Exhibits: Places at the Water Table

Friday, April 8, 2022 — Friday, April 29, 2022

by Bob Haverluck, Rhian Brynjolson, Sam Baardman, Louise Arnal, Gerry Wolfram

Places at the Water Table is a group exhibit by River on the Run Artist Collective, featuring photographs by Sam Baardman, paintings and illustrations by Rhian Brynjolson, ink and pastel drawings by Bob Haverluck, lino-cut prints by guest artist-scientist Louise Arnal, and poetry by guest writer Gerry Wolfram. River on the Run creates work based on their shared experience of living within the Lake Winnipeg Watershed. Integrating a variety of art forms and disciplines, and working in collaboration with biologists and climate scientists, their work investigates the increasingly fragile relationship between humans and their habitats.

For more information: CANVASs Mar/Apr Newsletter

Opening Event: Friday, April 8, 2022 at 7:00 PM | Masks required

Conference: Friday, April 29 — Sunday, May 1 | Register here to attend in person or online*

Art, Activism & Advocacy: Joint Operations for Healing the Earth

$25 in person registrant donations will go towards supporting the MHC Gallery (donation tax receipts available).
$10 online registrant donations will go towards covering conference costs (donation tax receipts not available).
Questions? Contact Selenna Wolfe | swolfe:@:cmu.ca | 204.487.3300 ext. 344

*Only 14 available in-person spots remain as of April 11. Regsitration closes at 4:30 PM on Friday, April 29. 

We act and fail to act in this troubled and wondrous world in part because of the key stories and images we live out of. This gathering will allow us to explore the good possibilities story making and image making offer for our ecological or social love labours. Abounding will be presentations of and conversations about story circles, theatre, visual art, storytelling, song in collaborations engaging just this world and its challenging realities.

So come let us speak together of such artful things and the ways and wisdom that give the heart and head and feets a shake and music by which we heavy footed dancers may lightly dance. For we see how arts may strengthen and lighten the love labours of each of us. Street protesters, activist ecologists, social justice advocates shall be joining presenter musicians, storytellers, poets of the eye and ear.

This conference has been generously supported by the “Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation” and the Foundation’s ‘Mentors’ and ‘Scholars’ are among its resource folks: Nadia Joe, Patrice Sauve, Joel Bernbaum, Bob Haverluck.

Conference Schedule:

Our conference shall happen in the gallery of the Canadian Mennonite University amidst paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography. (These artworks are collaborations with teams of water scientists from Canada’s north and south alerting us to our ecological sickening: see virtualwatergallery.ca). Key presentations will be livestreamed.

We shall begin Friday eve (7-9:15) with Indigenous elder, community
building conversations and opening presentations of theme intro (Bob Haverluck), story (Marc Kuly) and Talentless Lumps Clown Troupe (Daina Leitold) and mini concert with Sam Baardman & Susan Israel.

Saturday morning (9-12) shall include opening with Japanese drum and Flute of Fabuki Daiko performance and reflection with Debbie Patterson founder of Sick and Twisted Theatre Co and award winning Quebec Patrice Sauve.
This will be followed by conversation circle & workshops on arts collaborating for activism and advocacy. The various resource folks will sharing their experiences of partnering with others, inviting us to participate in conversations and activities, if we wish, exploring their particular art for our purposes.

Saturday afternoon will open with music and then excerpts from the play “Reasonable Doubt” which tells of the murder of Colten Boushie and the trial of Gerald Stanley before afternoon conversation circles. This will be followed by conversation circles and workshops.
The zoomed conversation circle for morning the will be Daina Leitold of Talentless Lumps Clown Troupe and Green Kids theatre and Debbie Patterson of Sick and Twisted Theatre Co on Theatre and activism/advocacy.
Afternoon zoom conversation circle will be with Bob Sandford renowned presenter on ecology & Colleen Sklar initiator of joint community ecological projects and both seers of Art as integral to engaging the Climate Emergency.

Sunday afternoon’s coffee house, starting 2:00 PM, shall have music by Len Udow; scenes and songs from Haverluck’s “The Court Case of the Creatures” ; poetry by Lori Matties and Gerry Wolfram; Ted Talk by Bob Sandford; music galore singing our themes with Allegra and friends. This will all be live zoom.

Resource people include:

Bob Sandford, Chair of Water and Climate at UN University for Water & Environment & Health, a renowned presenter of the science and art of climate and our life together. Author of a dozen plus books including, coauthoring “The Source: Rethinking Water through Contemporary Art” and most recent “Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Fresh Waters”.

Nadia Joe has spent the past 10 years working to support Indigenous communities across Canada advance their rights and interests in water security through various water co management initiatives. She was raised by a river and loved into leadership by the many elders, leaders, mentors of the southern Tutchone-Tlingit peoples. She belongs to the Crow Clan of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations.

Louise Arnal, water scientist, artist, lead curator of the Global Water Futures’ Virtual Water Gallery art/science project.

Patrice Sauve, renowned director, multi awarded Quebec film maker of mystery, comedy and dramas often engaging social issues entangling us all. Collaborations with museum and theatre and documentary work are in addition to his popular police thrillers “Victor Lessard” and « La Faille », cult series “La Vie, la vie” and Gemini awarded “Cia Bella”.

Daina Leitold actor and mother of the innovative arts and ecological education theatre project, “Green Kids”, which for years has brought together ecological wisdom and participatory theatre for all ages. Member of the “Talentless Lumps Clown Troupe”.

Sam Baardman, award winning lens artist and singer musician. Attentive to the eye and ear, understanding and heart, Sam has long served as an arts administrator in Manitoba and arts policy advisor in provinces across Canada.

Len Udow is a musician, performer, songster fully vested in "singing out." Like the creative mentors before him, song and story remain central. They are catalysts for sharing realities while creating new bonds with music and understanding. Continuing to sing out, Len has five albums of songs recorded in the past seven years. An upcoming collections “Stardust Memories” based on the birth of two grandsons. Generation to generation.

Rhian Brynjolson award winning book illustrator, artist, and art educator and a ‘Canadian Art Teacher of the Year’. Her newest illustration work is The Gifts of the Little People, written by William Dumas. Rhian is part of the Virtual Water Gallery project, a collaboration between artists and scientists.

Joel Bernbaum is an actor, director, playwright, journalist, and the founding artistic director of Sum Theatre in Saskatoon. Attentive to Verbatim Theatre’s Relationship to Journalism, Joel’s has produced plays including Operation Big Rock, Being Here: The Refugee Project and Reasonable Doubt (with Yvette Nolan and Lancelot Knight).

Debbie Patterson, theatre maker, wheelchair user, mom. Founder of Sick and Twisted Theatre which stories forth narratives from disabled creators for anyone with a body. Debbie is co-founder of Shakespeare in the Ruins, a collaborator with dance and theatre companies across Canada.

Marc Kuly, master storyteller and instigator of story circles with immigrant youth from war zones combined with other youth from conflict situations. These story circles are now nurtured by Marc throughout Winnipeg schools and at times offer sparks to public education. 

Allegra Friesen Epp, activist and organizer working in solidarity with Indigenous peoples in struggles of sovereignty and environmental racism. Recently, Allegra has been accompanying land defenders in Wet’suwet’en First Nation.

Colleen Sklar is the Principal of “Creative Resolutions" and lead on the “Collaborative Leadership Initiative,” a Reconciliation and Co-governance initiative that successfully brought Chiefs, Mayors and Reeves together to work on joint community projects. The arts are often an element in her strategies for engagement.

Gerry Wolfram is a prairie poet who grew up on Treaty One land. As a settler descendant she listened to thrilling childhood stories of the lives of homesteaders. Much later, she studied Indigenous history and Cree language. Her forthcoming collection of poems "The Girl in the Clock" with art by Rhian Brynjolson explores these different perspectives.

Lori Matties is a poet who lives, writes, and listens to creatures in Winnipeg and Caribou Lake, Ontario.

Bob Haverluck, storyteller/community based artist/theologian. Recent books include “When God Was Flesh And Wild: Stories in Defence of the Earth”; “Take Heart: Encouragement For Earth’s Weary Lovers” (2022) with Kathleen Dean Moore and “The Court Case of the Creatures” (2022).

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