Close up of a person holding a card with black ink drops

2023 Creatives in Residence

Betty Carpick workshop, photo by Marc Doucette.

The Creatives in Residence program sees artists develop new community-engaged projects for the annual fall Festival. Creatives work across artistic disciplines and are active in regions across the province. We are excited to welcome our fourth lineup of residents to the program. This year, the series is inspired by themes of material culture.

2023 Cohort

Alisa McRonald, seen from the chest up, wearing a colourful crocheted shirt, bright red earrings and glasses, short black hair, and smiling

Alisa McRonald

Based in Guelph

Alisa McRonald is a contemporary textile artist who experiments with themes of folklore, fables and the esoteric. For her residency, Alisa will create colourful, contemporary punch-needle wall-hangings and host an exhibition of these wall-hangings. She will facilitate a large-scale collective art piece during the 2023 Queen West Art Crawl that takes place during the Ontario Culture Days Festival. Here art lovers will be invited to learn the art of punch-needling on-site and to contribute to this collaborative art piece.

 

Betty Carpick, seen from the waist up, wearing a black turtleneck, black glasses, short grey hair, and smilling

Betty Carpick

Based in Thunder Bay

Betty Carpick is a multidisciplinary land-based artist, educator, and environmentalist, who offers stewardship of land and water shaped by her Cree and Eastern European heritage. Using Boreal Forest inks made by Betty, community participants made ink blots that were photographed and assembled as patterns in a galaxy for a digital projection. Following an Artist Talk at the Co. Lab Gallery, the projection will go live as an outdoor public installation in Thunder Bay during the Ontario Culture Days Festival. A Maker Session at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery will give people of all ages a chance to play with inks.

Chelsea Smith, seen from the neck up, wearing a black turtle neck, long earrings, long brown hair, and smiling

Chelsea Smith

Based in Temiskaming

Chelsea Smith is an artist of mixed European and Anishinaabe descent from Northern Ontario. Chelsea will grow her own plants to create dye, which she will use to tint natural fabric. The fabric will then be made into a traditional hand-tied quilt through a series of community quilting and story sharing sessions. The artist will exhibit the resulting artwork and host an artist talk and participatory workshop, inviting attendees to experiment on paper with natural pigments created by the artist.

Juliane Foronda, seen from the chest up, wearing a white knit sweater, long black hair and smiling. She is also pulling her hair away from her face with one hand

Juliane Foronda

Based in Toronto

Juliane Foronda is a Filipina-Canadian artist, writer, and researcher. During her residency, she will research the board game archive at Ottawa’s Canadian Museum of History. From there, she will create a text-based installation scattering extracted board game phrases throughout the city of Ottawa. Through this, the city becomes similar to a game itself, with the public as participants. A complementary artist talk and interactive event will take place during the Festival.

Kevin Ormsby, seen from the shoulders up, wearing a colourful shirt, black hair and smiling

Kevin A. Ormsby

Based in Toronto

Kevin A. Ormsby, along with KasheDance, will draw from Pan-Africanist based movement and host the ‘Kultcha Live Yah’ series at Citadel + Compagnie during the Festival. The series includes in-person and online workshops leading up to a final performance, which will feature a spectrum of dancers performing against a backdrop of digital artwork. The series is part of the organization’s 15th anniversary celebration that will incorporate dancers and the general public.

Mushtari Afroz, seen from the neck up, with long black hair, red lipstick, and smiling

Mushtari Afroz

Based in Pickering

Mushtari Afroz is a classical dancer trained in the North Indian classical dance form called ‘Kathak,’ and is director of the Kathak Bandi Dance Collective. For her project, Mushtari will work with dancers to surprise and engage the audience through a series of dance performances that will interact with Pickering’s public spaces and invite public participation. The project will raise awareness of the importance of these shared spaces as gathering points and places of pride within diverse communities.

Myung Sun Kim, seen from the shoulders up, wearing round glasses, long brown hair, and smiling

Myung-Sun Kim

Based in Toronto

Myung-Sun Kim’s ongoing project, ‘Rituals for Belonging’ invites artists of various disciplines to share objects associated with rituals that may recall joy, desire, and belonging. These rituals are encompassed in the series of objects on exhibition. The exhibition runs for the duration of the festival at the Toronto Public Library – Lillian H. Smith Branch. On October 7th, join Myung-Sun in-person at the library for an exhibition walk-through and ritual sharing.

Owen Marshall, seen from the neck up, wearing round glasses, shoulder length brown hair, and an intense look

Owen Marshall

Based in Toronto

Owen Marshall is an artist and printmaker who examines the way text and signage influence the surrounding environment. He will present a series of printed flags which use humour to challenge and undermine the perceived authority of flags and the significance they carry. The works will be presented on flagpoles throughout the Queen West neighbourhood. In partnership with the Queen West Art Crawl, the artist will provide a series of informative and performative guided tours of the works in this neighbourhood.

Read More About the Creatives in Residence

Postcard from Juliane Foronda's NOTES ON PLAY workshop at Ottawa Art Gallery. Photo courtesy of Claudia Zilstra.

Looking Back at the 2023 Creatives in Residence

Discover projects from the Creatives in Residence program.

Artistic programs are made possible thanks to support from Canadian Heritage, the Province of Ontario, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Arts Council.

Creatives in Residence