Artists-In-Residence Talk Series
The energizing capacity of a period in residence is unmatched; residencies provide artists with essential time and space to develop their ideas within a network of peers. To celebrate the artists-in-residence at the Similkameen Artist Residency and Penticton & District Community Arts Council, this talk series gives artists at both institutions an opportunity to share their practices with each other and the public. Each month, one artist will give a 30-minute talk, with 30 minutes of Q&A to follow.
Free to attend
The Leir House, 220 Manor Park Ave, V2A 2R2
2026
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Rachel (Raquel) Crane is currently based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver B.C). Her practice investigates how space is understood through objects, and how distance, framing, and geometry function as a language mediating the relationship between architecture and the human body. She also explores themes of text, humor and the nuances of her Guatemalan and mixed cultural identity through 3D forms.
Register for the hybrid version here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/BL3Zj_oPQYSoWQ9vEzCpkQ
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Jennifer Wood is a Vancouver-based artist who works with building materials to create environments that heighten sensory perception and unsettle familiar interior forms. Her practice considers how trauma is carried in the body rather than resolved through narrative, attending to the tensions between visibility and concealment. Through a critique of gendered labour, she examines the invisible work that sustains the private sphere.
Register for the hybrid version here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DPwEqhuMRRal3PeU8_z44A
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Wei Cheng is a Vancouver-based artist whose practice centers on ceramics and the integration of found objects. She studied at Langara College and Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she developed a refined technical foundation and a deep appreciation for the expressive potential of clay.
“This talk will introduce my practice, which combines ceramics and found materials to investigate trace as both material and conceptual residue. I am interested in how materials can hold subtle marks of presence, absence, and time. Through small-scale, site-responsive sculpture work, I arrange fragments that quietly register what has been left behind. These works function as a kind of visual poem, allowing the traces emerge and whisper.”
Register for the hybrid version here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DPwEqhuMRRal3PeU8_z44A
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Simone Littledale Escobar is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice uses foraged and naturally derived mediums to explore themes of ecological grief, ties to place, life/death cycles, and personal geography. Her practice and experience is strongly shaped by her Colombian/Canadian heritage and her upbringing by the ever-changing waters of the Pacific Coast. Aside from visual art, Simone is a naturalist, educator, and poet who spends much of her time scouring Vancouver Island for interesting birds and rare plants. Simone has shown her work at Xchanges Gallery, Arc.Hive, and The Fifty Fifty in Victoria, and has completed artist residencies in Spain, Tahsis, and the Colombian Amazon. In this talk, Simone will touch on her journey into a land-based art practice, and share some results of her recent wildfire-centered research, which is the focus of her residency at SAR.
Register for the hybrid version here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/XX8riectTd2KqtijP15VTw
2025
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My name is Tree! I’ve been making art since I can remember. My family and community always encouraged me to keep pushing my craft in different directions. I’ve always had a lot of fun dressing up, for Halloween or just for fun! That and my love for animals lead me to discover the art of fursuit making, and the community around it. I would love to share my creative process with you, and tell you about all the ways this art inspires me.
Catch the hybrid recording of Tree’s talk on our YouTube here: https://youtu.be/IgXac6GPLY4
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I consider myself a contemporary figurative artist who tells stories. Selling my work was always irrelevant, I just needed to paint, to unburden myself through the telling and expressing of emotion, to gain insight and even compassion for myself and others as I connected and engaged with the completed figure. But then I did start to sell work to people who were moved by the story, by the emotion in a piece of work. It was at this stage that I started to realize how that heartfelt exchange and connection with a viewer was a powerful transformative experience for both of us. So, then I knew that showing my work, talking about the stories and intent, was now primary and that I could even use art to explore beyond the intimate, to my big social and political hairball issues.
I come to Similkameen residency with all that and to now embark on what for me is a risky and incredibly challenging project. I am aiming to feel into and give life to the pit of despair I feel and felt in response to the animals caught up in the McDougall Creek Fire. It was the animals that upset me the most, pierced my heart and made the event even more traumatic. That fire looked like Armageddon, a hell on earth, the end of all things, the great wrath of God (I was raised Mennonite) and what I “heard” as I watched the trees burn was the animals screaming. I want to try to explore that dreadful experience through art and not just the despair but the new plant life, the deer footprints I saw when visiting the McDougall creek site last month, two years on….
If you’re unable to attend in person, sign up for the hybrid Zoom version here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Dnsbg-6VRsO8pAuglM6sXQ
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“What do pigeons and my art practice have in common? We're both adaptable in the face of changing circumstances and thriving despite the odds! I'll be chatting about pigeons, my journey back to traditional media, and why I enjoy painting these clever little birds.”
Lindsay Peltz is a painter, illustrator, and cartoonist whose goal is to bring a little more light into the world with her work. Her preferred subjects are animals, although recently she's been dabbling in plein air landscape and urban watercolour painting. Lindsay lives in Penticton with her husband and sons, and when not drawing she can be found zipping around town on her bike, reading, and appreciating urban wildlife.
If you missed Lindsay’s talk, you can watch it on our YouTube here: https://youtu.be/LtK-PewaQpM
Pigeon Party
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Boya Liang is the winner of the Similkameen Artist Residency Studio Award, facilitated by Griffin Art Projects, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and SAR.
About her work, Boya notes: “My practice investigates the creation of spaces for encountering uncertainty, impermanence, and transformation. Drawing from my Chinese heritage and informed by experiences across diverse cultures, I navigate the confluence of art, science, and Daoist philosophy through material explorations that reveal invisible connections between individual existence and cosmic cycles.
I engage with materials as active collaborators. In my recent projects, I have worked with Xuan paper, incense, human hair, and cyanotype, materials that respond to time, environment, and touch. Process holds more weight than outcome. I burn incense directly on Xuan paper, allowing the slow movement of fire and smoke to inscribe time into the surface. The process becomes both ritual and revelation. Incense burns into smoke, smoke disperses into air, and ash settles on the ground—each stage marking the transformation of qi (炁), the life force that moves through all things, creating movements that mirror larger transformative processes. These dialogues manifest my belief that our lives participate in ongoing cycles of existence. Through ephemeral forms and quiet gestures, I invite viewers to experience the world’s inherent fluidity, finding stability not in fixed answers, but in movement, breath, and becoming.”
If you missed the talk, you can watch it here!
风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers
Liang, Boya. “风息未已 The Wind’s Breath Lingers”-Installation View. 2025. Xuan
paper, incense, incense ashes.
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Pink Hat Art is a part-time wizard conjuring creations from whatever happens to be nearby! Bits of cardboard? Yes. Forgotten magazines? Of course. A broken computer? If it fits, it sits. Their practice is powered by curiosity, chaos, and lots of snacks.
Working across collage, sculpture, illustration, writing, and the mysterious fifth thing they always forget to mention (oops!), Pink Hat Art invites others to slow down and notice the strange little stories hiding in everyday objects. No fancy tools required, just a glue stick and a bit of wonder.
They believe art should be a joyful mess! Accessible! A little weird! A spark of inspiration for the folks who thought they couldn’t make things.
Currently an Artist in Residence with PDCAC, Pink Hat Art remains deeply suspicious of blank canvases and is known to hoard googly eyes.
Pink Hat Art “WHAT’S THAT SAYING?”
"WHAT'S THAT SAYING? Things worth doing aren't going to be easy?," mixed media on paper, Pink Hat Art (2024)
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Raha Fard is an Iranian Canadian multidisciplinary artist, holding an MFA and BFA from OCAD University. She has a Master’s Degree in Telecommunication Engineering and 14 years of experience in that field before attending OCAD University. She explores the intersection of body, psychoanalysis, politics, and art in her works as a member of the Iranian diaspora and a cancer survivor.
Raha was selected as one of the three artist-researchers for the AGO X RBC Emerging Artist Exchange Program in 2024. She exhibited her works in Iran, Canada, Italy, and Korea. Ontario Art Council Project and exhibition Grant, Full Ontario Graduate Scholarship (5 semesters), Graduate Studies Research Grant, First Year Graduate Award, OCAD U President’s Award, Patricia Joy Alpert Memorial Award, Art Gallery of Mississauga’s 4th Annual Juried Show Second Prize and Scarborough Arts' 36th Annual Juried Exhibition Award are some of her awards. Also, she has published a novel in Farsi, “محوشدگی” with Mehri Publication based in the UK, which was included in the list of ten Farsi books published outside Iran in 2023 by BBC Farsi.
“Embodiment of the Intertwined” exhibition installation, Raha Fard (2024)
