Contributors

Alison Calder

Alison Calder, an award-winning poet, has published widely on Canadian prairie literature and culture for more than two decades, She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.  

Michele Hardy

Michele Hardy studied textiles and craft at Sheridan College School of Crafts and Design (Dip. 1984), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (BFA 1985) and the University of Alberta (MA 1995) before turning to cultural anthropology at the University of British Columbia (PhD 2003). Joining Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary in 2005, she has curated more than three dozen exhibitions with a particular emphasis on Alberta craft and textiles. Highlights include Sandra Sawatzky: The Age of Uncertainty, 2022; Shona Rae: Re-Imagined Narratives, 2018; Laura Vickerson: The Between, 2016, and John Chalke: Surface Tension, 2015. Hardy is an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Art and Art History, University of Calgary and teaches courses related to art and museum studies. Hardy regularly offers conference presentations and is the author of numerous book chapters, articles and exhibition catalogues. Recent publications include: Richard Boulet: Stitching Between the Lines and Against the Grain (2022); Embroidering Development: The Mutwa and Rann Utsav in Kutch, India (2020); and Radical Access: Textiles and Museums (with Joanne Schmidt), Proceedings of the 16th TSA Symposium (2018).

Mackenzie Kelly-Frère

Mackenzie Kelly-Frère is an artist, educator and academic. His research focuses on textile structures; computer-aided weaving; the social history of textiles; craft theory; and craft-based pedagogy. He is currently Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts in the BFA Fibre and MFA Craft Media programs. Over the past twenty years Mackenzie has exhibited in Canada, China, Japan, Korea and the United States. He has contributed texts to publications including Craft Perception and Practice: A Canadian Resource, Volume III and Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. Mackenzie lives in Calgary, Canada with his husband Kristofer and daughter Elizabeth.

Julia Krueger

Julia Krueger studied art history (BA 2002) and Canadian art history (MA 2006) at Carleton University in Ottawa, ON and ceramics (BFA 2010) at the Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD, now AUArts) in Calgary, AB. In 2020, she completed a PhD in visual culture at the University of Western Ontario in London, ON and is currently the Permanent Collection Registrar with SK Arts. In addition to her studies, Julia has maintained an active teaching, writing, curatorial and research practice grounded in material culture and craft theory with a focus on Canadian prairie craft. She has taught art history courses at the University of Western Ontario, Luther College, University of Regina and ACAD. Her writing has been included in Cahiers métiers d’art ::: Craft Journal; Crafting New Traditions: Canadian Innovators and Influence; The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan; and Studio Magazine. She has curated or conducted research for exhibitions such as Hansen-Ross Pottery: Pioneering Fine Craft on the Canadian Prairies; Keepsakes of Conflict: Trench Art and Other Canadian War-Related Craft; Tactile Desires: The Work of Jack Sures; and Victor Cicansky: The Gardener’s Universe.

Mary-Beth Laviolette

As an independent art curator, writer and public speaker, Mary-Beth Laviolette pays particular attention to the world fine craft in Canada. Most recently, she worked with fourteen artists in fibre and Indigenous beading to create commissions for Calgary’s YW Hub. In 2017, she curated for the Glenbow Museum (Calgary AB) a major exhibition: Eye of the Needle—Beading, Embroidery and Needlework. She has been on the board of the Alberta Craft Council since 2009.

Timothy Long

Timothy Long studied art history at the University of Regina (BA Hons 1986) and the State University of New York at Stony Brook (MA 1990). He has over thirty years of curatorial experience at the MacKenzie Art Gallery where he is Head Curator and Adjunct Professor at the University of Regina. Writing regional art histories and assessing their impacts has driven several of his collaborative investigations, including: Regina Clay: Worlds in the Making; Superscreen: The Making of an Artist-Run Counterculture and the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop (with Alex King); and nationally touring retrospectives of David Thauberger (with Sandra Fraser) and Victor Cicansky (with Julia Krueger). Other projects, including Atom Egoyan: Steenbeckett (with Christine Ramsay and Elizabeth Matheson) and the MAGDANCE series of exhibition/dance residencies with New Dance Horizons, are the result of his interest in interdisciplinary dialogues between art, sound, film, and contemporary dance. His application of the cultural anthropology of René Girard has resulted in a number MacKenzie publications, including: The Limits of Life: Arnulf Rainer and Georges Rouault and Theatroclasm: Mirrors, Mimesis and the Place of the Viewer.

Sherry Farrell Racette

Sherry Farrell Racette is an interdisciplinary scholar with an active artistic and curatorial practice. Her work is grounded in extensive work in archives and museum collections with an emphasis on Indigenous women and recovering aesthetic knowledge. Beadwork and stitch-based work is important to her artistic practice, creative research, and pedagogy. In 2016 Farrell Racette was the Distinguished Visiting Indigenous Faculty Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto and in 2021 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the University Art Association of Canada (UAAC-AAUC). She was born in Manitoba and is a member of Timiskaming First Nation in Quebec.

Mireille Perron

Mireille Perron is an artist, educator, and writer. Since 1989 she has been living and working in Moh-kins-tsis/Calgary, Alberta. Perron is the founder of the Laboratory of Feminist Pataphysics (2000–), a social experiment that masquerades as collaborative works of art/craft, and events. She taught at the Alberta University of the Arts until 2018 when she received the title of Professor Emerita.

Jennifer E. Salahub

Jennifer E. Salahub, PhD is Professor Emerita of Art, Craft, and Design History, Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts) and sits on the Board of the Alberta Craft Council. Her interest in textiles and craft is long standing, reflecting her professional and personal life. She continues to be fascinated by the unexplored (neglected and lost) early history of craft and craft education in Alberta. In other words, she sees the world through “craft-coloured” glasses. Most recently she published “‘A Lot of Heifer-Dust’: Alberta Maverick Marion Nicoll and Abstract Art” in Bucking Conservatism: Alternative Stories of Alberta from the 1960s and 1970s (2022).

Susan Surette

Susan Surette has a PhD from Concordia University, Montreal, where she lectures in craft, textile, and ceramic theory and history. She is a co-editor of Sloppy Craft: Postdisciplinarity and the Crafts (Bloomsbury, 2015), “Special Edition on Craft” Journal of Canadian Art History (2018/19), and Craft and Heritage: Intersections in Critical Studies and Practice (Bloomsbury, 2021). She has written essays about Canadian craft for exhibition catalogues, contributed chapters to books and journals, and acted as a consultant for Canadian craft projects. As a former weaver and basket maker, she continues to be passionate about all aspects of textiles.

Cheryl Troupe

Cheryl Troupe, PhD is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of Saskatchewan. She is a community-engaged researcher whose work centres Métis voices and perspectives in examining on Métis road allowance communities in Western Canada. Merging oral histories, family genealogies and mapping, her work focuses on the intersections of land, gender, kinship and how stories are connected to specific places. She is a citizen of the Métis Nation – Saskatchewan.