These are the Artists in your Neighbourhood

Credits:
Producers/Co-Directors: Isabel Ahat, Virginia Antonipillai, Marie Lola Minimo
Sound Engineer & Editor: Michael Tobin Fiore
Sound Designer: Jonathan Kawchuk
Curators: Bill Kimball, Laurel Pluck
Local Coordinator & Artist Liaison: Laurel Pluck
Videographer: Michael Morritt
with Teenager Collaboration by the Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School Grade 10 Art Classroom
Teachers: Andrew Bigg, Lesley Givens
Featuring Artists: Nicole Bauberger, Anita Murphy, Kathryn Durst, Alice Olsen Williams, Gillian Turnham, and Melanie Marion McCall

These Are The Artists In Your Neighbourhood is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Resiliency Fund.

These are the Artists In Your Neighbourhood is a mash-up of popular touring project These Are the People In Your Neighbourhood, and Mammalian Diving Reflex’s award winning audio series It’s Been A While, culminating in a brand-new artist intervention and audio work in Peterborough, Ontario, in collaboration with Public Energy.

These are the Artists In Your Neighbourhood smashes together a Grade 10 art class from Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School, and 6 artists from in-and-around the metropolis of Peterborough. 

The artists, Nicole Bauberger, Anita Murphy, Kathryn Durst, Alice Olsen Williams, Gillian Turnham, and Melanie Marion McCall, create in a range of mediums, from quilting to children’s illustration. During the project, each artist prepared an educational art workshop for the class, and the next day, they were grilled by the group of inquisitive high school students.

The ground rules: The youth interview the artist and can ask any question they want, the artists can choose to answer or not answer; then we flip it. The artist asking, the youth answering. Finally, we kick out the artist and interview the youth on what they really thought. 

The whole thing is audio recorded and edited down to 6 heartfelt and silly conversations covering the whole spectrum of art, growing up, and pets. The audio pieces will be presented as part of Peterborough’s First Friday Art Crawl on March 3rd, 2023.

Artist Bios

Nicole Bauberger is an artist of settler ancestry who has made her home in the traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dun First Nation and the Ta’an Kwach’an Council since 2003. Her art practice varies. Finely honed skill in oil painting, begun over a 5-year apprenticeship in the 90’s, roots her artwork. And yet, she will use encaustic, acrylic, clay, beadwork, teabags, doilies and crochet yarn, research and writing, or songs on the ukulele, as required. She embraces collaboration with other artists, bringing to these occasions the rich skills she’s developed working solo with these various materials and her observations and imagination

Kathryn Durst is a printmaker and illustrator living in Peterborough, Canada. She illustrates picture books for children, most notable being “Hey Grandude” written by Sir Paul McCartney. She is also a mural painter and sometimes performer. When she is not illustrating she can be found growing vegetables, folk dancing, and playing the accordion.

Melanie McCall is a Textile Artist, who graduated from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design with a BFA in Textiles. Her artistic practice spans 20 years and endeavours to speak with the natural world creating a third voice, a new language spoken in collaboration. Her work is centered in the oneness of all life and her wild imagination. She works primarily with textile collage. Works are created using rust dye, natural dye, stitching, embroidery, Morse Code and assemblage. Works are in collaboration with stick, leaf, flower, sun, soil and water.

“Nature has the power to return us to our rhythm. The unfiltered noise of the natural world resounds in who we are. It belongs in us. We need to listen to that rhythm of life once more and stitch it back into being.”

Anita Murphy’s works of art are about emotion. The constant struggle to get a feeling from a work is the overall goal with every piece. Having spent her life in rural settings outside of Bancroft, Ontario and being of five generations to the area her familiarity with wilderness is not something she draws on for inspiration. Wilderness, rivers and forests are part of who she is and quite often she looks to the interaction between people and nature to create the work. It is the blending of the two within the individual or individuals that is her interest. The simplicity of it all is she loves to paint, there really isn’t any other explanation that is more important than that.  Anita has been painting for many years and has work in private collections throughout the world. She is a member of the Canada Council for the Arts and appreciates the support she has received from them.

Gillian Turnham emerged from NSCAD in 2007 as a fine-metalsmith. She refined and expanded her practice in the period that followed, working with wood, stone and hand-pierced metal to create miniature sculptural works that investigated elements of structure and traditional pattern. Building on her interest in traditional ornamental design, her attention turned towards tessellating geometric patterns. Since 2019 Turnham’s work has explored ever more complex patterns from the Islamic tradition. She has received training and mentorship from some of the world’s premiere educators in Islamic geometric design. Her most recent work transects geometric beauty with its underlying mathematical complexity, most notably in her ongoing ‘Geometric Deconstruction’ series, in which the underlying mathematical properties are revealed within the completed designs. Gillian spent three years in southern Spain where she was immersed in the study of the Islamic geometric tradition, creating hand sewn tapestries, two-dimensional and three-dimensional commissioned works, as well as a series of mechanical clocks that incorporate traditional Islamic geometric patterns with other tessellating forms. She continues her practice in Southern Ontario, with regular exhibitions, written articles, a radio series, geometric pattern workshops, and commissioned works in a variety of media.

Alice Olsen Williams is a certified public school teacher. While looking after their four children and their home, Alice completed her B.A. from Trent University, Peterborough, ON, as well as developing her skills in beadwork and sewing. In 1980 she discovered quilting, mastering the techniques which allow her to create the meticulous hand-quilting in her bed coverings and wall hangings. Gradually Alice formed the concepts which would be the basis for her distinctive style and work. Blending her cultural heritage into a unified whole, she envisions the central motif to depict the symbols and themes of her mother’s Anishinaabe culture, surrounded by the conventional North American quilting blocks and patterns which were developed and continue to be evolved by those women and their descendants who came to this Land from Europe, the legacy of her father’s people. Through her understanding of the teachings of the Elders, Alice has created her own Life symbol. She continues to grow as an artist, searching for new ways to express the Spirit of Creation in the images of her designs.