The Toni Onley Artists' Project
The Island Mountain Arts Society in Wells, BC, which celebrates its 30th Anniversary this year, is excited to welcome visual artists Chris Cran, RCA and Michelle Forsyth as artist mentors at this summer's Wells Artists Project for Professional and Emerging Artists.
To add to the excitement is the announcement that this summer the Wells Artists' Project will be officially renamed the Toni Onley Artists' Project. The renaming is the first step in a long term vision to develop an eight-month artist development program in Wells, called the Toni Onley School, where participating artists will live and work in the remote hamlet of historic Wells in order to create a body of work for exhibition.
"Toni Onley (1928 - 2004) very much embodied the spirit of this project, as he had a great passion for going into remote areas in order to gain inspiration and paint, he also was very savvy in the business of being a successful Canadian artist. With the Toni Onley School in Wells we hope to honour and celebrate these aspects of Toni and develop a program that will help artists to develop their studio practice, as well as their knowledge of the business side of art," explains Island Mountain Arts' president, Dennis Bogle.
The Wells Artists' Project provides an eight-day intensive studio experience where artists work directly with the artist mentors and artist peers, it will continue each summer now under the name the Toni Onley Artists' Project.
Chris Cran, who will mentor at the project this year, teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design, has been described by the New York Times as a painter who "’Ķhas built a career on tampering with people's perceptions." Widely exhibited across Canada and internationally recognized, Cran's paintings have to do with visual tricks, images that appear one way but have been made another way.
Michelle Forsyth, who was born in Vancouver, currently teaches painting and drawing at Washington State University, but has also taught at the Pratt Institute in New York and at Brooklyn College. She has received many accolades including residencies at the Banff Centre, Emily Carr and most recently a Canada Council Professional Artist Grant. An artist who works in many mediums, Forsyth uses painting, needlepoint and paper-crafts to counter the dehumanization of rapidly transmitted digital images.
Both of these artists, with their diverse artistic practices and experiences, will provide mentorship to participants to help them explore and develop their work and engage in dialogue around contemporary art practice.
This project, which is limited to 16 participants, is currently accepting applications for the 2007 session, which runs July 21-29. A limited number of scholarships are also available, including a new scholarship in honour of Cariboo painter Sonia Cornwall (1919-2006), which will cover the full tuition for one artist living in the Cariboo. For more information please visit the Island Mountain Arts website at www.imarts.com
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