february, march, april, 2009 611 main street winnipeg manitoba canada r3b 1e1 204-949-9490 | [email protected] | www.mawa.ca news from main street news from MAWA is a mere 15-minute walk from downtown. Talk about neighbourhood: more people on the street, a diversity of services location, location, location! Yet the Disraeli Highway cuts us off and some historic preservation. So far, most of these initiatives have from the Exchange with speed, noise and pollution, and perhaps been inclusive of existing businesses and residents. So far, few have nowhere in the city is the legacy of colonization – poverty and been displaced. substance abuse – more evident. This winter the City of Winnipeg is revising Plan Winnipeg by As Richard Florida describes in The Rise of The Creative Class, creating a secondary plan for South Point Douglas, which they define the reclamation of neglected neighbourhoods often begins with a as extending from MAWA north to the tracks and east to the Louise first wave of pioneers who move in, make improvements, and create Bridge. Our mayor has been quoted as describing the neighbourhood safety and community. Who are these brave urbanistas? According as a “jewel”. And it is! As long as our city and business leaders see to Florida, largely artists. Certainly that is true on North Main: diversity as its greatest asset, and don’t approach the area with a MAWA, the Edge, Manitoba Printmakers…. But there are also older literal or figurative demolition ball, creating a blank slate upon businesses and many individuals who make North Main home. which they can project their mega project dreams. Construction on the Manitoba Regional Health Facility is Last summer politicians greeted businessman David Asper proceeding at a blistering pace. MAWA’s favourite restaurant, The with enthusiasm when he suggested that the city expropriate the Tallest Poppy, opened last year. And yet another architecture firm residents of South Point Douglas and give him the land so he could has opened on the strip. All of these developments bode well for the build us a new football stadium. Fortunately, an unlikely and spon- taneous coalition of sports fans, urban planners, residents and artists stopped the plan cold. But that foray into what our civic administration might mean by “urban renewal” should make us nervous. inside Last month the city-planning department met with South Point Douglas “stakeholders” (residents, business owners and artists). 2 Foundation Mentorship Program Representatives from MAWA along with over 80 others, showed up to talk about how we want a community-wide geo-thermal heating 4 Artist Lecture | Valérie Lamontagne plan, more low income housing, and, since more people in the Critical Reading Group neighbourhood walk than drive, fewer roads, more footpaths. How 5 Mentor-in-Residence | Rosalie Favell about an orchard, someone suggested? Sounds like a city of the 6 Workshops future. A neighbourhood that doesn’t obliterate its past. A neighbourhood that welcomes those of lower incomes, rather than 7 International Women’s Day seeing them as an obstruction to progress. Over the Top Auction and Cupcake Party If only the city will listen. It remains one of our challenges, as 8 Donor Spotlight newcomers to North Main, not to pave the way for rampant gentrification 9 First Fridays but to be good neighbours: to advocate for fair treatment of those with whom we share the street; to form rich and unexpected 10 What’s New at MAWA alliances that support diversity; to build this community together in 12 Member’s News a way in which is welcoming to all. 14 Heads Up! Calendar 1 Team Executive Directors Shawna Dempsey, Lorri Millan and Dana Kletke Foundation Mentorship Program Call for Submissions, Deadline: April 30, 2009 Year-long Program Sept. 2009 – Sept. 2010 Mentors: foundation mentorship program foundation mentorship Lita Fontaine Sarah Anne Johnson Sandee Moore Bev Pike LITA FONTAINE, A Holy Man, mixed media collage, 2008 The Foundation Mentorship Program is a year-long program Mentors meet with their mentees individually once a month, in which senior artists share their experience with developing artists. and the entire group meets monthly for critiques, discussion, gallery This non-hierarchical program is designed to help women who are visits and other activities. visual artists develop skills and define their decision-making To Apply: Mentors select the participants based their ability to philosophies, and to provide access to the information, resources work with the applicant, and mutuality of practice or conceptual and support they need to realize their goals. In addition to a framework. Students are not eligible. The fee is $200.00 relationship with mentors, the program aims to provide a peer For Application Guidelines please refer our website mawa.ca group for the mentees, from which they receive valuable critical or contact Tracy Marshall Program Co-ordinator at 949-9490 or feedback and support. Self-reliance and resourcefulness are encouraged. [email protected] BEV PIKE, Hymenal View of the Reflective,gouache on paper, 2007. SARAH ANNE JOHNSON received her BFA from the University of Manitoba and went on to complete her MFA at The Yale School of Art in 2004. Sarahs photographic and sculptural work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now at The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia (2007); The Montreal Biennial (2006); and Imprints at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. She teaches sculpture at the University of Manitoba, and is Artist in Residence there. SANDEE MOORE creates in a variety of media, including performance, video, installation and interactive electronic sculpture. Her work has been screened and exhibited across Canada at venues such as the Edmonton Art Gallery, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Images Film and Video Festival, the Blackwood Gallery, the Dalhousie Art Gallery and SANDEE MOORE, I’m Bohunky Dory with It (My Nose),video animation, 2007. the Mendel Art Gallery. Through her artworks, she proposes to animate social relationships through personal exchange. She is currently employed as the Director of Video Pool Media Arts Centre. The Mentors www.sandeemoore.com LITA FONTAINE (Anishinaabe / Dakota) holds a Master of Fine Arts BEV PIKE is a painter of large-scale gouaches about environments foundation mentorship program foundation mentorship Degree from the University of Regina and a Diploma in Fine Arts made from contorted bundles. She has exhibited works from her from the School of Art, University of Manitoba. Lita’s media include current series, Hysteria Chronicles,across Canada. This series is a photography, mixed media and installation. She is an educator and long-term study of baroque two-dimensional drama. She also writes is currently employed as the Artist in Residence with the Seven Oaks satire, artist books, and has made videos, all about how women use School Division. Selected exhibitions include: The Sacred Feminine, metaphor to find pleasure and safety. Her artist books, Autobiography Urban Shaman Gallery, March 2006, and Lita Fontaine: Without of an Eccentric Line and Swallowing Safety Pins are in numerous Reservation,The Winnipeg Art Gallery, January 2002. international collections. 3 SARAH ANNE JOHNSON, Lost in Woods, c-print, 2003 Valérie Lamontagne Performing Objects, Animals, and Spaces Saturday, February 28, 2009, 2PM @ MAWA artist lecture Free! VALÉRIE LAMONTAGNE, Advice Bunny, performance/installation, 1999-2003 VALÉRIE LAMONTAGNE, Becoming Balthus, Lex Beaux Jours, digital print, 2003-04 Valérie Lamontagne will talk about her work and current areas Her technology-based works have been showcased across Canada, of research. She is a Montréal-based performance/digital media the United States, Central and South America and Europe. She is a artist, freelance art critic and independent curator. She regularly Special Individualized Program PhD candidate at Concordia writes about new media art and culture in: CV Photo, ETC Montréal, University investigating “Relational and Ubiquitous Performance Parachute, BlackFlash, HorizonZero, Rhizome.Curatorial projects Art” where she lectures in the Department of Design and have been featured at: The New Museum of Contemporary Art Computation Arts. Her research explores the resonance of (New York City), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec embodied somatic presence co-structured with technological (Quebec City), OBORO (Montréal), Images Festival (Toronto), apparatuses expressed via live performance or networked CYNETart (Dresden), Columbia College A+D Gallery (Chicago). environments. The Coming Community and MAWA Critical Reading Group facilitated by Sigrid Dahle, Sundays March 22, April 19, May 3, 2009, 2pm-4pm In order to present wide-ranging points of view and interests, representable? Join Sigrid Dahle to grapple with these and other big the Critical Reading Group will be organized into three-month questions! She is an unrepentant thinker and socialist who sessions. At monthly meetings participants discuss chosen texts, sometimes makes exhibitions, and has lived, worked, loved and themes and ideas. Join the CRG for conversation, critical analysis played in Winnipeg for over 25 years. and good company! Sigrid Dahle will lead this year’s first group. Sigrid says: “We Required Materials critical reading group critical reading will create a convivial reading group dedicated to thinking, talking, laughing, wondering, drinking and not knowing. Together we will Book: Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community.Michael Hardt, explore the challenging concept of community proposed by Giorgio trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. (Available Agamben, an enigmatic Italian philosopher whose ideas have sometimes in-store at McNally Robinson Booksellers but definitely inspired many contemporary artists. We will read Agamben’s book online at amazon.ca and mcnallyrobinson.com for prices starting at The Coming Community and will ‘attend’ some of Agamben’s $22. Please remember to factor in shipping time.) lectures via YouTube.” In The Coming Community,Agamben discusses the political Participants must register by Tuesday, March 10 at 4 pm.