Panel Discussion: Making and Materiality

PANEL: MAKING AND MATERIALITY WITH LARRY WEYAND
Featuring: Bruno Vinhas, Nicole Travers, and Nico Williams
Art as a Tool for Change Symposium
March 3, 1-2:30 PM

As part of the Art as a Tool for Change Symposium March 3rd, 2022 Materiality influences making. Materiality is a tangible way to relate. Materiality plays a crucial role in informing how we connect to the world around us. This panel discusses how research methodologies in contemporary craft-based practices uncover deeply-rooted narratives through making. Artists Nicole Travers, Nico Williams and Bruno Vinhas joined Larry Weyand for a conversation about process and material practices as tools to connect to land, place, and community.

Larry Weyand is a rug hooker whose work defies the established properties of traditional floor decor, domesticity and gender. Fueled by the complex history of processed foods, emotional trauma, autoethnography, queerness, and domestic spaces, Larry investigates how hard-to-swallow narratives can occupy space within the soft, fluffy dis/comfort of textile-based craft. Larry’s textile work has been presented across Canada, most recently at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery (St. John’s, NL, 2019-2020), Neutral Ground Artist Run Center (Saskatoon, SK, 2020-2021), the Art Gallery of Burlington (Burlington, ON, 2021), and Struts & Faucet Artist Run Center (Sackville, NB, 2019). Larry has recently been the recipient of a substantial Canada Council for the Arts Grant as well as the City of St. John’s Artist Grant to develop a pivotal body of work about bathrooms, to unpack their experience as a gender-neutral person. Having completed their MFA at Concordia University in Fibres & Material Practices, Larry is now a Visiting Assistant Professor in Textile Arts at Memorial University’s Grenfell campus in Newfoundland & Labrador.

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ (b. 1989) is Anishinaabe and member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation community. He is currently working in Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang | Montréal. He has a multidisciplinary, often collaborative practice that is centered around sculptural beadwork.

Williams is an active member in the urban Indigenous Montreal Arts community, a board member for the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (Contemporary Native Art Biennial), and a member of the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team. He has taught workshops at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NSCAD University, the Indigenous Art Centre, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), and Carleton University.

His work has been shown internationally and across Canada, including at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Musée des beaux-arts Montreal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Victoria Arts Council (British Columbia), PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art (Tiohtiá:ke), La Guilde (Tiohtiá:ke) and his most recent solo exhibition, Chi-Miigwech at Never Apart (Tiohtiá:ke).

Williams’s practice has been featured by National Geographic (2018) and CBC (2021) and is housed in prominent public collections including Musee des beaux-arts Montreal, Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Archives Nationales du Québec, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, and the Royal Bank of Canada Art Collection. His first public sculpture, Monument to the Brave, was commissioned in 2020 by the Sick Kids Foundation.

Brazilian by birth, Bruno Vinhas is passionate about global craft culture which drove his will to work in a gallery environment. A degree in Tourism and Hospitality has provided Vinhas with the experience of living and working in multiple countries and being immersed in different cultures changed his perspective about art and craft. Graduate with honours through College of North Atlantic’s Textiles: Craft & Apparel Design program in 2017, Vinhas started his career in the arts through theatre in Brazil, where he worked as director, set and costume designer, and teaching. Since leaving his home country he has been part of several different projects including but not limited to curatorial practices, visual arts with focus on textile and multimedia, theatre, film and dance. He has been working as the Craft Council of Newfoundland’s Gallery Director/Curator since August 2018, previously holding the position of Gallery Assistant Director for a year; his primary focus in a  gallery environment regards accessibility and inclusion in public art spaces.Brazilian by birth, Bruno Vinhas is passionate about global craft culture which drove his will to work in a gallery environment. A degree in Tourism and Hospitality has provided Vinhas with the experience of living and working in multiple countries and being immersed in different cultures changed his perspective about art and craft. Graduate with honours through College of North Atlantic’s Textiles: Craft & Apparel Design program in 2017, Vinhas started his career in the arts through theatre in Brazil, where he worked as director, set and costume designer, and teaching. Since leaving his home country he has been part of several different projects including but not limited to curatorial practices, visual arts with focus on textile and multimedia, theatre, film and dance. He has been working as the Craft Council of Newfoundland’s Gallery Director/Curator since August 2018, previously holding the position of Gallery Assistant Director for a year; his primary focus in a  gallery environment regards accessibility and inclusion in public art spaces.

Born and raised in the small hamlet of Little Port, Elmastukwek  (Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), Nicole Travers is a  Mi’kmaw artist, mother, and steward of the land and water. A  self-taught artist whose creativity was sparked by old style  beadwork found in museums, Nicole has been dedicated to  learning traditional Mi’kmaw styles of bead work since 2015.  After years of cultivating a deep connection with her  Indigenous roots, the influence of the traditional Mi’kmaq  double curve, petroglyphs and hieroglyphs is apparent in her  work as she marries historical styles of bead work with  modern day techniques into contemporary form. Most recently, Nicole has begun to tan various animal pelts and skins into leather using traditional teachings and now utilizes home tanned fish skin in her art, creating sought after unique pieces.  Nicole has been sharing her skills through workshops and one-on-one teaching sessions for several years and her small business, Blomidon Beadwork, has earned her recognition in the fine arts community. In 2020 she was awarded the Ulnooweg Cottage Crafters Award, as well as a residency in Cross Currents Artist in Residence at Fogo Island Arts, Summer 2021. Nicole’s work was featured on the cover of the Riddle Fence Spring 2021 issue. 

Art as a Tool for Change is supported in part by the Canadian Artist Presentation Fund.
Ce projet est financé  par le gouvernement du Canada