Michele Sereda Artist-in-Residency announced

By Costa Maragos Posted: October 19, 2015 9:00 a.m.

Two local artists, Eagleclaw Thom and Joey Tremblay, have been named to the Artist-in-Residency that will honour the memory of Michele Sereda.

The residency aims to create engagements between artists, organizations and students around socially relevant issues.

Thom is an alumnus of Fine Arts. He’s a visual artist who will use the residency to gather stories of missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

He will translate the images (silk screening, painting and photography) that will speak to what is lost.

“These multimedia pieces will depict the good memories these women left behind,” says Thom. “The project will encourage the families and communities experiencing loss to tell the stories from their point of view. Too often, media stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women, exhibit biases and prejudices, painting the picture of women who are not valued. My project seeks to depict who these women were, who misses them, and what they were like.”

Tremblay, a Theatre Department alumnus, is currently Artistic Director of Curtain Razors. That’s the theatre company founded by Sereda and who ran it for several years, to great acclaim.

Tremblay says he will use his time in residence to rebuild the company.

“My primary goal for this residency is to stabilize, re-interpret and re-establish Curtain Razors as Saskatchewan’s longest-tenured experimental theatre companies by developing bold new projects that interact with the community, and engage with professional artists and organizations,” says Tremblay. “Most importantly, I hope this will inspire student-artists to develop a passion for socially-engaged practice.”

Thom and Tremblay will interact with students and faculty, and will present their work in progress in a public forum during their residency.

“Having an artist-in-residence provides added value in that these creative individuals, who are always thinking outside the box, provide a catalyst for important exchange between disciplines,” says Rae Staseson, Dean of Fine Arts.

The Faculty of Fine Arts is especially grateful to Michele's family and friends who have helped make this happen through their generous donations.

Michele Sereda, an alumna of the theatre department, was one of five people killed in a multi-vehicle crash north of Regina in February, 2015.

Also killed in the crash was Lacy Morin-Desjarlais, an artist who taught powwow classes at the U of R’s College Avenue Campus.

If you wish to support the Michele Sereda Artist-in-Residency please contact Kathleen.Irwin@uregina.ca