Vanessa Lam Artist Talk and Assignment

Biography:

Mixed media painter Vanessa Lam creates dialogue between collage and expressive gestural painting. Lam was awarded the Vancouver Regional Award and Grand Prize Award for the 2017 Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series. As part of her award, she collaborated with Artsy for her first solo exhibition in New York. Her work was also featured in Create! Magazine and Uppercase Magazine. Lam was recently an artist-in-residence at Takt Projektraum in Berlin, Germany. Her work can be found in private collections in Vancouver, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Giovanna Swaby Textile and Mixed Media Artist

Biography:

Gio Swaby is a mixed media artist whose practice encompasses installation, textiles, collage, performance, and video. Swaby was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas where she obtained her Associate of Arts degree at The College of The Bahamas in 2012. In 2014, she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree majoring in Film, Video and Integrated Media at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Swaby completed the program in 2016 and is currently based in Vancouver and working on a solo show and is the recipient of a BC Arts and Culture grant for 2020.

Mackenzie Stroh - Photographer

Born and raised in Western Canada, Mackenzie knew she wanted to be a photographer after she first stepped into the darkroom at age 12. Her teenage fascination with photography led her to study Multi-Media at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. After teaching photography for a few years, she continued her studies, completing her MFA at Concordia University in Montreal.

Mackenzie loves portraiture in its many different forms: playful and energetic to intimate and introspective, and she is equally at home in the studio or on location. Whether photographing an actor, author, politician or someone with a story to tell, she aims to create an atmosphere where subjects feel at ease and authentic images can be made. She credits her ability to disarm people with humor from her extensive exposure to Monty Python and classic Steve Martin movies.

She lives in New York with her husband and son, and when not taking photos, she can be found biking around Brooklyn in search of the perfect espresso.

Sandeep Johal June 2020

Sandeep Johal Website: www.sandeepjohal.com Instagram: sandeepjohalart Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose art practice moves between intricate b...

Bio:

Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose art practice moves between intricate black and white line drawings to large-scale colourful murals which are aesthetically and conceptually inspired by her South Asian heritage. She believes in the power of art to create awareness around issues related to cultural identity, gender equality, and human rights. Her work is an expression of her social and cultural concerns, particularly gender justice. Sandeep was the 2019 recipient of Darpan Magazine’s Artistic Visionary Award and has worked on projects with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver Mural Festival and Indian Summer Festival. She has had her work featured in several print and online publications. Sandeep lives and works in Vancouver with her family.

Megan Mejewski May 2020

Megan Majewski Art Assignment Website: www.deadkittie.com Instagram: @deadkittie Art Assignment: Take a character from your childhood or an animal that you l...

Bio:

Megan Majewski’s narrative work tells stories from her dreams, experiences, and memories. She focuses on capturing the shadows in her unconscious and bringing them to life through symbolism and the haunting figures in her paintings. Her recent work explores the fragile beauty of life and death while fixated by symbolism from cryptological communication through the use of flowers. Her art has been featured all over the world and she’s been a GOLDEN Artist Educator since 2016. With a background in animation, working on movies and TV shows, she now creates art full time from her art studio in Vancouver Canada.

Aimée Henny Brown

AIMÉE HENNY BROWN Artist and Professor at University of the Fraser Valley Website: www.aimeebrown.ca Instagram: @aimeehennybrown Collage PROJECT: Start by jo...

BIO

Born and raised in Western Canada, Aimée completed her BFA at the University of Alberta and obtained her Masters in Fine and Media Arts at NSCAD University in 2007. Aimée’s artistic practice engages archives, research and printed matter to place historical content within her contemporary art practice. She has received several awards and grants, notably the Joseph Beuys Scholarship for Artistic Merit and several Canada Council Production Grants. Her collages, drawings, performances and bookworks have been presented nationally and internationally, with group shows in Germany, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and solo exhibitions in Canada. She has attended numerous artist residencies in North America and was recently artist-in-residence with Concordia University’s Print Media Department. She is currently a mentor with BC Arts Council’s Mentorship program and teaches across a wide variety of disciplines at the University of the Fraser Valley.

Andrea Hooge

Andrea Hooge www.andreahooge.com www.thedollyshop.com Instagram: @andreahooge @thedollyshop Learn about the artist Andrea Hooge in this interview with artist...

Bio:

Andrea Hooge is an artist living and working out of her home studio in East Vancouver. She is often inspired by the nostalgia of vintage magazine and children's books, and her focus is mainly on creating figurative oil paintings and scratchboards. While many of her painted works are on wood or hardboard panel, she also creates wood and scratchboard cutouts to move away from conventional shapes. These have been made to stand alone or to overlap to create larger and more dynamic pieces.

Andrea attended the University of the Fraser Valley, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Psychology and a minor in visual arts. Her work has been exhibited in various group shows in Vancouver, and she has had five solo exhibitions, titled "Dolly," "Scratch," "Menno Kitty," "Easter Eggs," and "Toy Babies" at Hot Art Wet City.