Art Connects | Outsider Art

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In conjunction with the annual Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival, the Gallery invites Kristin Cheung, Executive Director of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver, and Shannon Goodman, Program Manager, to discuss the festival, the artists it serves, the complex history of “Outsider Art” and its place within the Vancouver community.

Cheung and Goodman will be joined by artists John Clinock, Amy J. Dyck and Charlie Sandeman, who will share their experiences of being artists on the “outside” and how the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival brings together the Vancouver community to challenge stereotypes about who and what counts in the art world.

This episode of Art Connects is presented in partnership with the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival and the Community Arts Council of Vancouver.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Kristin Cheung 冮雪莉 (she/her/hers) is a fundraiser and arts administrator with more than ten years of experience working in arts and non-profits. Born and raised in amiskwaciwâskahikan territory (also known as Edmonton), she now lives and works on the traditional, unceded traditional territory of the Katzie, Semiahmoo, Kwantlen First Nations, also known as Surrey.

Cheung is passionate about working with and supporting the work of under-represented communities and has volunteered and fundraised for numerous culturally diverse non-profits in Vancouver and Edmonton. She previously worked at Pivot Legal Society, the Vancouver International Film Festival, Contemporary Art Gallery, Gateway Theatre, Ricepaper magazine and Geist magazine. She co-founded ‘The Future is you and me’, a free community mentorship program for young women of colour in the arts. ‘The Future’ aims to build a community of artists and leaders with an intersectional feminist lens. Cheung has a Masters in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths University of London and spends her free time as a Board Member at Centre A and Room magazine. Cheung has been the Executive Director at the Community Arts Council of Vancouver since summer 2021.

Shannon Goodman is a graduate of the University of Ottawa with five years of experience working in the arts and charitable organizations. Born and raised in small town Ontario, she now lives and works on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver. Goodman is passionate about building long lasting relationships with Indigenous communities and working alongside under-represented groups to create programming that provides a welcoming and creative environment for all to thrive. Goodman is currently the Program Manager at the Community Arts Council of Vancouver.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Influenced by the ‘Beat’ poets of the 1950s and ‘60s, John Clinock (he/him/his) left his home in the United Kingdom to travel the highways of North America. En route he fell in love with Canada’s West Coast and remains here still, living and making art in Vancouver, BC. Clinock failed high school art in England and didn’t even consider making visual art until the 1970s in Victoria, BC. At that time, John was down and out in spirit and mind. A concerned friend suggested he apply for the same art course she was applying for: a two-year foundational Visual Arts program at Camosun College. Clinock had no portfolio and no experience but was persuaded to try. He did so and discovered a deep and lasting passion for the visual arts. Although still plagued by periods of deep depression, Clinock has continued his art studies and practice and has used his experience to teach and help others discover and explore their own creativity and find healing and joy in the act of art. Clinock describes his art as: “An emotional evocation of imagined and expressive figures that act as facets of my subconscious, seeking to connect to the viewer and each other.” He calls his creative process, “experiential intuition” and says that his images appear through “investigative and meditative layering of paint, spontaneous mark making and the serendipity of gesture and brush.” Clinovk hopes that viewers of his art can find visual pleasure, and maybe an echo of their own stories, in his paintings.

Amy J. Dyck (she/her/hers) is a British Columbia–based artist whose work is a unique mix of representational and abstract expressionism and strives to express something deeper in the human experience than can be observed by the eye. Using collage, oil paints and drawing mediums, and pulling from anatomical studies and visual research, her work is influenced by old and new masters and is always evolving. Dyck has been interviewed for CBC Art Minute, has had her work featured in a handful of art magazines, and has won awards in several art exhibitions. She actively teaches and demonstrates painting and drawing for all ages in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley and has her work in collections across North America and internationally. In this mysterious internal landscape, where our experiences are not solid, knowable objects, where our feelings come and go, and where our deeper selves reside, Dyck’s work explores what it feels like to be human, alive and female, with all the vulnerability, yearning, resilience, and complexity inherent inside us. Her recent work is a collection of collages and paintings of women, referencing aspects of her depth, vulnerability and strength. Each complex and exploratory, these works are in direct rebellion against the instinct to simplify her to only what is visible at first glance and hint at something more allusive and compelling in the whole of her. Every figure is embodied, holding dignity and wholeness within the chaos and mystery.

Charlie Sandeman (he/him/his) is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working in ceramics, photography and printmaking. His work explores his life experiences as a queer trans person with mental illness. Whether it’s exploring his gender identity and what that means to him, or reflecting on experiences navigating the health care system as transgender and bipolar, clay allows Sandeman to play with the constant push of trying to live as authentically as he can and feeling the need to conform to society’s expectations of his experience. Through form and colour, he expresses the polarity and union of joy and depression, fitting in and sticking out, and trying to find a way through a world that doesn’t understand him.