oxygen logo

Oxygen Art Centre

MENTORSHIPArtist Talk
Saturday, April 1, 2023 @ 1:00 – 2:30 PM
Nadia Chaney + Zoe Kreye
Free to attend; Register via EventBrite
 
Workshop #1
Saturday, April 15, 2023 @ 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Nadia Chaney
Registration fee: $20; Register via Google Form
 
Workshop #2
Friday, April 28, 2023 @ 1:00 – 3:30 PM
Zoe Kreye
Registration fee: $20; Register via Google Form

Taking its name from something that whirls, coils, or spirals or whose form suggests such movement, and the concentric arrangement of a snail’s shell, Oxygen Art Centre is thrilled to present “whorl,” a public artist talk and contemporary art workshop series featuring Nadia Chaney (Kanata, Canada) and Zoe Kreye (Vancouver, Canada).

To begin the series, Chaney and Kreye will present an online artist talk on Saturday, April 1, 2023, from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM PST. The event will introduce the public and workshop participants to the artists and their respective practices. A short Q&A period will follow the talks, which will touch on the overlapping and divergent threads in their work.
 The workshops are two-hours in length each and provide participatory engagements with contemporary art discourses and practices to encourage non-linear curiosity in your creative approaches.whorl is a contemporary art series that invites the public and artists of all stages and backgrounds to engage in intensive artistic mentorship on the topics of embodiment, somatics, and performance practice. MOREWORKSHOP #1Saturday, April 15, 2023 @ 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Nadia Chaney
Registration fee: $20; Register via Google FormIn this workshop you will be welcomed to the Time Zone Research Lab archive! We use an intuitive process called Web Walking to trip lightly through the recordings of 102 daylong conversations about Time and Temporality. We will punctuate the Web Walking with silence (for making) and elongate its strands with whatever thoughts, bidden and unbidden, occur to us. The art of deep listening and tentacular thinking. You can expect to leave with a short work in a medium of your choice that is an open investigation of an aspect of Time and Temporality.  You are encouraged to join the Time Zone anytime before or after the workshop.REGISTERWORKSHOP #2Friday, April 28, 2023 @ 1:00 – 3:30 PM
Zoe Kreye
Registration fee: $20; Register via Google FormZoe Kreye is an interdisciplinary artist whose performance and installation work engages audiences in participatory and embodied happenings. Her focus on motherhood, grief, and the experience of loss in the body are activated through painting, tapestry, and ceramic works, alongside her somatic and bodywork practices. Kreye’s workshop will invite participants to engage in a series of movements to engage with drawing and sculpture through somatic practices.REGISTERABOUT THE ARTISTSNadia Chaney was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Treaty 6) of Indian descent. Performing and presenting since early childhood, Nadia has been professionally active since 1998 in poetry, music, creative non-fiction, visual arts, social practice and performance installation. She has also trained in clown, short and long fiction, memoir and action theatre. At the core of these many modes is community art and the belief that creativity is an illimitable birthright for all beings, human and beyond.
 
Her current work is as the founder and caremaker of the Time Zone Research Lab, a non-local and nonlinear collective for arts-based research into the nature of time and temporality. There are currently 332 international members of the Time Zone, plus a complementary drop-in research node designed for children ages 3-17, the Star Holders. We have completed 103 sessions, and over 75 children’s sessions thus far.
 
Our main instructors at the Time Zone are a ceramic octopus (Epok the Usher) created by Wai-Yant Li and designed to generate quantum oscillations and tentacular transversals across chronosocial materialities and a centenarian sourdough starter who hears everything. 
 
Through practices of reading, care work, listening, singing, dreaming, sleeping, baking, improvising, puppeteering, painting, film, interrupting, transpersonal shift and rhythm(s) (and more) we investigate two major questions: 1) how can we be more intimate with Time 2) how can we help to liberate Time / how is Time incarcerated. Our methods are both a- and interdisciplinary, deeply social, intentionally secretive (both secret and secretion), generous, gentle, and fun.
 
 
Zoe Kreye creates interdisciplinary art projects that explore transformation, embodiment and collective experience. Recent projects include De Fem (WAAP, Vancouver), Make Our Own Air (SPACE, London), Our Missing Body (Hochparterre Berlin, Western Front, Kamloops Art Gallery), FutureLoss (grunt gallery), Unlearning Practices (Unit Pitt, Goethe Satellite, <rotor> Graz). Working in the realms of sculpture, dance/movement, drawing and somatics, her projects take shape as installations, workshops, rituals and journeys. Materially she works close to the body using clay, cloth, foam and gestural lines. She creates artworks through transcendent experiences, then invites publics and performers into the installations to embody, disrupt and explore the transformative capacity of sensation, narrative and ritual. She holds an MFA in Public Art and Social Practice from the Bauhaus University Weimar and a BFA in Sculpture from Concordia University Montreal. She co-founded the Berlin artist collective Process Institute. She is currently based in Vancouver and teaches studio and Social Practice at Emily Carr University.MOREAUTHOR READING SERIESKathy Friedman + Erin Robinsong
Wednesday April 19, 2023, 4:00 PM PST (Zoom)
Register via EventBrite

We are thrilled to welcome Kathy Friedman and Erin Robinsong at Oxygen Art Centre’s Author Reading Series on Wednesday April 19th at 4:00 PM PST on Zoom.
 
Kathy Friedman is a writer and professor, joining us from Toronto, Canada. Her recent collection of stories, All the Shining People, is published by House of Anasi Press in 2022.
 
All the Shining People explores migration, diaspora, and belonging within Toronto’s Jewish South African community, as individuals come to terms with the oppressive hierarchies that separate, and the connections that bind. Seeking a place to belong, the book’s characters — including a life-drawing model searching the streets for her lover; a woman confronting secrets from her past in the new South Africa; and a man grappling with the legacy of his father, a former political prisoner — crave authentic relationships that replicate the lost feeling of home. With its focus on family, culture, and identity, All the Shining People captures the experiences of immigrants and outsiders with honesty, subtlety, and deep sympathy. 
 
Accompanying Friedman is poet and interdisciplinary artist, Erin Robinsong who is currently based in Montréal, Canada, but will be joining us from the United Kingdom for the event.
 
Robinsong’s recent book of poetry, Wet Dream, is published by Brick Books (2022). Wet Dream is an expansive book of ecological thinking for living on a wet planet on fire. Erotic and political, vibrating with pleasures, medicines, and unrest, these poems metabolize toxic logics and traverse enmeshed ecologies through the wetness that connects. A pulse of agency to the heart.
 
The evening will also feature a reading by student writer from the Selkirk College Creative Writing Program.
 
Join us on Wednesday, April 19, 2023 @ 4:00 PM PST on Zoom to participate in the second instalment of the Author Reading Series featuring Kathy Friedman and Erin Robinsong. Admission is free or by donation. Register via EventBrite to attend.
 
Please note the Author Reading Series event with Canisia Lubrin and Jessica Johns has been rescheduled to take place on May 10, 2023, at 4:00 PM PST on Zoom. Register via EventBrite to attend.

This event is generously supported by this Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance. Special thanks to Oxygen’s Author Reading Series committee.ABOUT THE AUTHORSKathy Friedman studied creative writing at UBC and the University of Guelph, and she was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Grain, Geist, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, and Canadian Notes & Queries. Her first collection of short stories, All the Shining People, was published in April 2022 with House of Anansi. She is currently at work on a collection of essays about travel, music, and mental health.A full-time professor in Humber College’s Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing program, Kathy has been teaching creative writing to diverse adult communities since 2013 through NISA/Northern Institute for Social Action, Workman Arts, The 519, Progress Place, CAMH, and the Toronto Public Library.Kathy is also the co-founder and artistic director of InkWell Workshops, which delivers free creative writing workshops to people with mental health and addiction issues. She is the publisher of four literary anthologies with in-house imprint InkWell Books, and she edited the anthology Brilliance Is the Clothing I Wear, published by Dundurn Press in June 2021. Quill & Quire called this latest anthology a “polished, triumphant collection.”Kathy emigrated with her family from South Africa to Thornhill, Ontario, when she was five. She now lives in Toronto, an uninvited guest on the shared Ancestral territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit and other Anishinaabe Nations, as well as the Wendat and other Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She endeavours to live in right relation with the land and its original inhabitants and caretakers, and to uphold the values embedded in the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Treaty.
 Erin Robinsong is a poet and interdisciplinary artist working with ecological imagination. Her debut collection of poetry, Rag Cosmology, won the 2017 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and she is the author of Liquidity (House House Press, 2020) and Wet Dream (Brick Books, 2022).A PhD student at Concordia University, Erin’s research-creation work focuses on ecological imagination in contemporary poetry. With scholar and place-based educator Michael Datura, she co-organized a Geopoetics Symposium & Residency on Cortes Island in spring 2022, bringing together poets, scholars, activists and place-based educators around questions of what it means to think and create with the more-than-human world.Collaborative performance works with Andréa de Keijzer and Hanna Sybille Müller include This ritual is not an accident; Facing away from that which is coming; revolutions and Polymorphic Microbe Bodies. Originally from Cortes Island, Erin is grateful to make her home in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.*UPDATE*


10 May 2023 @ 4:00 PM PST (Zoom)
Canisia Lubrin
Jessica Johns
Register via EventBrite

Join us for the last event for the Spring 2023 Author Reading Series program featuring Canisia Lubrin and Jessica Johns. Everyone welcome to attend. Admission is free. Learn more on our website.MOREEDUCATIONLino Printing – Reduction Technique
w/ Myra RasmussenIN PERSON
1 Class: Apr. 15
Saturday: 10am – 4pm (1hr lunch)In this class students will use one lino block and print it multiple times, carving a bit away each time. Through this process we will create a print with multiple colours, each layer overtop the previous one. This class is appropriate for all skill levels, whether you have experience with relief printing or if this will be your first time.  Material Fee: $20Course Fee: $80TOTAL FEE: $100

The Open Studio – Making time for the Actor’s Work w/ Valerie CampbellIN PERSON
1 Class: Apr. 22
Saturday: 10am – 5pm (1/2hr lunch)This workshop will offer a rare opportunity for actors–one that is the norm for visual artists–a full day in an open studio setting to work and play with an emphasis on process over product. Explore your art, work on your craft. Flex your creative expression muscles, loosen up your imagination, and cultivate responsiveness, spontaneity, and authenticity.Suitable for experienced and aspiring actors with an interest in creative process and for those looking for a place to practice away from the constraints of a production.TOTAL FEE: $95

Magic of Memory w/ Rayya LiebichONLINE
4 Classes: May 23 – June 15
Tuesdays: 6:30 – 8:30pmWe often recall memories in fragments. By accessing our scattered memories and borrowing from the container of non-linear structures we can record our life stories in authentic and innovative ways. Each week we will take a deep dive into a different literary form (prose poetry, flash non-fiction, epistolary writing, and the hermit crab essay) to enter our material sideways and find new shapes to unpack our experiences. Each class will include a study of the craft, guided writing prompts, and readings by authors who push the boundaries of hybrid creative non-fiction (CNF) forms. If you are working on a difficult memoir or looking for new ways to tell your familiar stories, this series will give you a chance to play, experiment, and come back to the magic of memory and the importance of meaning-making.  TOTAL FEE: $95REGISTERFALL SEMESTERPlan ahead! Oxygen’s Fall 2023 Semester is now open for registration. Continue learning a medium, explore a new one, dream, sing, and gather together, make your own screen printed artist book, and learn to paint!

Learn about the classes, instructors, and how to register via our website. Spaces limited. Contact Natasha Smith (Education Coordinator) with questions or registration support.REGISTERJOINSupport your artist-run centre by becoming an Oxygen Art Centre Member.

Oxygen Memberships run from $2 (Senior/Student) to $5 (Single) to $10 (Families) and significantly help our organization. Become a member today!

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITSEvents, Tours and Artist TalksVolunteer, Networking and Mentorship ExperienceRegular mailings and newslettersVoting Privileges at Oxygen Art Centre’s AGMAccess to current Exhibition Publications and CataloguesArtist-in-Residence and Exhibition ToursRegister ONLINE or by MAIL
Already a Member? Consider making a Donation.REGISTERImages (top to bottom): (1) Promotional image for “whorl” public talk + online workshop series, 2023; (2) Nadia Chaney, The Game of Recollection Pt. 2, 2023; Digital collage; (3) Installation view of Zoe Kreye, Uncommon Language exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, October 17, 2020 to April 5, 2021; (4) Nadia Chaney (L); Zoe Kreye (R); (5) Composite image of two book covers: Kathy Friedman (L) + Erin Robinsong (R); (6) Kathy Friedman (L) + Erin Robinsong (R); (7) OAC ARS poster, 2023; (8-10) OAC Spring semester promotional images, 2023; (11) OAC 2023 Spring and Fall Semester promo image, 2023; (12) “Become a Member” text overlaid on an image documenting an installation in progress at Oxygen Art Centre, 2015;