Community Connections – Meet the Artists!
Eastern Edge is excited to announce the artists selected for our Community Connections Public Artwork Project!
Community Connections draws from the Come Home Year 2022 Initiative’s goals of showcasing and celebrating local culture here in Newfoundland and Labrador. For this public art installation, artists were asked to explore themes of community, connection, and home. Reflecting on the effect that the pandemic had on connectedness, the project asks how NL-based artists experience community, and what it means to them. The four selected artists, who work in a variety of different mediums, have been hard at work, considering these themes and creating pieces that they hope will bring their community together once again.
In late August 2022, during our highly anticipated HOLD FAST Festival, we will be revealing the four original artworks at the Avalon Mall! To celebrate the unveiling of the works, there will be an opening reception at the mall (date TBD), where our community can gather and reconnect after an extended period of pandemic-induced social isolation.
Keep reading to meet the artists and see a sneak peak of their work!
SELECTED ARTISTS
Jessie Donaldson
“Foremostly, I am a pedestrian. I often live in vehicle-centric towns or cities, and find that the slowness of transportation on foot allows me to more-clearly witness and perceive the environments in which I exist and participate. These experiences play a large role in my work. Rebecca Solnit suspects “…that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour…” and I feel this sentiment. As a walker and an artist I continually seek to slow down and partake in life with more presence. Ktaqmkuk / Newfoundland is my chosen home, and through walking and hitchhiking I have connected with people and this land in unpredictable and delightful ways. I am compelled to draw some of these moments and glimpses, and hope others may relate to these experiences of daily life that contribute to a deep sense of Home.”
Jose Luis Gonzalez
JL González was born in Avellaneda, a city on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1980. He worked as an animator, illustrator and art director for motion graphic studios for several years while publishing his works online at www.elmundodejl.com and in print through self-published magazines (Bodhisatva!, Grotowski).
In 2009, González arrived in Newfoundland and Labrador where he continued his career by creating graphic novels and zines such as Año Sabático, Antes de Volver, or Loaded. Meanwhile, he contributed comic strips and illustrations to cultural newspapers (The Scope, The Overcast) and local musicians (Neil Conway, The Skylarks, etc.)
His more recent exhibitions include a solo show at The Rooms, a popup installation at Museo Mar (Contemporary Museum of Art, Mar del Plata, Argentina), and a group exhibition at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, Prince Edward Island, representing the emerging art scene in Newfoundland.
He is the co-founder of Toporama Prints, a design, screen printing and publishing studio responsible for the RPM illustrations and other graphics for businesses in the Trinity Bight area, such as Port Rexton brewery.
The artist has lived and worked in English Harbour, Trinity Bay, since 2019.
Tanea Hynes
Tanea Hynes is a 3rd generation open-pit mine worker, self-identified socialist, and woman of colonial-settler ancestry. Her works take an autobiographical and documentary approach to focus on the complex nature of extractive industries and the place of corporations within small, isolated towns. Through her images and works of various media, Hynes intends to build an intimate personal map of survival as a young woman, a hopeless romantic, and a worker under late-stage capitalism.
Hynes has shown work across North America and published a book entitled WORKHORSE in 2021. Hynes received the Hitting The High Notes fellowship (2020) and is the 2021 winner of the Roloff Beny Foundation Fellowship in photography.
Craig Francis Power
Craig Francis Power is a visual artist and the award-winning author of three novels. His hooked rugs have shown widely in galleries across Canada and he has attended art residencies in Sackville NB, the Banff Centre, Tuscany, and Beijing. He is a previous nominee for the Sobey Art Award.
This project is being generously funded by Come Home Year 2022.
