Brian Hoad

Brian Hoad is a visual artist originally from Port Hope, ON. After receiving training as Canadian artist David Blackwood’s studio assistant, he completed a BFA (Honours), Visual Art, minor Art History at Queen’s University and MFA, Visual Art at University of Regina. Maintaining his studio in Kingston, ON, Hoad is the Technician Supervisor and Paint & Drawing Technician for the Fine Art (Visual Art) Program at Queen’s University and has been an Arts Educator at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Recent projects have been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and RBC Emerging Artist Project.

Landscapes are organized chaos; untamed, sprawling life forms, recognizable on the two-dimensional image plane as line, speckle, smudge, and void. Working in mainly painting and printmaking, my artwork responds my personal experience coming-of-age in Ontario, demonstrating a connection with nature fuelled by nostalgia and an interest in how people have connected with wilderness spaces throughout history. At University of Regina, my graduate thesis Handrails connected Michel Foucault’s conceptual heterotopia space to my own experience attending and working at an Ontario summer camp from 2001-13.

Intrigued by age-old, historic processes, applied in contemporary contexts, printmaking has the greatest influence on my practice as I consider mark-making, compositional choices, and diversions from artistic tradition. A growing desire to experiment with a more visceral execution, approaching abstraction, in addition to considering my own familial history of making resulted in my current artistic inquiry. During a recent artist residency at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery I created a series of paintings that combined dramatic quilt-block patterns and surreal narrative scenes of environmental interaction. Displayed at the McLaughlin as Wild Braid, the exhibition referenced personal connections to the landscape, in addition to transforming an object typically associated with comfort (the quilt) into something sublime.

Deena Jacobs

Deena Jacobs combines painting, drawing, and collected ephemera to create cognitive landscapes. Pieces are fluid and connected, an ongoing series captures fragmented memories and documents liminal space. Ephemeral and intermittent; Like the rivers and streams, the wetlands, connected even when not present.

Shaped by years of chaos and calm, moving internationally and resettling into new spaces. A sculptural practice became fragmented, pieces had to be packable, less fragile, less cumbersome. Developing a style that is playful and melancholic, with specifics skewed by layering techniques. The work is transparent and opaque, detailed multimedia work blurring time and boundaries. Shifting forms, recognizable symbols, and shapes are distorted through the patient application.

Deena creates work that documents a life that not wanting to be erased, acknowledges the precarious nature of this existence, determination, and resilience as resistance. Into music, nature, and the specific stains we leave behind. Exploring themes of identity, community, joyful resistance, action-based reactions, and processing trauma.

Empathetic to the way an individual’s interpretation through their own semiotics and perspectives affect how the work is viewed. The work intentionally shifts its natural focus in different lighting, the details coming to light. This openness is exciting and is encouraged, as part of an ongoing dialogue. Time spent with the work, similarly to time with the person, reveals more details, out of context but linked.

Back in Canada long-term and planning projects that recall sculptural and site-specific installation methods previously used. Hoping to add carpentry and stained glass techniques as an extension of the current work being created.

Having graduated from York University in 2008 with a Fine Arts BA, Deena Jacobs has since exhibited work in Canada and abroad, and contributed to UK publications.

Demoleus

My name comes from a butterfly from South Asia, which is itself named after a Greek soldier that was slain by Aeneas who fled Troy and took his fabulous golden armour as war spoils. Meanwhile, the fabulous golden wings of the butterfly have dispersed from their ancestral home and are today found in parts of the Caribbean. Rather than describe myself as an emerging artist, I prefer a metaphor rooted in nature. I am a sapling: tender, delicate, full of potential; Side-ways residency is my nursery. I am exploring my practice as a way of positioning myself in the world and creating the future I want to live in. I have yet to sink my roots. Coming from the Bermuda Triangle and living in Katarokwi/Kingston, I am interested in disrupting inherited narratives to discover new ways of being. I stitch my ideas together, paste down thoughts and ideas, and capture moments on film before they are forever passed by. I am currently trying to understand my high school experience through my queerness; thus, my process involves examining the very things I am made of.

Francisco Corbett

My name is Francisco Corbett. I was adopted from Guatemala when I was 5 months old and have grown up in Kingston ON. I am now a full time practicing 22 year-old artist working in mediums such as abstract acrylic painting and performance art. I began creating art seriously to convey my message of being free. My paintings now show that freedom coupled with an immense amount of physical energy.

In my time with the Union Gallery / Modern Fuel Residency I plan to continue pushing my own boundaries as well as push other artists to their full potential. My work embodies freedom and physical energy on the canvas. Aside from painting, I choose to use the medium of performance art to best display “total theatre” in my life and work. My work is about energy, it has no limits, that’s how I believe artists work should be, free with no limits. I plan to showcase my best foot forward in our group show in 2021.

Grace Katie Dixon

Uncover,

              be honest,

                               tell stories sensitively.

Themes in my work speak to an interest in individuality, spirituality, self-discovery and vulnerability; letting go, breathing in, cultivating sincerity. Giving of my voice; my vocal chords now exercized anxiously, outgrowing the quietness.

To listen,

                observe,

                g r  o  w  .

Creating requires a pure sort of bravery.

                                          Heavy breathing becoming soft.

I hope to embody that in my work; a melancholic, lively and yet haunted entanglement of personhood and discovery.

Kayla MacLean/YuraSiku

My name is Kayla and I’m a 29 year old Labrador Inuit woman and mom. I have spent a lot of time in Kingston growing up, it’s my second home. I am a self-taught artist and work in acrylic paint and digital work but use other mediums in my spare time. My artwork is usually related to my Inuit culture and upbringing in Labrador, as I paint different things from my family history and folklore. Being in the city makes me miss home so I paint to escape there. I am learning my native language(s) and my artwork has been helping me learn different words as I name my paintings.  I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for my travels, driving, flying and hitchhiking across Canada, I had many adventures and not all were good. Sometimes the subjects or ideas behind my work show a vulnerable side of me and look into my past. I am an advocate for mental health, BIPOC issues, domestic abuse, and I have almost become a MMIW myself so I hope to create art to help bring awareness to these things that many people in this country have the privilege of ignoring. I’m not quite where I want to be yet, but it’s a work in progress as I explore how to express my thoughts onto canvas with paint. This year is opening a lot of great opportunities for me and I look forward to whatever is next.

Michelle Bunton

MICHELLE BUNTON IS A SETTLER/DERBY JAMMER/MULTI-MEDIA ARTIST/FLEDGLING CURATOR WORKING OUT OF KATAROKWI/KINGSTON.

EMBRACING THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE, THEY ARE EMBARKING ON A FEMI-QUEER/ONTO-EPISTEMOLOGICAL/MULTI-SPECIES ENTANGLEMENT WITH THE SIMULTANEOUSLY SINGULAR AND PLURAL SLIME MOLD, FRAMING THIS AS A RELATION BETWEEN DERBY JAMMER AND COACH. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN PARAFICTION AND SPECULATIVE FABULATION, THEY WILL CONSIDER HOW ONE MIGHT BUILD AN ETHICAL PROTOCOL FOR ESTABLISHING A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND MORE-THAN-HUMAN.

BUNTON’S RECENT WORK HAS PRIORITIZED A DECOLONIAL ETHIC, COLLABORATIVE PRAXIS AND QUEER INTIMACY AT A DISTANCE.

Rafael MacDonald

Rafael MacDonald (A.K.A Donald Martin Hernandez; Dos Caballos; El Scotiadoran) is a Canadian-El Salvadoran Digital Media Artist now residing in Kingston, Ontario with his partner.

He grew up on the East Coast of Canada just outside of Halifax and proudly holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University. He has a deep love for both sides of his heritage and often references this subtly and obviously throughout his work.

Pre-Pandemic he developed small and large public art projects with youth in Halifax and Kingston, spent 12 years in various departments in the film industry, and was a bit of a civic activist. Today he spends most of his time with his amazing partner and focuses on his practice.

The work can be presented under one of three names depending on several variables: His birth name Rafael MacDonald, or either one of his artistic pseudonyms, Donald Martin Hernandez or El Scotiadoran.

Participants in his work include friends, family, and other interested parties who share his love of creativity and wish to make something beautiful.

He mostly works in film, performance, radio, ceramics, sculpture, but will work in any medium if the resulting visual suits the needs of his project.

His current interests include Rubik’s cubes, 3D printing, light art, western iconography and the increasingly tenuous relationship between authorities and citizens.

William Carroll

I am a self-taught artist currently based out of Kingston, Ontario.

I have spent the last three years refining my photography practice, under the banner of my own business, Green Moth Photography. While also working towards producing art pieces that exceed the frame, becoming tangible, interactive representations of my disdain for the current financial practices present within the visual arts community at large preventing true accessibility to those who are low-income. As a non-binary person living on the autism spectrum, I strive to present my unique visual perspective to the world. I see my disability/diagnosis as the unique gift that it is an endeavour to advocate for the value of diversity in all its forms.

As an artist living with high functioning autism, I strive to present a unique perspective to the world. I see my disability as a unique gift and I endeavour to advocate for the value of neurodiversity in all its forms.

My current artistic practice is focused on producing simple and high contrast images. In particular, I seek to isolate everyday objects I encounter in order to push the boundaries of the viewers’ perspective. By turning household objects into abstract images and surreal landscapes, I present microcosmic worlds that mirror the myriad viewpoints of human experience. I am currently working on a number of installation-based public art projects exploring the idea of "financial gate-keeping" in art and exploring the use of spray foam as a material for sculpture.

Jean Jamieson-Haines

body

trauma

alone

harm

encountering

body

rage

fury

expulsion

grief

decay

permanence

body

healing

remembering

mourning

impermanence

release

body

self

memorial

rebirth