Art Mentorship Society of Alberta
AMSA is an artist run initiative that seeks to promote, connect and empower participants to create and develop professionally.
We seek to support artists with lived mental health experience in a wellness based artistic environment. By utilizing pre-existing community support and facilities, AMSA acts as a satellite program that enables individuals to meet their needs for creativity and expression. AMSA strives to act as a community connector: helping creatives find studio space, pairing emerging artists with established artists for development, and providing classes to enhance established skills. We welcome artists of all levels and experience.
AMSA sees Edmonton as a growing and vibrant hub; where individuals and collectives can feel safe to express in various mediums, to be heard, and to connect as a diverse cultural collective. Their goal is to add to the greater image of our city and the role in which the arts, expression and creation play in the health and wellness of our society.
AMSA has recognized a need for hands-on and experience-based learning by way of mentorship. We see a need to help connect emerging/curious creatives with professional/established artists to help connect them with specific skills and industries.
Examples of types of mentorship include, but are not limited to: photography, sculpture, printmaking, graphic design, exhibition installation, visual art , illustration, industrial design, performance art and curation.
AMSA hopes to expand community partnerships in order to inspire, explore, maintain, develop and celebrate cross cultural expression and creation. We succeed through support and partnerships. AMSA strives to be an integral liaison between educators, art makers, instructors and community programmers.
AMSA offers artists: collective and private studio space, mentorships between emerging and established artists, exhibition opportunities, networking within the Arts and Culture community, professional development, education and drop in classes.
Website: http://artmentorshipab.weebly.com/
The Alberta Society of Artists
Since 1931, The Alberta Society of Artists has stimulated growth, inspiration and passion for excellence in the visual arts in Alberta. The organization can count many important historical figures among its members, including A.C. Leighton and H. G. Glyde (ASA’s first two presidents), Marion Nicoll, Maxwell Bates, Illingworth Kerr, Stan Perrott, and Janet Mitchell.
The ASA is a province-wide, non-profit, registered charity. With a Full Membership of artists juried in by their peers, the Society also offers Supporting and Student Memberships. Through exhibitions, scholarships, and educational programs, the ASA works to increase public awareness and appreciation of the visual arts in Alberta provincially, nationally, and internationally. The Society also coordinates the Southwest region of the AFA Provincial Traveling Exhibition Program (TREX).
Website: www.albertasocietyofartists.com
Ross Bradley, A.O.C.A., B.A., A.S.A.
A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and the University of Guelph, Ross Bradley has exhibited his work nationally and internationally for over 35 years. His work is represented in corporate and private collections, including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. An active, Life Member of Harcourt House since its inception, he volunteers with the organization of the centre’s figure-drawing classes. A Life Member of the Alberta Society of Artists, Mr. Bradley also exhibits his figure-based work regularly in solo and group exhibitions across Alberta.
For the past 20 years, his studio practice has been divided between drawing, sculpture and photography. The common threads through all of his work are the study of the human form and the attempt to explore the variations and individuality of the figure, and the attempt to capture how the human form occupies and moves through space.
He will be teaching Figure Drawing classes at Harcourt House later this year.
Website: www.eross.ca
Christa Chapman
Christa Chapman is an Edmonton based artist and art educator who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (with distinction) and a Bachelor of Education (with distinction) from the University of Lethbridge in 2002. Her artwork touches on themes that include the media, societal stereotypes, labels, and modern/historical constructs to define human identity in various mundane, everyday contexts. Through various approaches to the acrylic medium, information and data that have been gathered—particular to how society defines populations and people—are stenciled and hand-printed using silhouettes. These silhouettes are developed from self-portraits and photographs of environments that surround her on a daily basis.
Christa’s paintings communicate themes of human identification through sociological constructs such as social status, gender, consumerism, societal roles, even though some people’s identities are hard to define. Her paintings evoke powerful messages pertaining to specific elements of society including memories/past acts. They convey the passing of time.
Ruth-Anne French
Ruth-Anne is a practicing artist working in ceramics. She follows the studio pottery tradition to produce series of architectural sculptures, vessels and public interventions. She is interested in architecture, design and the social and semiotic aspects of the built environment. Ruth-Anne has shown her work in group shows across Canada and has ongoing collaborations and exhibits: Add + Subtract (2014), Engagements (2013) and A Perfect State of Happiness (2009) with photographer Candace Makowichuk. Ruth Anne was born in Windsor, Ontario and raised in Edmonton. She earned a BFA Transfer Degree from Red Deer College (1998-2000), a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2000–2002), and an MFA from the University of Regina (2002-2004). She is currently a Fine Art Program Coordinator for the City Arts Centre, City of Edmonton and an Instructor (pottery) at the Art Gallery of St. Albert.
Website: http://www.ruthannefrench.com/
Edmund Haakonson
Edmund Haakonson is a painter and sculptor whose work is focused on the human figure as subject matter, specifically images of the male nude in both sculpture and painting. He works in a high realism style reflective of the Old Masters and the classical period of ancient Greece. He has exhibited across the country and has work in collections in Canada, the United States, across Europe and in Australia. Among other exhibitions, the bronze sculpture Slapshotolus was shown at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics as part of the Pride House. Edmund has recently stepped down as President of the Board of Directors of Harcourt House Artist Run Centre after filling that role for fourteen years. He continues to serve on the Board as Past-President.
Website: http://www.eahaakonson.com
Sydney Lancaster
Betty Lawlor
Betty Lawlor is a Leduc, Alberta artist who sees, draws and paints the essence or energy of her chosen subjects. She uses shapes, vibrant colours and lines to unite her composition and move the eyes of viewers about her pictures. Using her expressionistic style, Betty’s subjects vary from figurative to landscape to still life leaving her subject matter present in her work.
Betty studied at the U of A Department of Extension, Red Deer College and graduated from Sutton Art School. Betty also apprenticed to Eileen Raucher Sutton for over 25 years. The two artists have travelled extensively and often bring others with them to teach art lessons to locals around the world. Betty loves to create “en plein air” and has been known to pack canvasses with acrylic paints over clothes. She never goes anywhere with out a drawing book, watercolours and ink.
She has received an honourable mention by the Alberta Community Art Clubs Association (ACACA), and has been featured twice in the Leduc Representative Newspaper. She has exhibited work at the Harcourt House Naked Show, The Works Art and Design Festival, Leduc and Strathcona Art Shows and Sutton Art shows. Betty’s work is in numerous private collections in North America, Australia and Europe.
Robert Sinclair
Robert Sinclair was born in Saltcoats, Saskatchewan in 1939 and holds a B.F.A. from the University of Manitoba and M.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the State University of Iowa. He taught art at the University of Alberta from 1965 to 1996. Since the 1980’s he has also taught art at the Banff School of fine Arts and continues to teach at the Red Deer College Summer Series Program.
He also runs watercolour workshops that combine art and awareness techniques to explore the connections between creativity and physical/spiritual well-being. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour
Robert’s primary modes of expression are watercolour and acrylic stain painting developed around the landscape and botanic themes. At the moment he is working on a ‘Bow Valley Series’ of mountain watercolours: a series of watercolours involving icebergs floating in the ocean. He is also working on an islands and ocean theme from the Canadian coasts. In recent years he has also been exploring the oriental single stroke brush painting technique as a way to further explore his landscape themes.
Website: http://www.sinclairart.com/
Marian Switzer
Marian Switzer is a photographer/painter from Kitchener, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Guelph with an honours degree in Fine Arts in 2004. In 2003, she attended the University of Rajasthan and was mentored by Dr. Rekha Bhatnagar in the traditions of miniature painting and traditional folk design. In 2005 she moved to Edmonton, Alberta.
She has received an EAC project grant for a collaborative photo-based project titled “York” and is currently working on an extension of this project, “York: Moments” at the Boyle Street Community League. She exhibits her paintings at the AAF in New York, and has had past exhibitions in Seattle, Toronto, Miami, and Edinburgh.
Switzer’s paintings offer hints at objects that can constitute ideas between the abstract and representational. Colour and shape are the base of the paintings. The intentional choice of colour and placement of each circle manipulate the two-dimensional representation of foreground/background, skewing place and space. Repetitive shapes possess an ephemeral familiarity that engages the viewer and attempts to create a narrative. A dot or circle can represent a number of things: place, population, energy, space, and object. Meaning shifts and changes as the viewer is observing — from something concrete to something whimsical, something industrial to something biological. Somewhere between.
Website: http://www.marianswitzer.com/
Nataša Vretenar
Nataša’s art is inspired by a collection of images from her travels through mountains, prairies, farmlands, deserts, and badlands. Being in nature, away from city’s hustle and bustle makes Nataša happy, and she strives to transfer some of these feelings on the canvas via bright colors and thick textures. She finds inspiration in myths and legends of different cultures.
Website: http://www.artbynv.com/