Artist and curator biographies:

Visual artists:

Marlene Creates:  graduated with a BAE from Queen's University in Kingston in 1974 and in 1985 moved to Newfoundland. Since 1977 Creates has maintained an active exhibition schedule, exhibiting her work in group and solo exhibitions across Canada and the United States and in Great Britain and Europe. Her work has been included in many exhibitions which deal with landscape, environmentalism and social issues such as: North and South: tradition, invention and intervention in Labrador at the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2002 and River City at the Edmonton Art Gallery, in 2001. Creates' work may be found in many public collections including the National Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston), the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The artist has received grants from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. In 1996 she was named Artist of the Year by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and in 2001 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Creates' work-in photography and photographic installation--looks at the convergence between social history, landscape and the environment.

Orla Kenny:  holds a diploma in Art and Design Education and a Degree in Fine Art from the Institute of Technology, Limerick. Kenny uses video to explore the relationship between landscape and memory. Her work has been included in the Claremorris Open in 1995 and 1997 and in many other group exhibitions in Ireland.. Kenny has worked with children as an artist-facilitator on several projects using new technologies. One such project, Charlie Bailey and All His Friends, brought together children from both the settled and traveler communities in Co.Sligo .

Har Prakash Khalsa:  was born in Toronto, graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design and currently lives in Owen Sound, Ontario. His exhibition, The hole project, which was organized by the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery in 1999 toured public galleries and artist-run spaces across Canada.. Khalsa has exhibited work nationally in solo and group exhibitions since 1979. He has been awarded several Ontario Arts Council grants for exhibition assistance. In Khalsa's current work, he seeks to synthesize the wider landscape with the minute.

David Morrish:   received a BFA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba and his MFA from the University of Calgary. Morrish's work has been seen in solo, two, three and group exhibitions across Canada since 1981. His most recent solo exhibition was Photogravures: 1996-2001 at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain in St.Boniface, Manitoba. His work has been included in the SAW Gallery exhibition, No Such Animal, in two Marion McCain Atlantic Art Exhibitions and in several juried print exhibitions in Japan, Great Britain and Canada. The artist is the recipient of several Canada Council Artistic/Creative Grants as well as a similar award from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. His work may be found in private, corporate and public collections including: the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Edmonton Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. Many of Morrish's bookworks, photographs, and prints evince his interest in the social underpinnings of our relationship to nature. As photographer for two books on social history in Newfoundland, Morrish has insight into both the landscape and the social issues arising from land use.

Liam O'Callaghan:  has exhibited his work in group and solo exhibitions in Ireland since graduating from Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design in 1990. In 2001, he collaborated with Anna Rackard to produce the book, Fish stone water-holy wells of Ireland. In 2004 he will be artist-in-residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. O'Callaghan' has recently been working with video projections of organic material collected in his walks.in the Irish countryside.

Kris Rosar:  Kris Rosar's most recent solo exhibition, Domestic Possessions/Obsessions was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Peel, Brampton in 2003. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally since 1981. Group exhibitions include Arts2000, a juried exhibition at Gallery Stratford; In Camera at the Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound; and The Garden at the Durham Art Gallery. She is the recipient of numerous Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance Grants and was an award winner at the 1996-1998 Juried Photography Show organized by the Blue Mountain Foundation for the Arts. Her work is in public, corporate and private collections. As well her photographs have been published in many journals and exhibition catalogues.  The artist received her Bachelor of Applied Arts, Photographic Arts, from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.

Greg Staats: is a visual artist resident in Toronto. He was born on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, studied photography at Sheridan College and has been exhibiting his work in solo and group exhibitions in galleries across the country. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious Duke and Duchess of York Award in Photography. He is the recipient of several Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council Grants. His work may be found in several public collections including the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery. His most recent solo exhibition, Animose, amongst other things, explored the notion  of shelter and the urban landscape. For The Limestone Barrens Project, Staats continues to explore the architecture of shelter in natural space.

Writers and Composers:

Rob Canning:  graduated with a B.Mus. from University of Wales Cardiff in 1997 and went on to graduate with an M.Litt in composition at the University College Dublin, Ireland studying with Seóirse Bodley. In 1998 he was awarded 1st prize in the composer class of the RTE Musician of the Future Festival for his piece Through Cages. In 1999, he was awarded 1st prize in the International section of the New Music for Sligo Composition Competition with his work for mixed ensemble Creole.  He has received commissions from RTE, Concorde, Music for Galway and the Galway Arts Festival.  In 2001 he received the Macaulay Fellowship administered by the Arts Council of Ireland and the Emerging Artist Award administered by Wicklow County Council His compositional output includes chamber, instrumental and electro-acoustic works. Recent works have premiered at the 21st Nuovi Spazi Musicale festival in Rome, Italy in 2000, Costruzione Illegittima (2001); at the Galway Arts Festival 2001. The work commissioned by RTE for the London Sinfonietta, Garden of Forking Paths, was performed by the RTE Symphony Orchestra at the Helix, Dublin, in November 2002. This work has been selected to represent Ireland at the International Rostrum of Performers. He is currently working on an electro-acoustic/acoustic piece, commissioned by Concorde and lectures in composition at Trinity College, Dublin’s Music Department.

John Steffler: is a noted Canadian author resident in Corner Brook where he teaches at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. Steffler is the author of The Afterlife of George Cartwright, which was shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award in 1996, and several volumes of poetry. Most recently, Vehicule Press, Montreal, published Helix: New and Selected Poems and Brick Books of London, Ontario brought out a new edition of The Grey Islands. Steffler's work has been included consistently in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and TickleAce.  In 2002 his work was anthologized in The New Oxford Anthology of Canadian Literature.  Steffler is the recipient of many awards and honours including Canada Council Project and Travel Grants, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize.

Liz Zetlin:  received her BFA (Honours) in Visual Arts and Art History from York University and a BA (Honours) in Modern Languages and Literature from Antioch College, Ohio. Her work has been published consistently in collections of Zetlin's own work and anthologies. Her most recent collection is Thing with Feathers, a chapbook.  She has given readings, talks and workshops across Canada and has read her work on CBC Radio's, Fresh Air and Ontario Today. She is the recipient of several grants and awards including the Canadian Poetry Association's Shaunt Basmajian Award (in 1999),  first prize for poetry from Carousel Magazine, second prize in the Stephen Leacock Orillia International Poetry Contest, an Ontario Arts Council Grant, and two Toronto Arts Council Grants.  Currently, Zetlin divides her time between Toronto and Traverston, Ontario.

Curators:

Charlotte Jones, Project administrator and curator for Newfoundland and Labrador:  received her B.A. Honours in Psychology from the University of Manitoba,  M.A. in Communications from Simon Fraser University and her Masters of Librarianship from the University of British Columbia. Since 1984 she has been an independent curator and arts administrator. In 1988-1989 she was the Research Officer for the Art in Public Places Project at the University of Ulster in Belfast. This entailed establishing an archives on public art, administering the commissioning of public artwork and writing a report mapping out a public art program for the City of Belfast. She was co-administrator and curator of The Wood Project, an interdisciplinary cultural exchange between the island of Ireland and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The exchange comprised a touring exhibition of visual art and craft by Newfoundland and Irish artists; a publication; and six artist-in-residency exchanges. She was interim director of the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery from 2001 to the end of 2002 where she curated exhibitions of work by such artists as Andy Fabo and Michael Balser, Diana Thorneycroft, David Hoffos, Anne Meredith Barry and Barb Hunt. Other current projects include The Art and Science of Forest Ecology, a collaboration between artists and scientists at the Canadian Forest Service. She has written extensively on art and art-related issues, most recently contributing an essay to Barb Hunt: PINK.

Sean McCrum,  project administrator and curator for Ireland: received his BA Honours in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. McCrum was the Director/Curator of the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College from 1976 to 1982. From 1982 to 1987 he was an independent critic, writer and broadcaster contributing frequently to such media as The Irish Times, Art Monthly, Arts Review, the BBC and Radio Telefis Eireann. He has been an independent curator and project administrator since 1987. Since 1997 much of his work has focused on cultural exchange programmes and cross-disciplinary and multi-media programmes. One of his most recent projects was Soundshapes, which brought together artists and composers. The resulting exhibition with accompanying publication and cd-rom toured throughout Ireland.

Stuart Reid, project administrator and co-curator for Ontario: Born in Dundee, Scotland, Reid received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University in Toronto. He is the Director of the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery in Owen Sound. During his tenure as Director/Curator of the Craft Gallery of the Ontario Crafts Council, the John B. Aird Gallery, the Art Gallery of Mississauga and the Tom Thomson, he has curated numerous exhibitions by Canadian and Irish artists and contributed to many publications. Among the touring exhibitions with accompanying publications that Reid has curated or co-curated are: Sylvia Safdie: Extensions; Further: Paintings by Monica Tap; Kai Chan: Rainbow Lakes; Sheila Butler: Sympathetic Magic; Shane Cullen:Fragmens sur les Institutions Republicaines IV; Janet Werner: Trust.