Artists
Listed in alphabetical order according to first name.
Alec Dempster
Event: Faces of Son Jericho
Alec Dempster is a visual artist and musician based in Toronto. He recently moved to Toronto from Xalapa, Veracruz where he was for the last ten years. He is primarily a printmaker but also works in other medium which he often combines with his printmaking, such as stencil, encaustic and egg tempera. Alec has shown widely in Canada and Mexico.
Amy Gottlieb
Event: FBI Family
Amy Gottlieb is a Toronto-based photographer and video artist. Born and raised in New York City, she moved to Canada in 1972. Her work explores family histories, the intersection of personal and historical memory and the relationship between cognitive and body memories. Her 1997 award-winning video In Living Memory screened at over 25 festivals across North America and on television. "Tempest in a Teapot," a 1987 video about Amy's mother and her radical political activities screened at five festivals around Toronto and was exhibited as an installation at A Space Gallery in Toronto, complete with wallpaper created from her mother's FBI files. Her 2010 photo-based work, FBI Family speaks to the social and political textures of state surveillance, both historic and contemporary. These photomontages are densely layered images combining her mother's FBI surveillance files with archival family photos.
Ashley Bomberry
Event: Young Voices: Work It!
First time playwright Ashley Bomberry is Mohawk from Six Nations, Ontario. As a writer, photographer and film director Ashley passionately embraces her cultural identity, expressing it through various forms of media, aiming to communicate to a vast and diverse audience. Ashley wrote, directed and co-produced her first short, Waiting for Willie, which premiered at ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in 2006. Since then she has worked on short and feature films gaining experience and knowledge in the field. Ashley is a world traveler using photography to capture the people, stories and moments throughout her journey.
Brett Story
Event: Land of Destiny
Brett
Story is an independent non-fiction filmmaker based out of Montreal
and Toronto, Canada. Her first film, Going
Condo, followed the
struggle of community activists as they battled the gentrification of
one Montreal's oldest working-class neighbourhoods. As well as
holding degrees from McGill University and the University of Oxford,
Brett is currently pursuing a PhD in Human Geography from the
University of Toronto. She has worked extensively as a freelance
journalist and has directed numerous short
non-fiction films. Land
of Destiny is her first
feature-length documentary.
Camille Turner
Event: The Boilermakers and Ironworkers Union
Camille Turner is a Toronto-based artist and cultural producer who uses media and performance to build bridges across cultures and differences. Her performance work includes: Miss Canadiana, a beauty queen on an around the world Red, White and Beautiful Tour, challenging assumptions of Canadian identity and normative beauty. Her new Afro-futurist project, The Final Frontier is inspired by her experience in Lethbridge, Alberta and the alien landscape of the coulees. Camille is a founding member of performance company Outerregion and digital collective YZO. She is a curator with Subtle Technologies, a festival that blurs the boundaries between art and science. Camille has presented her work nationally and internationally at numerous conferences, festivals and exhibitions.
camille.turner@gmail.com
outerregion.ca
416 871 4200
Carlie Howell
Event: Family Fun Day!
Carlie Howell is a Toronto based performer, songwriter, and educator with a passion learning and creative music making! As a student, she has a degree in jazz performance on double bass, and has also studied the drumming and dancing traditions of West Africa and Japan. Most recently, her passion for learning has led her to Brazil, where she has travelled studying music and movement traditions, language, and pedagody. As a performer, she weaves together her experience with jazz, classical, folk, pop, rock, reggae, klezmer, free-improv, and world music traditions, to create an eclectic and unique musical voice all her own. Her passion lies in collaboration and creation, working and performing with composer-collectives, accompanying original singer- songwriters, and fusing traditional styles with contemporary contexts. She leads her own original project Carlie Howell and the DeHarms, and can also be seen and heard playing with The River Pilots, Culture Reject, Austin John, Amy Campbell, The Toronto Jazz Orchstra, Maracatu Mar Aberto, and Batucada Carioca to name a few!
As an educator, she strives to bring this same spirit of adventure, collaboration and creativity to developing musicians young and old. She is the co-founder of Blue Moon 'School of Rock and Beyond!' summer camp, and ArtLab, a program that engages kids in multi-disciplinary projects, learning through movement, theatre, visual arts and music. Most recently, she has joined the Royal Conservatory of Music, working as a guest artist in schools teaching core curriculum through music, as well as leading professional development workshops to help teachers use music in their classrooms.
carlie.howell@gmail.com
carliehowell.com
Clare Preuss
Event: Cake
Clare graduated with distinction from the University of Alberta's Bachelor of Fine Arts Acting Program in 1999 and has been working as a multidisciplinary theatre artist ever since. Clare is fiercely dedicated to the development of new Canadian theatre. As a choreographer, movement designer, actor and physical theatre instructor, Clare has collaborated with The Blyth Festival,Carlos Bulosan Theatre, eastBOUNDtheatre, Factory Theatre, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre, Humber College, The Hysteria Festival, Lorraine Kimsa Theatre For Young People, Native Earth Performing Arts, Nightwood Theatre, The Rhubarb! Festival, Sheatre, Te-Amim Music Theatre,Theatre Direct Canada and Union Eight Theatre on new Canadian plays. As an emerging director, Clare's approach is boldly physical, highly specified and challenges creators and audience alike to experience theatre viscerally and spiritually as well as intellectually and emotionally. Last summer she directed Tuesdays and Sundays for Union Eight Theatre and is directing the company's current play in development:Oil Man. Clare is honored to the be a recipient of the Chalmers Professional Development Grant and will use it to assistant direct Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland's new play Oil and Water in the winter of 2011. Clare is the Co-Artistic Director of Union Eight Theatre in Owen Sound.
Dan Bergeron
Event: Workers on Site: Evergreen Brick Works Artist Talk
For the better part of a decade, Dan Bergeron, aka fauxreel, has been creating subversive, photo-based street interventions. The aim of Dan's work is to question the notion of 'public' space. It is intended to expose the exclusions embedded in billboard advertising, city architecture and urban geography and to reclaim those spaces for the people and issues they ignore. To that end, Dan's work is visually and thematically accessible, inclusionary in its documentation of subjects rarely focused upon in mass media, and is intended to provoke reflection upon issues of identity, social relationships and the spaces that we collectively inhabit.
Dave Silverberg
Event: Day of Mourning
Dave Silverberg is the host and artistic director of Toronto Poetry Slam. His most recent book of poetry is Bags of Wires (LyricalMyrical) and he edited Canada's first spoken word anthology, Mic Check (Quattro Press). He has performed his unique brand of poignant and engaging poetry across Canada, including Calgary, Halifax, Vancouver, Ottawa, London and Montreal. In 2010, he performed at a TEDx event in Toronto. He has also been a feature performer/lecturer at the Influency Salon Series run out of the University of Toronto.
silverberg@digitaljournal.com
torontopoetryslam.com
D-Lishus
Event: What's Becoming of our City?
poet
mother firegoddess diva storyteller
dispensing
words of wisdom
laced
with dub and framed by womanly hips
hard
hitting political sistah
telling
it like it is and
why
a spade should never be called a spade
feminist
dyke warrioress
spinning
it and spitting it
to
educate the yoots
fighting
hate with words and poetry and
starting
love-fires everywhere
breaking
the bonds of mental bondage
with
my word[s]word
Dinah Thorpe
Event: What's Becoming of Our City?
Dinah Thorpe is a musician, composer, and producer who lives and works in Toronto. She makes alternative electro-folk-pop with a little bit of country and a little bit of blues.
After dropping out of sound engineering college, Dinah went rogue and released a self-titled EP in 2008. Truths and Other Stories, her full-length debut, was released in the fall of 2009, to much praise from press and peers. She has honed her performance chops opening for Buck 65 in a boxing gym, playing at a public bath on the lake in Zurich, and sharing the stage with industry heavyweights like The Cliks, Eternia and Melissa Ferrick. Dinah is currently putting the finishing touches on her second full-length album to be released in June 2011. Dinah also works part-time at the YWCA and is a proud member of CUPE local 2189.
dinah@dinahthorpe.ca
dinahthorpe.com
416 260-2489
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
Event: Cake
DM is a creator whose mediums of expression are the voice, the pen and the body. Her most recent works for the stage include Gas Girls for New Harlem Productions winner of the Outstanding New Play (Independent)2009 Dora Award as well as the Herman Voaden Playwriting Prize and Enbridge PlayRites Award; Salome's Clothes for Sage Theatre's Ignite Festival 2009, The First Stone for bcurrent's rock.paper.sistahz7, Oh Sudanah for bcurrent's rock.paper.sistahz6. She has worked as a director for New Harlem's Job's Wife in Summerworks 2009, The Movement Project's How We Forgot Here, Marika Schwandt's Mulatto Nation for Nightwood Theatre's Write From the Hip 2008, Nalo Hopkins'Money Tree for CrossCurrents 2008, John Feld's Oops!for Summerworks 2006. Her alter ego, Belladonna, has released two hip hop EP's entitled Off My Chest (2005) and The Bridge/is Over (2009).
Erin Konsmo
Event: Resilience
Erin Konsmo is a young Metis Indigenous feminist from Innisfail, Alberta focusing on art forms that incorporate traditional knowledge while telling stories of struggle, resistance, self-determination, identity and sexual and reproductive justice.
erin.konsmo@gmail.com
Eshan Rafi
Event: Resilience
Eshan Rafi is an emerging Toronto-based artist who uses video, photography, performance and installation art to construct auto/biographies out of fragmentation and rupture. He has exhibited his work in Montreal, Toronto and Brooklyn.
eshan.rafi@gmail.com
www.andotherstories.ca
Huellas Importadas
Event: Resilience
Huellas Importadas is a multimedia, culture and documentary arts project for young Latin Americans living in Toronto to voice their challenges and mark their footprints in the city. Huellas uses the arts and mediums of communication as tools that create space for dialogue as well as a critical look into society and the community. Huellas includes Fabiola Jimenez, Monica LaTorre, Veronica Bravo, Sorel Aviles.
hdc.youth@gmail.com
gabriela.rodriguez.tyc@gmail.com
www.hispaniccouncil.net
thepeopleproject.ca
Ghadeer M.
Event: What's Becoming of Our City?
Ghadeer is a Palestinian activist and feminist. She writes and performs spoken word and poetry and is part of the arts collective AqsaZine. She is active on women's rights issues and is a strong advocate of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to end Israeli apartheid, occupation and colonization of Palestine.
ghadeermou@gmail.com
647 895 8973
jamila malika
Event: What's Becoming of Our City?
jamilah malika is a storyteller in search of deeper connection and community through conversation; alumni of the anitafrika dub theatre residency and the banff centre of the arts spoken word program, vocalist for electro dub hop trio abstract random bringing back political-cool, member of music and multi media collective 88 days of fortune, performance poetry facilitator and published writer.
Jessie Anthony
Event: Young Voices: Work It!
From The Six Nations of the Grand River Territory Jessie Anthony is Onondaga Beaver clan. Jessie is a graduate from the theatre of performing arts program at Fanshwe College and has also studied at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and The Public Relations Program through FNTI. Stage credits include Tituba, The Crucible, Mama possum, digital NDN, and The Crackwalker, where she was nominated for best performance in a fringe for the London Fringe. Film credits include Just Another Dead Indian. Jessie is a former Miss Six Nations 07/08 and Miss Indian Defence League of America 08/09 Ambassador. Nia:wehs to Young Voices participants and instructors. Thank you to Ashley her car buddy and to her family and friends, especially her brother.
NIA:WEH HA
John Wort Hannam
Event: Working Songs
From the prairies in Southern Alberta comes one of Canada's best folk/roots songwriters, John Wort Hannam. For five years John Wort Hannam taught grade 9 language arts on the largest reservation in Canada, The Kainai Nation, part of the Blackfoot tribe. But in 1997 he heard a Loudon Wainwright III record and was hooked by the music and stories. In 1998 he bought a guitar and learnt some chords. In 2002 he quit teaching and began to pursue the dream of being a working musician. John has achieved some fine accolades in a few short years including a 2010 Juno nomination and 2010 Canadian Folk Music Award for his CD Queen's Hotel, a mainstage performance at the 2009 Kerrville Folk Fest, and three Grand Prizes at the Calgary Folk Fest Songwriting Competition. With comparisons to Gordon Lightfoot, James Keelaghan, and John Prine, John Wort Hannam is a born story-teller with a keen eye for the quirky and lyrics that create stories behind the songs.
Leila Pourtavaf
Event: What's Become of Our City?
Leila P.is the co-organizer and DJ of Gayfinity Fridays, a monthly queer dance party at Naco Gallery.
l_pourtavaf@yahoo.com
647-865-4595
Lisa Cromarty
Event: Young Voices: Work It!
Lisa is an emerging actress and playwright from the Oji-Cree Nation. She is a recent graduate of The Centre for Indigenous Theatre and worked with the Debajehmujig Theatre Company for their 2010 Summer Season. Lisa was so delighted to receive both a TAC Grant and an OAC Theatre Creator's Reserve Grant (recommended by Native Earth) for her first play, Wagosh Kwewag. This is her first year in Young Voices and she is happy with the progress she has made within the program and looks forward to what the next year will bring. Select Theatre Credits: An Honour Story (Dawn), The Red Moon (Song Girl),Coyote City (Boo), White Rabbit, Bear and Eagle (Matilda), The Rez Sisters (Marie-Adele); Film Credit: Wave a Red Flag (Adam Garnet Jones)
Lishai
Event: Stop Wage Theft! Campaign Launch
Lishai
has lived in three different continents, but has found a home in
Toronto's dynamic arts community. She believes in art as a tool for
community development and uses her words to create dialogue and
retell her-story. She is one of the founding members of the Kemba
Collective. A dynamic group of artists working to create safe spaces
for womyn's voices, stories and talents to be shared and celebrated
in Toronto and she facilitates spoken word workshops with UNITY
Charity and the Toronto Poetry Project.
lishai.peel@gmail.com
www.lishai.ca
416-721-1460
Maria Dunn
Event: Working Songs
Maria Dunn is a storyteller in song, melding North American folk and country traditions with her Celtic roots. A 2002 Juno nominee (For A Song), Maria performs at theatres, folk clubs and festivals across Canada and in the USA and Europe. She has been featured on CBC National Radio (The Sunday Edition, DNTO, This Morning), BBC Radio Scotland and her original songs have been published in Penguin Eggs and Sing Out! magazines, and recorded by other artists including Niamh Parsons and Bob Bossin. Maria's fourth CD, The Peddler (2008) is produced by Shannon Johnson of 2007 Juno award winning The McDades.
MataDanZe
Event: Cake
"Our body is the expression of our spirit, color and emotion...our movements the language of justice, love and peace."
We are a dance-theatre collective founded in 2006 by Victoria Mata and Olivia Davies. MataDanZe is currently made up of eight female artists who come together in order to empower women through dance and activism, and transform the stigmatized role of women. We are determined to bring our work to communities across Canada and abroad, in order to inspire and enrich people's lives through artistic expression. We aim to offer dance classes and workshops that are accessible to the working class and that include a variety of dance styles. We welcome gender diversity and embrace multiculturalism. Our choreographies explore the power of storytelling, with a focus on women's stories. We use contemporary dance and elements of theatre to bring our projects to life. As well, we believe in the power of collaboration with other artists including musicians, designers, and activists, in order to promote the growth of our artistic community.
Olivia
Davies created
Liv Dangerously Productions in 2010 as a vehicle for creative
pursuits. As co-founder of MataDanZe, Davies continues to
empower womyn through movement.
Lilia
Leon is an independent
dance artist from Mexico City, teacher, and choreographer who
graduated from York University and The School of Toronto Dance
Theatre.
Victoria
Mata is
an indigenous identified Venezuelan-Canadian choreographer, dancer,
muralist, urban planner and activist. She is co-founder of MataDanZe.
Wendy
Miller is a dancer,
photographer, and yoga instructor originally from Niagara Lake
Region.
Misset
Parata is an
Afro-Venezuelan dancer from Caracas, Venezuela, and a professional
accountant in Toronto.
Corrie
Sakaluk is
a core member of MataDanZe and has choreographed and performed in
several MataDanze productions, including tours to El Salvador and
Venezuela.
Grisel
Severino is a versatile
film-maker, drag-king artist and theatre director originally from
Venezuela.
Irma
Villafuerte is a passionate
salsa dancer, originally from El Salvador, as well as an activist for
youth and women.
matadanze@gmail.com
www.matadanze.com
Maureen Hynes
Event: Mapping Our Work: Labour History Walking Tour
Maureen Hynes is an award-winning poet and retired Coordinator of George Brown College's School of Labour. With David Kidd, she wrote Mapping Our Work: Toronto Labour History Walking Tours. She is poetry editor for Our Times: Canada's Independent Labour Magazine (www.ourtimes.ca).
Michelle Muir
Event: What's Becoming of Our City?
Michelle Muir is a teacher, poet and spoken word artist. She captured the imagination of many in 2006 when she won CBC radio's poetry competition with her evocative poem My Fantastic Voyage to Planet Irresistible. In 2007 she was once again named CBC's Radio Poet Laureate. She recently published her first book of poetry, titled Nuff Said. The book, which also includes a CD of selected poems, captures the mood and rhythms of the city through poems that reflect on life, music, community pride and education. Michelle combines her work as an elementary teacher and artist to promote literacy across Canada and abroad. She is currently working on a children's book.
Nadijah Robinson
Event: Resilience
Nadijah Robinson is a multidisciplinary artist whose fabric-based work mixes the conventions of painting, street art and textile art in order to raise themes of memory, identity and storytelling. This work aims to reflect and archive the stories of communities in which she is strongly rooted, and which are not often represented in conventional art spaces.
nadijahr@gmail.com
nadijah.wordpress.com
Paul Boddum
Event: Family Fun Day!
Paul Boddum is an established artist who's been a passionate participant in Toronto's local art scene for the past 20 years. He is a visual artist/painter, musician, scenic theatre painter, educator childcare teacher, and children's art educator. Paul is a nationally renowned animal artist, his contemporary pet art hangs in private collections across North America and Bermuda. He has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States, including the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and the Museum of Arts and Sciences (MOAS) in Daytona Florida. Paul's work is represented by Shelly Lambe Fine Arts in Toronto. Paul has been featured in publications such as Canadian House and Home, Toronto Star, National Post, and the Boston Herald. Paul appeared on CP 24 Animal House Calls, interviewed by host Ann Rohmer who owns one of his works. Paul studied Early Childhood Education at Seneca College, and from 1988-2008 was a childcare teacher to elementary age children in TDSB based non-profit daycares across Toronto. Most recently Paul has led children's art workshops at Art City St. Jamestown, Pawsitively Pets Camp, and after-school programs throughout Toronto.
Rick Hill
Event: The Boilermakers and Ironworkers Union
Rick Hill is an artist, writer, educator, curator, museum consultant and advocate. A member of the Beaver Clan of the Tuscarora tribe, Hill is skilled in a variety of art forms, including painting, photography, carving, beading and basket weaving. Hill studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago (1968-70) and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, where he received his master of art degree in 1980. Rick currently teaches at the Six Nations Polytechnic in Oshweken.
Ruben 'Beny' Esguerra
Event: Stop Wage Theft! Campaign Launch
Born in Colombia, Ruben 'Beny' Esguerra is a multi-instrumentalist, lyricist and arts educator. As a musician he has earned the privilege of becoming band-leader of Conjunto Abanico (1997-2000), Palenke Orchestra (2000-2002), CHIVA (2002-present), New Tradition Drum and Dance (2006-present) and NT La Banda (2009-present). As a song writer he has performed his pieces in the 10th annual Hip Hop Festival held in Havana, Cuba as well as the 16th World Festival of Students held in Caracas, Venezuela, participated in the 7th Annual 2008 National CBC Radio Poetry Face-Off and just returned from performing in Vi単a del Mar, Chile, in 2010. As an arts educator Beny has been a music tutor, course director and lecturer in the Music Department at York University since the age of 22 and currently spends much of his time facilitating workshops through the Ontario Arts Council's Artists in Education Program, bringing music and story telling as a medium for healthy self-expression to inner city schools as well as schools in rural areas across Ontario. Ruben holds an M.A. degree in Musicology/Ethnomusicology.
Sundance Crowe
Event: Young Voices: Work It!
Sundance Crowe is an Ojibway from Ontario, residing and working out of Toronto. He is a graduate of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre's (CIT) three-year full-time program, also where he received apprenticeship vocal coach training, giving him the opportunity to coach theatre students in voice work. He has been in numerous CIT productions and has worked with other professional theatre companies. Selected credits include: The Rez sisters, Coyote City, Elder Brother, Crude-mentary Tales, Gabriel's Crossing, and Iitsokappimon where he mentored students in story weaving alongside CIT teachers. Film credits include Casino Jack, Just Another Dead Indian.
Tyler Pennock
Event: Young Voices: Work It!
Tyler is of Metis/Cree descent, from the community of Faust, Alberta. He was adopted into a military family at birth and grew up in various places across Canada as well as Germany. He graduated from the University of Toronto, specializing in Aboriginal studies and English Literature. In his spare time, Tyler enjoys writing and performing poetry and prose. His creative non-fiction piece, Elijah Harper, was published in the Yellow Medicine Review in 2008. He currently works at the University of Toronto as an Aboriginal Recruitment Officer.
