“What does it sound like when a class of Grade 10 visual art students have conversations — about art, life, and … anything — with a series of prominent visiting artists from their city / neighbourhood?”
That question will be answered when Public Energy Performing Arts and Mammalian Diving Reflex present These Are The Artists In Your Neighbourhood at The Gallery of Sorts at Watson & Lou during the First Friday Peterborough Art Crawl on March 3.
For the project, Public Energy curator Laurel Paluck chose six Peterborough artists whose work covers a wide range of creative mediums, from quilting to children’s illustration and multi-media installation: Nicole Bauberger, Anita Murphy, Kathryn Durst, Alice Olsen Williams, Gillian Turnham, and Melanie Marion McCall.
Each of the six artists was asked to prepare an educational art workshop for a Grade 10 art class from Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School, under the guidance of teachers Andrew Bigg and Lesley Givens.
The following day, the group of inquisitive high school students were allowed to ask the artists any question they wanted, with the artists choosing whether or not to answer the question. Then the roles were reversed, with the artists asking the questions and the students answering.
Finally, the artists were asked to leave the class and the students were interviewed about what they really thought.
The entire experience was recorded to audio and edited down to result in six frank, heartfelt, and silly conversations covering the whole spectrum of art, growing up, and pets.
The six conversations, along with a highlight reel of video documenting the artists’ classroom visits and interviews, will be presented at a free launch and listening party on Friday (March 3) at Watson & Lou at 383 Water Street in downtown Peterborough, who are opening up their Gallery of Sorts for the event.
Visitors, who can drop-in any time from 6 to 10 p.m. during the First Friday Art Crawl, have the option of listening to the interviews on headsets or by using their own devices to access the recordings, which will be available online through the websites of both Public Energy and Mammalian Diving Reflex.
These are the Artists In Your Neighbourhood is a mash-up of two popular Mammalian Diving Reflex touring projects: These Are the People In Your Neighbourhood and the award-winning audio series It’s Been A While.
Produced in collaboration with Public Energy, this new artist intervention and audio work was made possible in part by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Public Outreach program, the Ontario Arts Councils’ Artists in Communities and Schools program, and the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Resilient Communities Fund.
For more information about the project, visit publicenergy.ca/performance/these-are-the-artists-in-your-neighbourhood/.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a long-time media sponsor of Public Energy Performing Arts.
