MOCA Artist Series: Stephanie Fortin, David Frankovich and Maggie McCutcheon

There are only a few weeks left in Year 1 of the Akin Studio Program at MOCA , a unique studio residency program in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada.

Akin is honored to continue sharing profiles of the remarkable group of artists from our inaugural cohort in this final installation of the MOCA Artist Series. We have posted profiles of the artists throughout the summer and this is our final post; you can click here to see the entire series. Today we are happy to share profiles of three of the Year 1 artists, Stephanie Fortin, David Frankovich and Maggie McCutcheon.

Image source: https://stephaniefortin.com

Stephanie Fortin

Stephanie Fortin’s studio methods and research involve resist based techniques - clamping, folding, stitching, wrapping, ikat weaving, natural dye and pigments - plant, animal and mineral. Growing and harvesting dye plants and stitching.

These techniques blur transitions of line, shape and form; regardless of the attention in preparation and creation, there are unexpected moments that occur. The shape and imagery is dependent on the pressure applied during the resist - in kind, resist dyeing becomes an excellent metaphor for life. The process demands closeness, precision, physical and mental endurance that has a narrative of stress on both land and body. Opposing elements of control and lack of control, come together. The body and objects resist colour in the work. There is a directness and connection between the body, the land and colour, that materializes give-and take.

The abstraction grants choice reaction, engaging imagination. Asking viewers to be present and mindful, while contemplating the hidden circumstance of process and colour that go unseen at a scan; and enjoy looking at the same time.

www.stephaniefortin.com

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Image source: http://davidfrankovich.com Photo by Teresa Ascencao

David Frankovich

David Frankovich (born 1985) is an artist based in Helsinki and Toronto working in performance and experimental media. They hold a BFA in Film and Video from York University, Toronto (2007) and are currently pursuing an MA in Live Art and Performance Studies from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Their work is based in the body and its relation to others, including material, space and audience. They have exhibited internationally, including FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto), Rhubarb Festival (Toronto), Mountain: Standard Time Performative Arts Festival (Calgary), Perform Now! Festival (Winterthur), ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival (Kuopio), CREATurE Live Art Festival (Kaunas), Cyprus International Performance Art Festival (Nicosia), Performance Studies International (Shanghai), Tonight (Helsinki) and Nomadic Arts Festival (Charciabałda and Warsaw).

www.davidfrankovich.com

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Image Source: https://www.limitednobility.com

Maggie McCutcheon

Maggie McCutcheon studied Comparative Literature, copy writing, and creative writing and worked as a writer before realizing she was driven by a need to create something more enduring. She returned to school and studied Furniture Craft & Design at Sheridan College. Since graduating in 2016, she has been working for herself and producing custom pieces, commissions, and the occasional small run of original designs.

Limited Nobility is a Toronto-based, luxury furniture design and production company producing small runs of original designs as well as one-off commissions. It was created in 2017 by Maggie McCutcheon with one eye on languorous indulgence, the second on the significance of materials, and the third on true forms.

Each Limited Nobility piece is on nodding terms with the canon of the past as it embraces elegantly contemporary forms. She creates work that is at once opulent and luxurious without sacrificing purpose, comfort, or concept. McCutcheon believes unwaveringly in the beauty of materials and in the truths belying organic and pure forms.

www.limitednobility.com

Thank you for joining us for the MOCA Artist Series - stay tuned to the blog for our announcement about the Year 2 cohort of artists who are preparing to move into the studios at the Museum in October.

MOCA Artist Series: Christian Butterfield, Jamie Ellis Pasquale and Stanzie Tooth

There is only one month left in Year 1 of the Akin Studio Program at MOCA , a unique studio residency program in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada.

Akin is honored to continue sharing profiles of the remarkable group of artists from our inaugural cohort. We have posted profiles of some of the artists throughout the summer and will continue until mid September; you can click here to see previous posts. Today we are happy to share profiles of three of the Year 1 artists, Christian Butterfield, Jamie Ellis Pasquale and Stanzie Tooth.

Image source: www.corkingallery.com/artists/contemporary/christian-butterfield

Christian Butterfield

Christian Butterfield is a young Torontonian artist working on the interception of mass media and the painting of the human form. Since 2016 he has been developing a series of portraits, exploring the traditions of painting and popular culture. He uses Time magazine as a source and includes text extracts onto painted faces to comment with humour on our current society. The words in his texts are signifiers in relation to the abstraction of the human figure. Christian Butterfield is represented by Corkin Gallery.

www.corkingallery.com/artists/contemporary/christian-butterfield

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Image source: https://cargocollective.com/jamieellispasquale

Jamie Ellis Pasquale

Born in London, England where he attended the University of Greenwich studying for a bachelors in Landscape Architecture. Now living and working in Toronto where his work shows a nod to the classical history of representational and figurative painting. He is currently working on personal projects and progression in the field of portraiture.

Working from observations of nature and my immediate environment Jamie Ellis Pasquale creates objects of fascination that reflect his emotions. Paintings that are belonging to the essence of life and the nature of pure being. Inspired by art history and the formal definitions of painting, Jamie continues to push the boundaries of painting both representational and abstract to reflect a contemporary idiom previously not seen before from a black british artist.

https://cargocollective.com/jamieellispasquale

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Image source: https://www.stanzietooth.com/collection/coming-home-2018

Stanzie Tooth

Canadian artist Stanzie Tooth works primarily in painting, though her practice also diverges into sculpture, collage and installation. Tooth holds a BFA from the Ontario College of Art & Design (2007) and an MFA from the University of Ottawa (2015), where she was awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Stanzie was the 2015 recipient of the Joseph Plaskett Award for Painting, through which she spent time traveling and creating new work, completing residencies in Berlin and Iceland, as well as self-directed research in Greece and Italy. She has been acknowledged for her work by Canadian Art Magazine, The Toronto Star, Now Magazine and Studio Beat. Her work is included in the collections of The Royal Bank, Toronto Dominion Bank, A.T. Tolley Collection and several private collections. Stanzie Tooth currently lives in Toronto. Stanzie is represented by General Hardware Contemporary.

www.stanzietooth.com

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Stay tuned next weekend as we wrap up the Akin MOCA Artist Series with our final post!

MOCA Artist Series: Maren Boedeker, Raoul Olou, and Emma White

There are only a few weeks left in Year 1 of the Akin Studio Program at MOCA , a new and unique studio residency program in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada.

Akin is honored to continue sharing profiles of the multi-talented group of artists from our inaugural cohort. We have posted profiles over the past few weeks of some of the artists and will continue until September; you can click here to see previous posts. Today we are happy to share profiles of three of the Year 1 artists, Maren Boedeker, Raoul Olou, and Emma White.

Image source: Maren Boedeker. Untitled 1, 2018.

Maren Boedeker

Maren Boedeker studied visual arts and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Münster, Germany.

Her abstract, large-scale canvases have been shown in galleries in Germany, Belgium and Canada. She received the artist-in-residency-grant Liguria, Italy and was awarded first place in the exhibition "Art for Europe", curated by the European Community in Brussels, Belgium.

Besides her artistic practice, she has continuously been working with children, teens and adults as an art teacher and instructor.

https://www.marenboedeker.com/

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Image source: Sarah Bodri @sarahbodri

Raoul Olou

Raoul Olou is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Toronto. His work focus on home, belonging and archiving the mundane.

https://raoulolou.com/

https://www.instagram.com/raoul_o

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Image source: Emma White. Vita Coco, 2019

Emma White

Emma White is a recent graduate of Fine Art at Queen’s University, and is new to Toronto. Her main focus is oil painting, although she works with many mediums (such as sculpture and collage) in the process of creating a final painting. 

She is extremely influenced by her surrounding environment. This can be a natural setting or a parking lot; it can be somewhere she has lived for years or a vacation spot she passed through in a few minutes. What makes these places important to me is that she has seen them, and through the act of looking, she has left her trace there forever.

This irreversible act of occupying a space is something that she attempts to express through her work. When someone looks at my piece, they’ve now touched the work themselves, as well as the place that the piece depicts. She thinks of the artworks as portals to these special places. 

www.emmawhite.net/

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You can see work by Maren, Raoul and Emma from now until–September 8, 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA) as a part of An Index. The exhibition An Index comprises work in a variety of media from sculpture, to video, to new wall murals by the first cohort of Akin residency artists who entered the year-long studio programme in September 2018.

While the participating artists’ practices range widely in terms of conceptual approach, style and media; they have also been influenced to some degree by the experience of sharing and conversing within an open-plan studio structure for the last nine months. 

We also hope you can join us for MOCA Goes Dark, an interactive art party on August 17 by the artists and curators of the exhibition An Index. Come see MOCA transformed into an interactive art party by some of Toronto’s best emerging artists.

MOCA Artist Series: Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Humboldt Magnussen, Adria Mirabelli and Tanya Louise Workman

There are only two months left in Year 1 of the Akin Studio Program at MOCA , a unique studio residency program in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada.

Akin is honored to continue sharing profiles of the remarkable group of artists from our inaugural cohort. We have posted profiles over the past few weeks of some of the artists and will continue until September; you can click here to see previous posts. Today we are happy to share profiles of three of the Year 1 artists, Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Humboldt Magnussen and Adria Mirabelli.

Image source: Ghazaleh Avarzamani

Ghazaleh Avarzamani

Ghazaleh Avarzamani (b. 1980, Tehran) is an artist currently based in Toronto. She was trained in painting at Azad Art University, Tehran and holds a Master of Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins, London. Avarzamani’s practice examines the role of experience, memory, psychology, modern rationality and educational methodologies in the construction of knowledge. Considering a range of spaces, structures and devices for interactivity, self-development and play, her work questions the contextual biases that shape meanings and values. Exploring these concerns in relation to growth and erasure, Avarzamani aims to expose the paradoxical realities beneath the surface of society.

Her art practice encompasses a variety of forms, including sewing, needlework, patchwork, printing, ceramics and installation. This craft dimension of her work is combined with research that seeks to discover the socio-historical relevance of these disciplines, as it reflects on her own experience and larger cultural issues.

www.ghazalehavarzamani.com
www.instagram.com/ghazaleh.avarzamani

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Image source: www.instagram.com/humboldtmagnussen

Humboldt Magnussen

Humboldt Magnussen is an artist and curator from rural Saskatchewan. Magnussen holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD University focusing on performance art and masculinity studies and a BFA from Concordia University from 2011 in Studio Arts. Humboldt weaves in autobiographical elements with larger political and social context to talk about the lack of safety and protection for queer people, even in designated “Safe Spaces”. He is interested in ways to visualize complicated notions of identity and gender / sexuality which can contribute to the growing conversation on these topics in Canada.

His practice is interdisciplinary in nature. Often his work is rooted in performance and includes the creation and use of elaborate masks and helmets. He utilizes elements of humour and glamour to make difficult topics more accessible and to create entry points for people to engage with the work.

www.instagram.com/humboldtmagnussen

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Image source: Adria Mirabelli

Adria Mirabelli

Adria Mirabelli graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2015 with a major in Drawing and Painting and Minor in Textiles. Having also studied at Parsons Paris her work is influenced by conceptual themes and narratives alongside art and craft processes. Adria uses a variety of media and practices to create her works, utilizing collage, drawing, textile manipulation, installation, poetry and sculpture. Her works are often autobiographical and explore themes of space + place, temporality, belonging, love, and longing. Her process involves the collection of extensive, rotational archives of physical materials including ephemera, photographs, digital images, and texts, often saved from spaces of lived experience. This ever-developing catalog serves as the inspiration and materials for her final works, which manifest in various physical and digital forms.

Adria strives to create works that explore experiences of fear, desire, and love in regard to personhood, place and nostalgia. She makes work in an effort to create spaces of connection and acceptance through moments of beauty.

www.adriamirabelli.com
www.instagram.com/adriamirabelli

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Photo by Sean Patenaude

Tanya Louise Workman

Tanya Louise Workman is a Toronto-based multi-disciplinary artist, storytelling facilitator and journalist who works with audio, images and text to unravel the relationships between voice and our embodied selves. Her photographic, multimedia and audio work has been exhibited and screened in spaces in Toronto and internationally. She holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University, a post-graduate certificate in creative writing from the Humber School for Writers and a photojournalism diploma from Loyalist College.

Through spoken word, sound, installation, images and writing, I tune in to the embodied experience. My body is a radio, both a receiver and a transmitter; I listen in to make audible, visible and tactile what the body holds – what reverberates between interior and exterior selves, between what is seen and heard.

Tanya is a candidate in the low-residency MFA program at Maine Media College + Workshops in Rockport, Maine, and is one of the artists-in-residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto as part of the inaugural Akin Studio Program at MOCA. She holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University, a post-graduate certificate in creative writing from the Humber School for Writers and a photojournalism diploma from Loyalist College.

She is currently working on her first book.

www.tanyaworkman.com
www.instagram.com/tanyalouiseworkman

You can see work by Humboldt, Adria and Tanya from now until–September 8, 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA) as a part of An Index. The exhibition An Index comprises work in a variety of media from sculpture, to video, to new wall murals by the first cohort of Akin residency artists who entered the year-long studio programme in September 2018.

While the participating artists’ practices range widely in terms of conceptual approach, style and media; they have also been influenced to some degree by the experience of sharing and conversing within an open-plan studio structure for the last nine months. 

We also hope you can join us for MOCA Goes Dark, an interactive art party on August 17 by the artists and curators of the exhibition An Index. Come see MOCA transformed into an interactive art party by some of Toronto’s best emerging artists.

MOCA Artist Series: Steve Lee, Emily Woudenberg and Nuff

There is a little more than two months left in Year 1 of the Akin Studio Program at MOCA , an independent and collaborative studio residency program in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada.

Akin is thrilled to continue sharing profiles of the talented group of artists from our year 1 artists. We have posted profiles over the past few weeks of some of the artists and will continue until September; you can click here to see previous posts. Today we are happy to share profiles of three of the Year 1 artists, Steve Lee, Emily Woudenberg and Nuff.

Image source: A’Design Award & Competition

Steve Lee

Steve is the founder and lead designer at Aprilli Design Studio, mostly focusing on architectural design projects and interactive art installations. He is a licensed architect in California and Ontario with 8+ years of working experience in Seoul, New York and Los Angeles prior to opening Aprilli Design Studio. As principal in charge, he focuses on design development and project actualization through all phases of projects including architectural design and product design. Steve has deep interest in creating innovative objects, spaces and atmospheric conditions which aesthetically, psychologically and functionally enhance the quality of living environments.

Prior to founding Aprilli Design Studio, he has worked at architectural design firms such as Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Koetter Kim Associates and RTKL Associates focusing on international high rise, mixed use and hospitality projects in various countries.

Since 2014, he has been a lecturer at various universities including UCLA March II program “Suprastudio” and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

www.aprilli.com/
www.instagram.com/aprilli_design_studio/

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Image source: Emily Woudenberg

Emily Woudenberg

Strike is a Toronto-based design studio founded and lead by Emily Woudenberg that offers frank design consultancy, innovative strategy and striking solutions for print and screens — with a client portfolio ranging from creative industries to corporations.

Emily is an entrepreneurial designer that is passionate about using design processes to bridge mediums and messages. With experience in art direction, product development, digital brand strategy and design thinking.

www.strikedesignstudio.com/

www.instagram.com/studioonstrike/

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Image source: Nuff

Nuff

Nuff creates quite design with simple forms. In an anti-disciplinary practice, he uses whatever he can to make a mark. His work spans from commercial to fine art and lives in both public and private spaces.

Nuff has been doing computer-creative-artsy-media things since about 2001, when a friend showed up at the studio with a CD containing basically every piece of software under the sun. Professionally, Nuff has been working since graduating in 2007.

Currently, Nuff spends most days designing brand identities, digital products and illustrations, and nights making interactive installations. Nuff is generally available to work with you within a few weeks, depending on current workload.

www..designbynuff.com/
www.instagram.com/designbynuff/

You can see work by Emily and Nuff from now until–September 8, 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA) as a part of An Index. The exhibition An Index comprises work in a variety of media from sculpture, to video, to new wall murals by the first cohort of Akin residency artists who entered the year-long studio programme in September 2018.

While the participating artists’ practices range widely in terms of conceptual approach, style and media; they have also been influenced to some degree by the experience of sharing and conversing within an open-plan studio structure for the last nine months. 

We also hope you can join us for MOCA Goes Dark, an interactive art party on August 17 by the artists and curators of the exhibition An Index. Come see MOCA transformed into an interactive art party by some of Toronto’s best emerging artists.