Blog

No matter the discipline, the creative process is a process! Professional mentorship can help artists work through creative blocks, bounce ideas off each other and share knowledge gained in years of experience in the arts. Playwrights Ellen Peterson and Sarah Flynn recently completed the Professional Mentorship Program through Creative Manitoba and shared a few of the highlights with us!

Mentoring is a rewarding experience for both the mentor and the mentee. Creative Manitoba serves as a facilitator to help up-and-coming rural artists find mentors to further their artistic growth.

A recent graduate of our Exchange Arts Incubator program, Solange Roy is a Francophone, Indigenous ceramic artist living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Solange obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from the University of Manitoba in 2022. She won the People’s Choice award at the BFA Honours exhibition and her cake sculpture “You Want a Piece of Me?” won the provincial prize for the BMO 1st Art! National Competition. Solange specializes in hand-building methods to create intricate, colourful and unique sculptures.

In this spotlight, we feature visual artist and mentor Kelly Klick and her mentee Atlas Lister. Read on to find out more about their experiences working together!

Mentorship pair Colten Matousek & BJ Verot are taking part in our 2022/2023 Professional Mentorship Program, in the discipline of film. They have been working on developing Colten’s first official short film: developing the script, editing, shot listing, and refining grant writing skills.

Lake Winnipeg is Gayle Halliwell’s first love; her watercolours of this freshwater ocean are in collections across North America. As painting large is also a favourite challenge for Gayle, she gleefully splashes acrylics across canvas as well. When neither media represents a subject that dominates her mind’s eye, she turns to clay and squishes out shapes that play on her theme. In 2010, Gayle rehabbed a derelict building in Winnipeg Beach to become Studio 410. Typically a messy hive of creativity, she tidies for The WAVE Studio Tour, appointments and to host…

Mentorship pair Lara Schroeder & Débora Cardaci took part in our 2022/2023 Rural Mentorship Program, in the discipline of visual art, working with molds, oil painting and charcoal.

Mentorship pair Parker Koepnick & Victoria Emilie Hill are taking part in our 2022/2023 Professional Mentorship Program, in the discipline of movement and contact improv. They’ve been taking a holistic approach to movement, focusing on discovery and exploration in a low stress environment. Within Contact Improv and movement Victoria has mentored Parker on ranges of dynamics, lifts, emotions, inner battles, overcoming, and experimentation. This has involved many hours of rolling on the floor, falling into the floor, and finding a way to remember to bring my knee pads to the studio.

Alan Lacovetsky has been making functional pottery and sculpture from custom-mixed clays for nearly fifty years. He has worked and exhibited throughout Canada, the US, Australia, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Croatia. After receiving a Master’s degree from the University of North Dakota, he taught at both the University of Manitoba and Brandon University. His earthy and ageless work is made on a foot-powered wheel and fired in a wood-burning kiln in a studio near Oak Hammock Marsh, with many materials sourced locally.

Mentorship pair Hailey Witt and Brenda Gorlick are taking part in our 2022/2023 Professional Mentorship Program, in the discipline of dance, choreography and musical theatre.