Welcome to the page for the very first County Arts Mentorship Program!
This program took place in Fall 2023-Winter 2024, and brought together 10 mentor-mentee pairs working in a wide variety of disciplines including painting, poetry, furniture making, ceramics, writing, dance, and more. Mentors, who were selected following an Open Call and Peer Assessment process, were compensated for their time, and Mentees also received an honorarium to help cover their costs.
You can view the Mentorship Program Highlight document here, and photos from the program’s culminating panel and exhibition event, participant testimonials, and bios of program Mentors below.
This program was funded by the Government of Ontario through a Seniors’ Community Grant. We thank them for their support!
We invite you to check out this 3-minute video for a glimpse into the success and impact of this program!
Video shot, Directed & Edited by David Rendall/Heliograph Media. Music by Delta Will.
County Arts Mentorship Video from County Arts on Vimeo.
Mentee testimonials:
Mentor testimonials:
Kamee arrives in the world today as an interdisciplinary artist, writer, producer, performer, director, organizer, caregiver, creative strategist, communications expert, waitress, and witch. Born into an Armenian family displaced from the SWANA region and grown in an immigrant suburb of Toronto, their work is steeped with relational and generative practices oriented towards ancestral reclamation, visionary fiction, and diasporic futurism. Kamee holds degrees in cinema, poli-sci, art therapy, and community/liberation psychology. Their work has been published and presented internationally, and their projects have been supported by multiple local and global fundings bodies.
I am fundamentally a designer, with lots of experience in applying design to specific
disciplines, like furniture design, product design, interior design, exhibit design, graphic
design… I have used this in the disciplines of art as well: sculpture and monuments. I also
have a lot of experience in ‘making’. This has been very useful in realizing and materializing my design ideas directly by myself and in assisting others to make them, whether they are one-of-a-kind or produced in large quantities. I have had a long career in the visual arts and managed to figure a few things out.
I am an established visual artist interested in mentoring emerging and mid-career artists who
might need guidance in various aspects of their artistic career.
Since graduating from OCADU (formerly OCA) and the Academy of Florence in 1981, I worked as a professional artist, managing my art practice by dividing my time between personal exhibitions and commissioned artwork. I have received a number of grants from various Arts Council and participated in an art residency in 2005.
My figurative work has been exhibited in both public and private venues and collected nationally and internationally. I am presently represented by three commercial galleries.
Joan McBride is a versatile Montreal-based professional actor. Since moving to PEC since in 2014 Joan’s theatre credits include: County Roads Theatre Company productions of “Collected Stories”, (Ruth Steiner)2022; “On a First Name Basis’ (Lucy Hopperstad)2019; The Belle of Amherst (Emily Dickinson) 2017; Festival Players’ “Unjustly” by Krista Dalby (Margaret Jones)2015. Joan is an accomplished theatre actor, director, and acting instructor, with over thirty years of experience teaching professional theatre in Montreal.
Joan is continuously learning and evolving as an actor through workshops and her home studio programs. She looks forward to the privilege of mentoring and sharing her passion and experience with a kindred thespian spirit.
Rhonda Nolan is an established Canadian contemporary, mixed media artist who has her studio/gallery in Bloomfield. Rhonda’s raw, graphic, markmaking is influenced by expressive street art, her love of texture and her enduring curiosity for creating in all dimensions. For many years, she co-ordinated an art program for Toronto’s inner city homeless people, to which she attributes her love of expressive art.
Rhonda comes from a textural background of papermaking and bookarts. She has a desire to create relevant work on current subjects to publicly share. In the last few years she has been exploring in 3 dimensions with large scale banners, and also exterior and interior site specific installations. She enjoys collaborations with other artists in music and dance.
Andrea Piller’s sculptural hand built ceramic works are ongoing investigations of natural form that evoke a primitive quality, aiming to synthesize the organic world and human experience. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Andrea is the recipient of numerous art awards and Ontario Arts Council grants, and her work is shown nationally and internationally. As a mentor and artist educator, she is passionate about sharing her enthusiasm and knowledge for visual arts and creative fluency: “I try to imbue what I believe is essential in all of us, that which connects us to the world; a courage to create on a personal level and challenge the imagination. Finding this is often a life journey. Sharing this is a joy.”
Kirei has been attending craft shows for over 30 years. She travelled around Ontario and participated in such premier shows as Signature’s Spring and Christmas, Ottawa, Toronto and Fair November, Guelph. Kirei has been featured on radio, live TV and in print. Signatures made a TV commercial to commemorate 25 years in business, it was of her creating in her studio. Kirei has produced The Pink Cow Market for 4 years to rave reviews from customers. She has been teaching the glass fusing course at Haliburton School of Art and Design in the summer for the last 9 years and also teaches out of her studio. Kirei has been a full time vendor at The Wellington Farmers Market for the last 8 years.
Bill is an energetic and passionate Queer quilt-maker, motivated to create work that will change the way folks view the world. His work pushes limits, challenges tradition, redefines quilt-making and
explores alternate materials and techniques.
He is a storyteller and quilts are his medium. While the experiences and issues addressed in his work are his own, viewers react to them on both a general and a personal level. His goal is that viewers will think, react, start conversations, become part of the change; that they’ll see his work as true and honest;
something that matters; something that will make a difference. Through this program, he’s hoping to meet someone interested in
exploring possibilities with him.
JC’s narrative, lyric, ekphrastic, and found poetry appears in print and online, either
under name or as A. Garnett Weiss. Her cento won the 2023 Wind & Water Writing
Contest. Bricolage, A Gathering of Centos was amongs finalist for the 2022 Fred
Kerner Book Award (Canadian Authors Association.) Point Petre Published released
South Shore Suite…POEMS.
Using an approach that’s collaborative and encouraging, not prescriptive, JC considers
it a privilege to work with established and emerging poets. She has also been
mentored by the best. She selects for www.bywords.ca and is a full member of the
League of Canadian Poets. www.jcsulzenko.com
Katrina Tompkins is a wooden furniture designer and maker living between Picton, Ontario and Fogo Island, Newfoundland. She graduated from the Furniture Studio at Sheridan College (2009) and completed her Masters of Design degree at OCAD University (2019); her thesis explored creating community through craft. Katrina has spent time learning and teaching in the shops of leading craftspeople and craft institutions throughout North America; she has received several awards for her work in craft. Katrina is passionate about design and exploring ideas through making. She is interested in sharing how expressive, fun and empowering woodworking can be.
