Island artists receive grants

Colton Curtis says receiving an arts grant will allow him to create art he's wanted to make for a long time.

Curtis is among 14 Island artists who recently received a total of $50,000 through the provincial Arts Grants program.

"I feel so lucky to be able to call PEI home. This grant is an incredible blessing that will allow me to commit the time to a creative idea that I've been wanting to nurture for years," said Curtis. "I'm so thankful to the peer jury for their time and selection, and to PEI for committing to the growth of Island artists."

The successful applicants were selected by a six-member jury of their arts community peers and follows the same model used by the Canada Council of Arts.

"Our cultural industries are incredibly valuable to our province. They contribute greatly to our provincial economy and society and play an essential role in connecting Islanders and showcasing our Island to people around the world."

- Minister of Economic Growth, Tourism and Culture Matthew MacKay.

Backgrounder

Here are the successful arts grants recipients.

Colton Curtis

• Theatre - $4,500
• Colton Curtis will develop a new interdisciplinary work titled "Forgive Me" featuring two actors. This work will be a hybrid of text and ballet, based on childhood journal entries, and explores the themes of queerness, religion, acceptance, and the relationship between a grieving mother and a coming out son.

Hans Wendt

• Visual Arts, $3,200
• During the winter of 2021/22, Hans Wendt will produce eight to twelve large scale watercolour paintings for exhibition in London Ontario and Charlottetown PEI. The artist is inspired by Philip Guston, an abstract expressionist painter of the 1960's who famously stated that he was "sick of all this purity." The artist feels strongly about going back to some previous interest in the grotesque, in Bosch and Brueghel, humour and suggested narrative, or more broadly speaking, the work will be more personal and accessible.

Kirstie McCallum

• Visual Arts - $2,500
• Kirstie McCallum will mentor with sculptor and designer Jody Racicot to develop an original design for the piece, Forest Chair, a work of living sculpture destined for the Glenaladale Sculpture Forest. This mentorship will support the artist in developing and building a unique design that supports artistic excellence and creative growth and development. The artist will build on this foundation when completing the living components of the sculpture and installs the final work in June 2022.

Ryan McCarvill

• Film and Media Arts - $700
• Ryan McCarvill will take a series of online filmmaking workshops offered by the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto in order to help produce a microbudget feature film on PEI in 2022.

Doug Dumais

• Visual Arts - $4,500
• Doug Dumais will be working on a photographic narrative entitled "The Third Place" about the history and future of Prince Edward Island's libraries. The artist will spend one full day at each of PEI's twenty-five library branches, producing photographs and documenting the vital role that these spaces play in their respective communities.

Damien Worth

• Visual Arts - $4,000
• Damien Worth will produce a new body of visual artwork that examines travel, transition, and (dis)location as subject matter. The artist will complete no less than eight individual works in a variety of media formats including: video, photographic document, two dimensional drawings and paintings, and multi-media installations.

Jenna MacMillan

• Film and Media Arts - $4,000
• Jenna MacMillan will write the outline & first draft of a feature-length comedy screenplay, B-UNIT, the story of an aspiring filmmaker who manages to attract a Hollywood project to shoot in her small coastal town. The story centres around her race-against-the-clock journey to cobble together a multi-million-dollar film industry ahead of their arrival.

Scott Parsons

• Music - $6,000
• Scott Parsons will record an album of songs telling the stories of PEI black history using traditional forms of music including blues, folk, and reggae. The project will celebrate the contributions of black Islanders that have been underrepresented in the past. Songs will be presented in different settings, such as a documentary for CBC and a stage performance. In addition to the music, there is a storytelling aspect which will be supported with a multimedia presentation including a slideshow featuring historical photographs of black Islanders.

Teresa Kuo

• Film and Media Arts - $5,000
• Teresa Kuo will direct and animate a seven minute animated short-film "Where my Branches Stem" on Chinese Canadian identity and culture for submission to film festivals by February 2023. The film tells the story of a young Chinese woman who is tired from her nine to five work life in the big city prompting her to move back home with her grandfather mending their relationship and her own sense of cultural identity.

Renee Laprise

• Visual Arts - $5,000
• Renee Laprise's goal in the next year is to focus on the theme of "humans reconnecting with nature." The artist will create twelve finalized sketches for a new painting series that will have elements which are drawn from life using "life models" and from nature, en plein air, in all four seasons. It is anticipated that the paintings will be ready for exhibition in Spring of 2023.

Ryan Drew

• Interdisciplinary - $1,500
• Ryan Drew will attend the upcoming International Conference on Creativity and Cognition in June. The theme Creativity, Craft, and Design is directly related to the artist's career and study of art based creativity. Ryan Drew hopes to gain a wealth of knowledge and perspectives relevant to the artist's professional career, ongoing doctoral studies, and capacity to support the local arts community.

Ariel Sharratt

• Music - $2,500
• Ariel Sharratt will use the grant to tour Canadian music festivals to promote the new album Garbage Island. The artist will also create two music videos. This album, to be released in summer 2022, is the culmination of several years of writing and is loosely themed around a future where the Pacific Trash Vortex has become a solid landmass populated primarily by a colony of birds, and scattered human climate change refugees.

Tyler Landry

• Visual Arts - $2,600
• Tyler Landry will create a graphic novel entitled Old Caves, about a middle-aged man living in the woods, dogged by an obsession with bigfoot. The project tells a story concerning the nature of obsession and the isolation that often contains it, embodied in vignettes from the life of a forest-cabin-dwelling middle-aged man dedicated to proving the existence of Bigfoot. The completed artwork is planned for release in the fall of 2022.

Sid Acharya

• Music - $4,000
• Sid Acharya - The project, 'PINKED.', is an expressive story of Sid Acharya's re-connection to their roots and ancestors-musically and spiritually, as well as their discoveries of self-love and gender identity. It dives into breaking boxes that we are placed into, living in a society with norms and constructs. Production has already begun and the album is set for release in August 2022.

Media contact:
Hillary MacDonald
Department of Economic Growth, Tourism and Culture
902-394-6368
[email protected]

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