5 Artists' Practicum Experiences at Banff Centre

Jacqueline Bell, Curatorial Research Practicum

Over the past year I’ve worked as the curatorial research practicum at Walter Phillips Gallery. I am lucky that the team here has been supportive of my individual curatorial practice. This image is from the exhibition and residency, Help Wanted that I organized with the Cocina Abierta Collective last summer. The collective’s public practice provides a platform for engaging restaurant workers and consumers in dialogue about the realities of the restaurant industry. The project took place in Los Angeles at the non-profit art space, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), located in the neighbourhood of Hollywood. During their residency, the collective investigated the neighborhood from the perspective of the restaurant worker.

Andrea DeBruijn, Printmaking Studio Practicum

I’m an artist and a printmaker, currently completing a year-long studio practicum at Banff Centre. My art practice encompasses traditional print methods like screen-printing and woodcut, as well as digital printing, drawing and collage. Much of my work has explored themes of trace, intimacy, memory and nostalgia. These notions continue to inform my recent projects, which contend with home/homesickness, longing/belonging, and being in-between.

I have come to feel very at home at Banff Centre, where a typical week might involve assisting an artist with a screen-print project, participating in a typography demo, attending an open studio event, and learning how to press handmade paper or develop black and white film. The generous mentorship of Wendy and the other studio facilitators have invested me with technical knowledge but also with heaps of confidence! It’s been amazing to work with the VA team to deliver our programs; to meet so many different artists and to be exposed to their practices.

Although the future is a mystery at the moment, I know that I will always find home in any place with a printmaking studio! I look forward to continuing to explore the skills and the concepts I have been developing while at Banff Centre, no matter where I go next.

Jennifer Laiwint, Photography Studio Practicum

I’m a visual artist from Toronto, Ontario currently working at Banff Centre in the studio arts and photography practicum program.

Since starting my practicum at Banff Centre, I’ve expanded my skills in both analog and digital photo-based processes and exhibited my work in Calgary with The New Gallery’s +15 Window Space. I’ve had the privilege of helping support artists with their projects, attending artist talks and exhibitions as well as having access to shared studio spaces and resources for my own practice. Being exposed to a multitude of diverse artists has been tremendously enriching and has undoubtedly influenced my own art practice and goals. What is more, having the opportunity to be mentored by incredible studio facilitators has helped me develop my confidence in my technical knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a practicing artist

In my personal practice, I use photography, installation and video to explore psychologically charged terrain that navigates the lines between truth and fiction.  I am currently interested in self-help and the trust we put into authors and healers who guarantee healing by way of an easy to follow methodology. The project that I’m working on right now engages in a close reading of a self-help book to create visual stories and performances, which disrupt the claims of the so-called expert and reveal what manifests when we try to do something “all on our own.”

Kasia Sosnowski, Preparatorial Practicum

My name is Kasia Sosnowski and I am an artist from Lethbridge, Alberta working at Banff Centre as part of the Walter Phillips Gallery preparatorial team. 

Working at Banff Centre as part of the preparatorial team for the Walter Phillips Gallery on two massive installations, Neil Beloufa’s Counting on People and the group show Séance Fiction, has been an invaluable learning experience. I’ve found the practicum program is a nice balance between work and my artistic practice. We have shared studio spaces where we can work on our art in a supportive, encouraging, and fluid artistic environment. Because of the structure here I have been able to dedicate a lot of time working on my own practice, and I am currently making work for my first solo show in Calgary in TRUCK’s +15 window space.

Lately I have been focusing on ideas around the body, transgressive bodies, phantom limb syndrome, loss, and ideas of ‘the self’. More specifically, exploring how the body is a site and vessel for our ideas of ‘self’ and how trauma, shock, or loss can affect our internalized image of ourselves. Additionally I am curious about the power that the physical manifestations of our bodies have over self-image, transgressive acts, gender identity, and embodiment of the abject. 

Cora-Allan Wickliffe, Preparatorial Practicum

Over the last year I have met amazing people who have presented me with exhibition opportunities. I have been fortunate to have shown in multiple spaces throughout Canada, and presented a work at last year’s Convergence Summit. Most recently, I had an installation piece at the +15 Untitled Art Society Window space which featured hand-made and found objects that were highlighted and encompassed by rich earth. 

This piece is from a new series –‘#miseducation series’ (2015), a small body of work that encourage the position and validity of Indigenous stories told by indigenous people.