Stanley Park Environmental Art Project-Launch

Entwined, Tania Willard, cedar bark, hemlock, red alder and madder hand dyed wool dimensions variable. 2009

Entwined, explores the interconnectedness of Stanley Park’s ecology, and how the different uses, experiences and perspectives of both indigenous and non-indigenous people, plants and materials are interwoven. Referencing native-plant and material usage in the plaiting of cedar and in the dyes created from hemlock and red alder barks as well as the oyster shell buttons, this work is a meditation on the Cedar as a tree of life and asks this cedar to share it’s story.

Please join us on Sunday, August 9 as we premiere the semi-permanent artworks of the Stanley Park Environmental Art Project.

Walking tours to the works will begin at the Lost Lagoon Nature House.

The artists, Shirley Wiebe, Tania Willard, John Hemsworth, and T’Uy’Tanat Cease Wyss and Davide Pan, will be on-site to talk about their works and their environmental art practice.

Walking tours: 1-3pm, begin at the Lost Lagoon Nature House. Everyone welcome.

Please visit the project website for more information: www.vancouver.ca/spea

Curator in Residence-grunt gallery

Tania Willard Appointed  grunt gallery Resident Curator

The grunt gallery welcomes Tania Willard as resident curator August 2009 – August 2010. This residency is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts program. During her residency Willard will be working on several projects. Initially she will focus on completing the exhibition and dissemination of Beat Nation and the editing of brunt issue 5. In the coming year she will be coordinating an exhibition of the work of Nicholas Galanin and developing an exhibition of emerging Northern Artists. One theme running through these projects is the transformation and resurgence of cultural knowledge and values through new forms and media whether it be hip hop, film and video or web based media.. These projects will involve travel based research investigating the contexts in which the next generation of emerging and young Inuit and Northern artists live and work.

Ndn Comix

 

Native Pride

Native artists have been working with carricature and image since early depictions of cowboy colonists on horseback getting an arrow shower. A recent exhibition at the Smithsonian American Indian Museum curates an outstanding collection of Aboriginal artists who work with comix or other allied illustrative styles. Including artists like Navajo artist Jolene Nenibah Yazzie and her Warrior Women series this show puts non-Native comix out there that feature Indians hunting dinosaurs or just being cannon fodder for cowboy’s to shame. My own work in comix has featured a re-telling of Aboriginal worker’s history as well as Secwepemc stories and legends. Working with Vancouver’s Healthy Aboriginal Network I have helped to letter and layout several great projects illustrated by Steven Keewatin Sanderson that use comix as a way to create positive messages and health issue awareness for Aboriginal youth. Inspired by comix like Super Shamoo, an Inuit superhero on the early Inuit Broadcasting Corporation turned comic to create awareness around glue sniffing, I worked with Redwire Magazine to create an all NDN comix version of the magazine that continues to be a collector’s edition of the mag. Native editorial and politic comics artist the late Everett Soop’s life and work was on display at the Galt Musuem, Everett Soop referred to himself as “the pit bull terrier of native journalism.” a member of the Kainai Nation, Everett’s biting commentary is an inspiration for many Aboriginal comic artists. I am excited to see his work memorialized. To read more about my own work and interest in Native comics check out this interview with Broken Pencil.

A Woman’s Place is Everywhere

I am excited to have this show A Woman’s Place is Everywhere! A Century of Women and Work coming to Vancouver, a really great show with a bunch of amazing women artists I was grateful to be a part of come and check it our March 8th. And to top it off artist Favianna Rodriguez who I have blogged who has fantastic work is going to be here for a workshop…see details below!!!!

A powerful national collection of visual art works by contemporary Canadian artists including BC’s Tania Willard, produced by Workers Arts and Heritage Centre. Sponsored by HEU, BCGEU, CEP 467. 

March 8-29 

W2 Launch Pad 

(116 W. Hastings Street) 

International Women’s Day opening reception 

Sunday, March 8 at 4pm 

Gallery open Wed-Sun, 12-6pm 

BY DONATION 

Artist activist Favianna Rodriguez is one of Utne Reader magazine’s ‘Top 50 Visionaries’ of the year. She’ll talk about her art practice and how the Oakland Eastside Arts Alliance Center she’s co-founded – combining a community centre, youth programs, a media arts collective plus social housing offers an inspiring model for Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Sponsored by DTES Community Arts Network and Tides Canada Endswell Fund. 

Sunday, March 8 

W2 Launch Pad 

(116 W. Hastings Street) 

Workshop begins at 2pm

Thunderbirds, Stencils and The Streets

Recent exhibitions and artworks from me Tania Willard. New catalogues are out for two recent exhibitions featuring some of my work. LORE curated by Ryan Rice, director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, is a group show with myself Jason Lujan and Duane Linklater upcoming at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University and recently shown in Ottawa at Gallery 101, the exhibition features woodcut, wood engraving and paintings that look at animals of myth and tradition. A beautifully produced catalogue for the show is available through the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University. Also ”Mother’s Mother’s Mother”, curated by Jenny Western for Urban Shaman Gallery and The Gallery of SouthWestern Manitoba made the top ten visual art highlights of 2008 in the Winnipeg Free Press. There is also a beautiful little catalogue for this show, the work I had in this exhibition was called Key7e Dress and was a life size stencil of my great grandmother’s dress which was reproduced on canvas and several site specific locations. The catalogue for Mother’s Mother’s Mother also features the amazing work of Maria Hupfield, Rosalie Favell, Shelley Niro, Hanah Claus and Daphne Odjig in this, “Legacy and Rebellion of Aboriginal Women’s Art.”

Claiming Space at the Kamloops Art Gallery

I am working on a series of new work for an upcoming show curated by Jordan Strom at the Kamloops Art Gallery, Claiming Space April 5 to May 24, 2009. The new works are examining land and geological formations in my home territory Secwepemculecw, Land of the Shuswap, and relating Secwepemc story and culture as embedded in the landscape.