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the beginning was the word.” – Stan Brakhage

A swallow’s eye is longer than other birds. Their visual acuity is said to resemble raptors. For sailors, swallows are good omens signifying a close shore. My father loved birds. Since his passing, I’ve felt afloat. Lost and unanchored. At sea in overwhelming emotions, I look for swallows, as metaphors for moulting oppressive epistemologies and (re)visioning the world. 

Bios:

Kelly Egan is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Trent University whose work focuses on materiality and obsolescence, looking beyond hierarchical, canonical and linear histories. Her award-winning films have screened internationally, including at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, amongst others.

Presented by the Art Gallery of Peterborough

Alice Williams, Brad Copping

Anishinaabe artist Alice Williams (Curve Lake First Nation) and glass and sculpture artist Brad Copping have created an immersive installation of blown glass, textile, sound, and projection. The vibrant greens of springtime frame envelop the ceiling, light catches a cascade of glass droplets suspended in their fall towards blown vessels full of water, atop quilted medicine wheels. The sound of rain through trees plays as voices speak the names of water in its various forms in Anishinaabemowin and English. By bringing the outside in to this space originally constructed for educating the next generation acknowledges the long tradition of King George Public School’s work to provide specialized environmental and nature-based programs and the intention of Erring itself, bringing unoccupied spaces to life. 

Bios:

Alice Williams is an Anishinaabe artist (Curve Lake First Nation) who holds a BA from Trent University. Her quilts and wall-hangings have been exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian (the Smithsonian), Michigan State University, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Wanuskewin Heritage Park and the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Brad Copping is a sculptor and functional glass blower whose work has been exhibited broadly. He has been reviewed in the New Glass Review, received support from the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council, and is in the permanent collection of many museums, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts