Residency Opportunity: “i made it through the wilderness” – Making Art Through Climate Change
June 5 – June 19, 2023, Artscape Gibraltar Point, Mnisiing/Toronto Island
Submission Deadline: March 15, 2023
Calling all painters and those who work in the expanded field of paint (sculpture, installation, performance, and site responsive work)!
APPLY NOW for “i made it through the wilderness”, a two-week visual arts residency led by painter Lisa Cristinzo on Mnisiing/Toronto Island for artists creating work about and within landscape and who wish to spend time contemplating what it means to be an artist at this point in our climate history.
“i made it through the wilderness” will be examining the importance of landscape art in the context of the deforestation of 85% of the world’s forests, uncontrollable wildfires, and catastrophic climate hazards that disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. This residency is an attempt to collectively understand more deeply through the practice of art the vibrancy and agency of the world around us. Although the theme of the residency sounds somber, participants will be encouraged to access this knowledge through gratitude, play, and emergent experiences in co-authorship with the site and with each other. Confirmed guest speakers include, Christina Battle, Jonathan S. Green, and Fake Art School’s Leida Englar and Jim Belisle.
For more information regarding accommodations, application and fees, please visit the Artscape Gibraltar Point website here.
Facilitator Bio
Lisa Cristinzo (She/her) is a queer painter and installation artist, and a first-generation Canadian settler living in T’karonto on Turtle Island. Cristinzo’s large-scale painting installations traverse natural history, climate hazards, materialism, and magic. She holds a BFA from OCAD U and an MFA from York University, where she received a graduate scholarship and SSHRC federal funding for her research into fire and climate change. Cristinzo’s writing and artwork about fire was recently published in Fire Season II by Liz Tooney-Wiese and Amory Abbott. She was also selected for the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence Program and will be spending time this summer “plein air” painting at the Scarborough bluffs. Along with being an artist, she has spent over a decade managing arts programs and community cultural hubs, including Artscape Gibraltar Point, an artist residency and event space on Mnisiing/Toronto Island.
While completing a Masters degree, a medical diagnosis prompted Cristinzo to conduct her work outside of institutions both academic and medical. Through a Canada Council for the Arts research-creation grant she spent 60 days at four artist residencies, including a residency at Vermont Studio Center, where she explored the tradition of “plein air” painting through the lens of climate change. “i made it through the wilderness”, 2023’s thematic residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point, is inspired by her experience. Website
This is a facilitated residency, but the aim is to work non-hierarchically and in co-authorship across the collective of visiting artists and participants.
Virtual/In Person Visiting Artists
Christina Battle is an artist based in amiskwacîwâskahikan, (also known as Edmonton, Alberta), within the Aspen Parkland: the transition zone where prairie and forest meet. Her practice focuses on thinking deeply about the concept of disaster: its complexity, and the intricacies that are entwined within it. Much of this work extends from her recent PhD dissertation (2020) which looked closer to community responses to disaster: the ways in which they take shape, and especially to how online models might help to frame and strengthen such response. Website
Jonathan S. Green is of Mi’kmaq and Inuit, British and Scottish heritage from Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. He does not know a lot about his indigenous heritage but is trying to learn more. Green earned an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta in 2016, a BFA from Memorial University of Newfoundland – Grenfell Campus. He has been a Visual Arts Studio Work study at the Banff Centre. He has canoed down the Yukon River as part of the Canadian Wilderness Artist Residency. He currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at his studio Campsite Press. Website
Leida Englar’s formal education includes a Sciences degree from McMaster University and studies at Toronto School of Art. Leida is a dedicated artist, peacemaker, environmental and community activist and has been a Plein Air painter since 1980. Whenever Leida and her husband Jerry traveled around North America, Plein Air painting became the tool of record keeping. Leida was co-founder of Shadowland Theatre and band leader in Caribana from 1985-2005 where she built costumes for the Trinidad Carnival, in Toronto and Trinidad and Tobago. In 1993 Leida and Jim Belisle and Jerry Englar created L’Ecole de Faux Arts/Fake Art School, a base for their love of painting outside, PLEIN AIR.
Leida Englar and Jim Belisle (Landscape Architect/Painter) from the Fake Art School will be conducting an Artist Talk and taking participants on a Plein Air excursion.
For more information regarding accommodations, application and fees, please visit the Artscape Gibraltar Point website here.
If you have any questions about the application process or venue, please feel free to contact Lisa Cristinzo
[email protected]
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