May 2024

Alexandra Bischoff (Long Term Artist, Onsite Coordinator 2023-24)

Alexandra Bischoff (b. 1991, Amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton, AB) holds a Fine-Arts Diploma from MacEwan University (2012), a BFA in Visual Arts Studio from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2015), and an MFA from Concordia University in Intermedia (2021). Bischoff’s artworks manifest as multimedia installations, sculptures, and writing; their artmaking processes as a whole are based in durational performance. While in residency at SAR, Bischoff has been researching family archives and Canada’s homesteading histories to investigate what it means to be a housing-insecure settler on stolen Indigenous land.

Miriam Gil

Miriam Gil is a visual artist based in North Vancouver. She holds a Masters Degree in Art Education from UBC and a Bachelor of Arts from Simon Fraser University. Her engagement in the arts dates since 1985, when she became interested in the study of animals in relationship to the culture we live in. Recently, she shifted her attention to the study of trees, and started a new series of work entitled The Tree of Life, where she examines the symbol of the tree as a life giving force. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. 

Chantal Rousseau

Chantal Rousseau is a queer settler artist. Her practice is informed by a bioregional focus, using both embodied experience and research to learn about specific ecosystems. Recent career highlights include a solo show at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 2020, and two temporary public art commissions, one for the City of Kingston, the other for Erindale Park in Mississauga. In 2021 she participated in four residencies, including: a virtual residency between Sweden, Spain, and Canada, in a mobile off-grid tiny house on Manitoulin Island, hosted by 4elements Living Arts; and at Bareneed Studios and the Pouch Cove Foundation, both in Newfoundland. In 2022 she will be an artist-in-residence at The Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in Dawson City.

Andreas Rutkauskas

I have been making photographs of landscapes for over twenty years, six of which have been dedicated to the aftermath and regeneration following wildfire. My past projects have focused on land that has been transformed through the implementation of a range of technologies, including surveillance along the Canada/U.S. border and cycles of industrialization & deindustrialization in Canada’s oil patch. I was the inaugural artist in residence at the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment (2020), a Research Fellow with the Canadian Photography Institute (2018), and I was a finalist for the Gabriele Basilico International Prize in Architecture and Landscape in 2016. My work is held in private and public collections, including the Canadian War Museum, and the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery. I currently teach photography at The University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus, on unceded Syilx territory.

Lori Weidenhammer

Lori Weidenhammer, aka Madame Beespeaker, is a Vancouver performance-based interdisciplinary artist and educator. She is a settler originally from Cactus Lake Saskatchewan. It is in this place, bordered by wheat fields and wild prairie, that she first became enchanted with bees. She is the author of a book called Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide for Saving the Bees. For the past several years she has been appearing as the persona Madame Beespeaker, practicing the tradition of “telling the bees”. As a food security volunteer, artist and activist Lori works with students of all ages on eating locally and gardening for pollinators. She uses many art forms in her teaching and art practice including garden designing, drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, cyanotypes, sculpture, photography, textiles, singing, culinary arts and installation. Using all the skills in her artist’s tool kit, Lori Weidenhammer works to be positive force giving people of all ages new ways to connect to the beauty and wonder of BC’s native bees.