Lavinia Lindsay

The Don Phillips Scholarship Residency is offered in memory of printmaker Don Phillips, who helped establish printmaking as a fine art practice in Canada, and is presented annually to a recent graduate who has just completed an undergraduate art program with a printmaking major at an accredited Canadian institution and who will not be returning to full-time studies.

Lavinia Lindsay grew up in Niagara Falls Ontario, which has been a major source of inspiration for her work. She is a recent graduate of the University of Guelph Bachelor of Arts program, where she was first introduced to printmaking in 2015. She is now focused on intaglio etching, mezzotint, and how printmaking and animation can work together.

Drawing inspiration from the degradation of her hometown, Lavinia strives to contrast the advertised ideals of Niagara with the uncanny realities of what growing up there was actually like, from her perspective.  Her work often begins as a political commentary on the tourist industry, and attempts to expand into a more poetic reflection of comfort. Lavinia thinks storytelling and knowledge are important elements of art, and she tries to capture these notions in her work: be it through the titles of her prints, or by creating intentional variations within an edition. Her practice is very process driven, and sometimes becomes physically demanding, especially when rocking her mezzotint plates by hand. With this residency, she plans to continue creating animations from prints, and she would like to continue analyzing her hometown and Niagara Falls tourism through a critical lens.

Victoria Day

Through the generous support of artist Jeannie Thib’s (1955-2013) family, friends and colleagues, the Jeannie Thib Mentorship Residency provides two months of studio time, 20 hours of mentoring and a materials budget, awarded annually to an artist in the early stages of their professional career, who has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to their practice.

Victoria Day creates screenprints, murals, and drawings that examine themes of gender, self-indulgence, and mental health through an autobiographical lens. She is inspired by the duality of the internal – the mind, identity, thought – and the external – the body, society, action. Her practice explores the fluctuating relationship between these elements through self-portraiture, bridging her interior landscape with her exterior form.

During the Jeannie Thib Mentorship Residency, Day will be combining her drawing and printmaking practices to produce a series of images that have been passed through repeated digital and analog manipulations. She hopes that her experiments will lead to work that gives pause to the rapid image consumption of the times and will raise the question …what is this? …how was it made?

Alison Judd

Through the support of an anonymous donor, the Hexagon Special Projects Fellowship Residency provides an annual fellowship to support a mid-career or established Open Studio Artist Member through the provision of six consecutive months of studio time to create and complete a specific project.

Alison Judd’s practice is rooted in printmaking at the intersection of print, sculpture and language. She uses earthly phenomena to ruminate on transience, impermanence, and loss, as well as the slow accumulation and distillation of knowledge.

A ‘fact’ is a thing that is known, or proved to be true,
a ‘fracture’ is the act or process of breaking or the state of being broken,
and ‘facture’ is the manner in which something is made.

During the Hexagon Fellowship Residency, Judd will work with these definitions as concept, materials and process. She will create a series of works where scientific texts and geological descriptions are mined for poetry and pair this with letterpress, relief and etching processes. Judd is interested in the discrepancy between logical language and the ineffable and how we struggle to find and express meaning. She is particularly compelled by how such representations can strip away emotional and relational complexity, how metaphor and materiality can restore a nuanced understanding to what is and is not.

Judd holds a diploma from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, a BFA in Printmaking from Concordia University, Montreal, and completed her Masters of Fine Art in Print Media at York University. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally and has been awarded residencies at the Kloster Bentlage Cultural Centre, (Rheine, Germany), the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, (Dawson City, YK), the Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, AB) and the Druckwerk Printmaking Studio (Basel, Switzerland). She is Assistant Professor in Printmaking at OCAD University in Toronto.

Michelle Forsyth

Nick Novak Fellowship Residency is offered in memory of one of Open Studio’s most influential master printmakers and is awarded annually to an artist currently involved with the Studio as an Artist Member.

While not technically considered a printmaker, Michelle Forsyth employs a wide range of copying in her practice and calls attention to the nature of the multiple. Her current work consists of photographic prints depicting hand-crafted items such as: screen prints, lithographs, paintings, weavings, and sculptures. These items are copies of things that are dear to her and she outlines those sentiments in text passages that accompany her work when exhibited.

The work she will complete at Open Studio will follow along this trajectory but will more specifically address the self, performing in the home, and the body in relation to illness and disability. Forsyth will complete a series of six life-sized self-portraits. Each work will focus on repeat patterns, printed on fabric and on papier-mâché forms. The textiles will be sewn into tight-fitting garments and the sculptural forms will be made to wear as jewelry or accessories. Ultimately this work will be reproduced as digitally-printed self-portraits. In the finished works, the printed matter will be predominant.

Inspired by the figures captured in interior decorating and lifestyle magazines, the work will picture her body interacting within her home. Here the body will uncover her struggle to perform once mundane tasks. Ultimately the work will be performance based. Here her body, with all its renewed achievements, will seem beautiful, transcendent, and effervescent through the exploration of the qualities of movement that are unique to it.

Nix Burox

The Don Phillips Scholarship Residency is offered in memory of printmaker Don Phillips, who helped establish printmaking as a fine art practice in Canada, and is presented annually to a recent graduate who has just completed an undergraduate art program with a printmaking major at an accredited Canadian institution and who will not be returning to full-time studies.

Nix Burox is a non-binary trans artist based in Montreal. Interested in process-oriented art, their work references archiving practices and takes the form of modular interactive art-objects such as sets of cards, artist books, and installations. Using autobiography as a tool to discuss issues of identity and mental health, Burox is interested in queer and small press initiatives, and was a founding member of the Concordia Queer Print Club. They have recently completed a BFA in Print Media at Concordia University and are the 2017 recipient of the Wendy Simon award. They have participated in a number of exhibitions and residencies, including a collaborative residency at Gravity Press Experimental Print Shop in Massachusetts and most recently a research/creation residency at the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room.

Burox’s practice exposes the futile search for a coherent narrative through which to consolidate personal identity and experiences, using autobiography as a tool to understand the world. During their residency, they will work to expand and complexify their use of the archive as a framework for reinterpreting and recontextualizing the subjective. They are interested in discussing the topic of embodiment, particularly as related to their experience of anxiety, transness, and situating themselves in new spaces and environments. They will be working across print mediums, with an emphasis on woodcut and small scale works that build towards a larger collection, assemblage, or installation.

Mark Bath

Through the generous support of artist Jeannie Thib’s (1955-2013) family, friends and colleagues, the Jeannie Thib Mentorship Residency provides two months of studio time, 20 hours of mentoring and a materials budget, awarded annually to an artist in the early stages of their professional career, who has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to their practice.

Mark Bath is a visual artist from Newfoundland. At Memorial University, he studied Dramatic Literature and Creative Writing, and later pursued a Bachelor of Design in Illustration at OCADU. While at OCADU, Bath fell in love with the process of creating copper plate etchings and completed a series of intricately detailed self portraits as part of a student residency with Working Title Press at OCADU.

During the Jeannie Thib Mentorship Residency, Bath will create a series of etchings called Draped in Net. These prints will comprise a wordless storybook telling a fictionalized and tragic tale of Newfoundland resettlement. The story looks at trauma, migration and nostalgia through the lens of memory. Bath will work with mentor and printmaker Emma Nishimura for the planning, execution and presentation of Draped in Net.

Loree Ovens

Through the support of an anonymous donor, the Hexagon Special Projects Fellowship Residency provides an annual fellowship to support a mid-career or established Open Studio Artist Member through the provision of six consecutive months of studio time to create and complete a specific project.

Loree Ovens specializes in intaglio techniques: especially copper etching, aquatint, dry point and collagraph. Primarily working with Japanese Washi paper and often combining the use of surface design techniques for textiles, Ovens’ fascination with line, pattern, and architecture continues to inspire her work.

Ovens studied Fashion Technique and Design at PEI’s Holland College. She continued her studies and received an arts diploma from Sheridan College, SOCAD, majoring in fabrics. Subsequently, Loree had a two-year residency in the textile studio at the Harbourfront Craft Studio. In 2008, she earned a BFA in Printmaking from OCADU and began printing at Open Studio. She is represented by David Kaye Gallery. She has shown in national and international exhibitions in Canada, Japan, United States, Taiwan, Australia and Scotland. Her work is part of both private and public collections.

Ovens states:

I thrive on exploring new ways of working and pushing boundaries of what could be realized in my creative process. I have always been fascinated with science and the natural world. Using a digital camera microscope I plan to take photographs of plant, sand and water samples. Interpretations of my findings will be the starting point of the work that I would create at Open Studio, through etching, embossing and screen.

My inspiration for this project evolves around the work of Günter Haese, a German sculptor and printmaker linked to kinetic art. The intricacy of Haese’s kinetic sculptures in metal energizes me to look at printmaking beyond a two dimensional form.

Agata Derda

Nick Novak Fellowship Residency is offered in memory of one of Open Studio’s most influential master printmakers and is awarded annually to an artist currently involved with the Studio as an Artist Member.

Agata Derda was born in Poland to a working class family. She began her art education at a local youth centre and later studied at the high school of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland. In 2010 Derda completed a BFA with Honours in Printmaking at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, Ireland. Derda immigrated to Edmonton in 2011 where she completed an MFA at the University of Alberta in 2013. Derda has exhibited in Hamilton, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver as well as internationally in Slovakia, Poland, China, the United States, Ireland, France, and the UK. She recently won an award at the International Print Triennial in Krakow, Poland. She lives and works exclusively on her art practice in Toronto.

Derda’s art practice is centered on the creation of large prints, which combine both linocut and digital printmaking techniques. Her work often responds to and comments on contemporary social issues related to the injustices of cultural deprivation, such as the normalization of violence and sexual assault.

The Don Phillips Scholarship and Nick Novak Fellowship residencies each entitle the recipient to rent-free access to studio facilities for a period of one year; materials assistance; professional development opportunities; and tuition-free access to Open Studio workshops. In addition, each artist will mount an exhibition of the work created during their time at Open Studio. Each recipient will commence their residency periods in September 2018, with an exhibition of the outcomes of their time at Open Studio scheduled for January 2020.