March 5 to April 21, 2024
Climate change is so many things, it is fitting that the show by the Artists in Residence at the Northwest Climate Gathering 2023: Hope & Action is so eclectic. The show includes music, lithographs, painting, sculpture, journalism, Natural wonders, writing and photography. The Northwest Climate Gathering was held November 24-25, 2023 and engaged almost two hundred people in discussion and activities informing both hope and action to address the causes and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis in this region. The seven Artists in Residence of the event are: Shelby Gagnon, Heather McLeod, Madison Dyck, Kathleen Baleja, Keira Essex, Robin Faye and Elizabeth Pszczolko. Their show at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery runs from March 5 to April 21, 2024 with an Opening on Thursday March 7 from 7 – 9 pm.
Shelby Gagnon is an Anishnaabe / Cree Artist from Aroland First Nation who has lived in Thunder Bay most of her life and is a graduate of Lakehead University’s Fine Arts program. Through involvement with community-engaged organizations and projects she uses multi-disciplinary mediums to express and share her holistic feelings & perceptions.
Heather McLeod writes and records an original song for every episode of her podcast Something Different This Way Comes – all ten episodes in the fifth season of which feature participants in the Northwest Climate Gathering 2023: Hope & Action. She released six albums and her music was included in numerous collections as a singer-songwriter and a jazz artist before moving to Thunder Bay in 2002. She is an award-winning journalist and author who co-hosted Voyage North on CBC Radio for Northwestern Ontario until 2009.
Madison Dyck has been a climate activist since high school, when she joined a group of youth suing the Ontario government led by Doug Ford for violating their charter rights by reversing climate action targets. She is currently a Forestry student at Lakehead University as well as a leader with the Food Security Forum and was one of the organizers of the Anemki-Wiikwedong Climate Justice Movement Visioning Discussion in Thunder Bay November 2022.
Robin Faye is a transplanted Canadian settler visual artist and activist / engaged citizen, a restorative yoga teacher and currently a student in the Indigenous Learning program at Lakehead University. She uses least-toxic and found materials to create 3-D statements works that no-one wants in their living space.
Keira Essex is an environmental studies student, activist and novice photographer of mixed settler – Anishinaabe heritage. Her ancestors are from Michi Saagig Anishinaabeg territory, but her family has lived in Thunder Bay for three generations. Through her photography she seeks to explore how we might live in better relations with water, land, sky and the many non-human beings that inhabit this Earth.
Elizabeth Pszczolko is a writer living in the woods outside Thunder Bay. As a child growing up in Northwestern Ontario she kept scrapbooks filled with drawings, musings, poems. Now that she has retired from her medical laboratory work she is dedicating more time to her musings about Nature and how we see and interact with it. She is a member of the poetry group The ParaTactics. She has had poetry published in NOWW’s magazine and the Walleye, and her play “The Decision” produced as an online reading in 2020 by 10×10 and Come Play With Me TBay.
Kathleen Baleja is a multimedia artist. She is an avid outdoors enthusiast and yoga teacher. A reverence for the land is evident in her collection of rocks, fossils, shells, cones, seed pods, feathers, wasp nests, lichen and a 400 year old hammer stone. Kathleen also shares her love of the outdoors through intriguing photos on her Facebook page, inspiring us to look more closely at the wonders of nature.