Thu, Apr 2, 2015
7pm—8pm

Last fall, VIVO offered a youth mentorship program for emerging artists, ages 18-24. Participants learned all about VIVO, artist-run centre culture, and the ins and outs of the art world from media artist and producer, Wynne Palmer. They were then guided through the experience of curating, promoting and exhibiting for a final show.  Anchi Lin, one of the participants, has since gotten more involved with VIVO, and shared a bit about her experience below, along with some profiles with her fellow mentees. We will be announcing more youth mentorship opportunities soon, so keep your eyes open for some exciting news! and read more about her experience below. (A big thanks to the BC Arts Council for making this mentorship possible). From Anchi:

A friend of mine in the Visual art program at SFU asked me if I was interested in participating in the Youth Mentorship Program at VIVO. I later found out that he is an active contributor and volunteer for the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archive VIVO. I immediately applied to the program without a second thought, though my already-busy schedule made me later doubt my choice, but only briefly.

There were three other young artists also participating in the program. Wynne Palmer was our program mentor, an extremely inspirational teacher. She shared her experiences as a professional artist in the business world with us. This experience was especially valuable, since art students don’t get to learn this from the curricula offered currently in art schools. This mentorship program helps young artists like me to realize earlier that it is important to also understand the business side of the art world.

VIVO staff thoughtfully organized the other two successful emerging artists, Matt Troy and Vincent Parker, to join the guest teachers and participate in the final show with the four youth artists. We learned from their experiences and ideas. The one night ::show:: SKIN:: was the final product of all our great learning experiences. Below, I’ve included a few interviews from the three other emerging artists that participated in the mentorship:

Zandi Dandizette

Artist Bio:

Emily Carr Animation graduate Zandi Dandizette hails from Portland, OR. They currently run and curate from the James Black Gallery in Mount Pleasant. They explore the binary elements of society in base code shapes, lines, and structures. Their work tends to be immersive interdisciplinary installations.

​What’s your background and experience?
I graduated from Emily Carr in 2014 for animation. Although this provided me with media experience, I lacked curation and showcase experience.

What did you learn in the youth mentorship program at VIVO?
I learned about business elements, marketing, and curatorial skills.

Has this mentorship opened up any new opportunities for you?

December I co-curated a show at VIVO and applied to volunteer there. I showed work at Vancouver Art and Leisure and curated my own group artshow at the James Black Gallery.

What did you create for the final exhibition in : : SKIN : :

Grotto.exe was a immersive installation with video, paper mache, and sugar.

Do you have any plans for what’s up next in your artistic career?

I currently run The James Black Gallery and curate group shows there. I’ve had several published interviews from this, and am moving into developing my own showcasing further.

Alanna Ho

Artist Bio:

Alanna is a maker based in Vancouver, currently  focusing  on large sculptures and interdisciplinary  installations influenced by relationships and natural dependency between mediums.

What’s your background and experience?

My very early creative background started in classical music and abstract painting.  Later, I broadened my medium use as I felt more drawn to making interdisciplinary work which encourages interactive activity.  Installations, projections, sound pieces and large sculptures are mediums in which I have been focusing on during the last two years.

What did you learn in the youth mentorship program at VIVO?

At the VIVO youth mentorship program, I absorbed much information on how to protect and market your work.  This included business, presentation, social media, the list is endless.  The collaborative media show with all the other members, mentor and visiting artists gave us a hands-on curating experience, collaborating, and closely experiencing how to build an art show from scratch.

Has this mentorship opened up any new opportunities for you?

This mentorship sprung me into a number of art shows soon after, due to connections and reworking my skills through the help of Wynne Palmer and the curation of Zandi Dandizette.   I now see the Vancouver art scene as a very collaborative space where there is bursting potential;  I am excited to see more artists thrive fully on their creative careers, if given more tools on ‘how to be an artist’, or learning the realities of how to professionally do art related tasks which is not covered in many institutions. VIVO did an outstanding job with giving us support and confidence to continue with our endeavors.  I now volunteer for VIVO and loving it!

What did you create for the final exhibition in : : SKIN : :

For SKIN, I exhibited a second part in a series of my Wall Salutations.  It is a projected video installed to highlight the body, architecture and implied space.

Do you have any plans for what’s up next in your artistic career?

For my artist career, I plan to expand my research in sculpture and programming (at workshops held by VIVO).  Very excited to collaborate more as well; there is always more room for learning.  I am also passionate about education, in which I am working on a program between youth and specific galleries.  Won’t tell too much about it for now!

Anchi Lin

Artist Bio:

Anchi a Vancouver-based artist, born in Taipei, Taiwan. She will graduate from Simon Fraser University with a BFA in the spring 2015. While the majority of her works are performance and video art. Her practice often engages in dialogues of body, and cultural norms. She is also interested in decontextuaizing language and sound. Traces of Lin’s Taiwanese background can be found in her works, in the form of food, objects, and cultural traditions.

What’s your background and experience?

My initial interest in art began when I started drawing comics around the age of 11. I never received any formal art training until I started my post-secondary education at Langara College where I learned the fundamental skills for traditional art practices. I began experimenting more with performance and video art after I transferred to Simon Fraser University’s school of contemporary art. I now considered myself an interdisciplinary artist.

What did you learn in the youth mentorship program at VIVO?

The mentorship program gave me an opportunity to work with artists outside of an academic context, as well as training me to be better at time management while I had to attend to school and work.

Has this mentorship opened up any new opportunities for you?

Thanks to this mentorship program, I understand more about how an artist-run centre operates and I see the importance of supporting this type of establishment. I also was given the opportunity to rent video equipment after this program. Aside from that, I met many talented practicing artists who have generously gave me feedback on the piece I was showing in the final show. Their feedback was very valuable to me and it is something I couldn’t get from my peers at school.

What did you create for the final exhibition in :: SKIN ::

In this exhibition, I created a 10 minutes video performance piece with the title: Prayer, Portraits, and Pills. A survey project on making portraits of people I know. Instead of displaying their faces, I am instead interested in collecting the pills they take, either on a daily basis or during a certain period of time. The pills they take revealed a vulnerable and private side to them which you can see from the ordinary face-based portraits. I organized the order of the pills from each person and put them together into a Buddhist prayer’s beads, with 108 beads in total. In conjunction with the video, the viewer is encouraged to engage with the OM soundtrack that I have created.

Eating pills is like a western religious ritual in order to obtain good heath. In this project, I merged the aspect of everyday pill taking everyday spiritual praying practices together to make a statement about the pill taking culture in contemporary western society.

Do you have any plans for what’s up next in your artistic career?

At this point, I would like to spend a couple years experimenting with different media, and perhaps later I will pursue further post-secondary studies in the fine arts.

Marchien Veen

Artist Bio:

Marchien Veen is an interdisciplinary artist with a prime interest in conceptual art and theory. She has received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from UBC with a Major in Visual Arts. Her work focuses on the manifestation of dissociative disorders through the usage of futile labour, repetitive tasks, and illuminating the glitches of the human-machine.

What’s your background and experience?

At the time of the mentorship, I was a recent BFA graduate from UBC. I had done a small residency, was an exhibition coordinator for a student association and briefly ran a makeshift art space with another person. I had a lot of experience but it was all in a fairly controlled setting (being in a Fine Arts program naturally created a lot of opportunities that I wasn’t getting anymore).

What did you learn in the youth mentorship program?

I learned new ways to find opportunities and the power of promotion. I think the most beneficial things I learned had a lot to do with the financial side of being an artist : how to apply for grants, cheap ways to get materials, how much I should be getting paid from various kinds of work, CARFAC fees, etc.

Has this mentorship opened up any new opportunities for you?

Definitely. The connection between the artists doing the mentorship was strong and we have collaborated in different ways since then. I have also done some work with one of the visiting artists and have been compelled to start opening up a serious but small online business.

What did you create for the final exhibition?

For the final show I created 4 looping sound pieces in which I performed my body as an instrument of disgust. It was installed on a custom built shelf mounted on the wall with headphones above.

Do you have any plans for what’s up next in your artistic career?

I have just finished applying for several residencies and writing proposals for future exhibitions. I would like to keep working on developing my small business and hopefully get involved in another makeshift art space in the near future!

Corie Waugh

Artist Bio:

Corie Waugh is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, with a focus on process-based projects. Corie has earned her BFA in Visual Arts from UBC Okanagan. Waugh explores the unsaid; her focus is on physical interaction and experience.

What’s your background and experience?

While studying at UBC Okanagan I focused on oil painting and photography, usually exploring the figure in relation to my environment. I continue to paint, do film photography, and explore new ways of expression through sculpture and new media.

What did you learn in the youth mentorship program at VIVO?

Wynne was very helpful and allowed us to create a show from the ground up, as for the individual lecture sections there was tons of useful information. I took pages of notes on a variety things that pertain to being a professional artist, like invoicing and general contracts.

Has this mentorship opened up any new opportunities for you?

Having been so new to Vancouver at the time (I had moved a few weeks before) I was able to see some of the inner workings and social aspects of the art and culture scene in the city. Also since the mentorship I have become more involved with VIVO.

What did you create for the final exhibition in : : SKIN : :

For the final exhibition I created two short animations that were then projected on to the bar crowd. The animations were of two couples that I painted with watercolour engaged in sexual activity. The project was called Fold (2014) and was in response to my early work called Crease (2013).

Do you have any plans for what’s up next in your artistic career?

I am currently working on a project that will be revealed later this year along side my explorations in painting.