As part of the Prairie Webinar Series, CARFAC Alberta, CARFAC Saskatchewan and CARFAC Manitoba are pleased to present:
PUBLIC ART
with Adrian A. Stimson & Sydney Lancaster
The Prairie Webinar Series is proud to prioritize the expertise of artists working in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, promoting discussion with our provincial neighbours on various topics while sharing investment in prairie perspectives. The formula is simple: look forward to two 25-minute presentations from two artists speaking to their practice and their experience with a given discussion topic, followed by a 30-minute Q&A period.
In this special Prairie Webinar, a team member from CARFAC National will highlight the newly published Public Art Toolkit.
SYDNEY LANCASTER is a queer visual artist and writer living in Mtapan/Wolfville, in unsurrendered and unceded Mi’kmaq territory. Her practice considers the intersections of place, history, memory, and identity through the lenses of ecology and settler-colonialism. Her approach to making is rooted in the senses and the body in space. Often work in site-responsive ways, she responds to her environment through printmaking, sculpture and installation, video and sound. They are represented commercially by Harvest Gallery.
Sydney holds an MFA in Studio Practice from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and was a SSHRC recipient for her MFA research. She has received funding for her practice through the EAC, AFA, and Canada Council, and held several artists’ residencies, including at Gros Morne National Park. She has a collaborative essay collection (with Geoff Martin) titled Channel Migration: Moving With an Urban Creek due for release by PS Guelph in 2027, and a chapbook of poetry co-authored with Jannie Edwards, entitled Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place, published by Collusion Books in Kjipuktuk/Halifax NS in 2022.
She is a member of VANS, CARFAC Maritimes, CHRC, and volunteered for over a decade on the Boards of CARFAC Alberta, CARFAC National, and Copyright Visual Arts. They have held the position of Community Relations Advisor with CARFAC National since Fall of 2024.
ADRIAN A. STIMSON is a member of the Siksika Nation, Treaty 7, Alberta.
Adrian has a BFA with distinction from the Alberta University of the Arts and MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. He has exhibited in three International Biennales, Photo Quai, Paris, France 2009, The Shoreline Dilemma, Toronto 2019 and Narin, Sydney 2020.
Adrian majored in painting, His paintings vary from abstract to realism, his bison paintings are melancholic, memorializing, political and sometimes whimsical.
His performance art looks at identity construction, specifically the hybridization of the Indian, cowboy, shaman and Two Spirit being. Buffalo Boy, The Shaman Exterminator and Lord of the Plains are reoccurring personas.
His installation work examines the residential school experience; he attended three residential schools in his life, works that speak to genocide, loss and resilience.
His public art includes; Spirit of Alliance, Saskatoon; Bison Sentinel healing gardens of the FNU Regina. Inii Bison Heart, Animals that Roam the prairie, Sweet Grass Bison, Past Present Future count in Calgary, National Monument to Canadas Mission in Afghanistan, In progress, Ottawa, From Earth to Sky in Airdrie and recently announced The Wandering Spirit, Indian Residential School Memorial, Calgary.
He was a participant in the Canadian Forces Artist Program, which sent him to Afghanistan in 2010.
Adrian was awarded the Alumi of Influence award by the University of Saskatchewan in 2020, the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018. REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award –Hnatyshyn Foundation 2017. He was awarded the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003.
Webinars are free for CARFAC Alberta, Saskatchewan & Manitoba members and $25.00 for non-members. Registration/payment option through Eventbrite.