HOLD FAST Artists 2021
Drew Pardy and Elizabeth Cook
Elizabeth Cook is a 2021 Master of Architecture graduate from the University of Calgary. She previously studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and received a BA with a Major in Classics and a Minor in Archaeology. She also received a certificate in Ancient Languages and a diploma in Ancient Worlds. Her academic studies include projects located in Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Detroit.
Drew Pardy is a multi-disciplinary artist working through installations, performance, textiles and social engagement. She received her BFA in 2019 from Grenfell Campus, Memorial University and is currently based in St. John’s, NL. Pardy has exhibited her work provincially and internationally at venues such as Grenfell Art Gallery, the Tina Dolter Gallery, and PULP Gallery in Corner Brook, NL; St. Michael’s Printshop in St John’s, NL; and Gatehouse Arts in Harlow, England.
Lily Taylor
Lily Taylor is an illustrator & multidisciplinary artist living in St. John’s, Canada. She earned a BDes majoring in Illustration and minoring in printmaking from OCAD University. She graduated with the Project 31 Illustration award. Lily was born and raised in Stratford, Ontario and moved to St. John’s in September 2018. Lily has worked freelance for numerous clients and shown at several galleries both in Toronto and St. John’s.
Phlegm Fatales
The Phlegm Fatales are St. John’s weirdest drag collective. An ooey gooey team of clowns, actors, singers, dancers, circus, and visual artists, Phlegm shows are nothing short of immersive theatrical experiences complete with narratives, characters, dialogue, sets, projections (and projectiles). Sometimes sexy, often silly, always twisted tongue-in-cheek political commentary, these gender subversives will have you rolling out of your seats and begging for more. The Phlegm Fatales are: Amanita 95, \garbagefile, Eda Kumquat, Liezel Hues, Madame Daddy, Wych Hazel, and the (ir)matriarch, Irma Gerd.
Robyn Love
Love received her BFA from Cooper Union in New York City and has an extensive record of exhibitions, residencies and public projects at galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Struts Gallery, The Brooklyn Museum, and Northern University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. She created a permanent public art project for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in a high school in NYC and made a five kilometer-long site-specific crocheted installation in Cheongju, South Korea, for the Craft Biennale there in 2011. Robyn has received numerous grants to create new work from foundations and public agencies, including the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2021, she will make a site-specific installation on a fish flake in Bonavista, NL, that asks us to acknowledge the labour of the women in the community – efforts that have never been publicly recognized. A performance of reading the names of the women in the community based on census date from the 1930s will accompany the installation.
Aram Han Sifuentes
Aram Han Sifuentes who is based in Chicago is a fiber and social practice artist who works to claim spaces for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion and protest. Aram is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2016 3Arts Awardee, and a 2020 Map Fund Grantee.
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