Dr Rebecca Caines

I believe in interdisciplinary collaboration, innovative creation, critical thought, and community connection. In these things I find hope.

Liquid Art
Curated by Rebecca Caines in partnership with Creative City Centre, Sâkêwêwak Artist Collective, a team of emerging and established visual artists, cultural and artistic mentors, and a number of Saskatchewan high schools.

Project Summary
Liquid Art is a community-engaged art project investigating the social impact of improvisation in live painting and mixed media. This project works with visual arts as a liquid, live form, able to sustain a creative city. It explores painting, drawing and mixed media art as liquid forms that can be created live with audiences, and used to sustain and enrich communities. In particular it explores live painting, drawing and mixed media art as a format that allows learning in the visual arts to flow from established artists to emerging artists, to young artists, to the communities of Canada and back again. It examines the social impact of live art on communities in Saskatchewan through supporting live art workshops, events and exhibitions. This initiative is a project by the Regina Improvisation Studies Centre, The Creative City Centre and its Hague Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, working with renowned Indigenous artist collective Sâkêwêwak and the communities they are embedded in, and two local high schools: Scott Collegiate and Balfour Collegiate. Improvising musicians from Holophon Audio Arts and the communities could also join us for live art events.

Mentorship Outcomes
Through a series of workshops and events where established, emerging and young artists learn about live art, and participate in making live art with and for their communities, visual art practices can be sustained and supported. It aims to support the best of the area’s emerging artists, and allow youth, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, access to fine arts mentorship and training unavailable through the current school systems. This project also aims to create public engagement with innovative visual art through the creation of large, exciting, public interactive visual art events with a significant online and media profile.

Artistic Innovation and Exhibition Outcomes
Through partnering with an artist collective which is an established leader in contemporary First Nations art, the project will bring together a range of intercultural approaches to live art technique, including contemporary Aboriginal mixed media art practices, and interdisciplinary approaches such as competitive, performative “art battles,” and painting live to improvised music, film, and spoken word. A final exhibition will be mounted at the Hague Gallery to exhibit work by the established artists, the emerging artists developed from the live art events, and work by the school children from workshops.

Community-Engagement Outcomes
The project will pair two emerging artists (Geanna Dunbar and Larissa Kitchemonia) with two established artist mentors (well known artists Lionel Peyachew and Josh Goff). These artists will work together with their mentors to develop a series of workshops for school children, with a focus on improving access to high quality visual art programming and mentorship for those whose communities face socioeconomic disadvantage. The artists will also participate in public live art events, demonstrating their work in art battles and improvised live art evenings and show their work in exhibitions. These public events will bring in new audiences for contemporary Canadian public art, and also engage the communities that the artists are part of. The schools will benefit from culturally appropriate, professional visual art workshops and informal mentorship for their students who have an interest in the arts. Support letter from the schools are available on request. The emerging artists will benefit from the professional development of working with mentors and showing their work and the stories inherent in their work from their own lives back to the communities involved. Elders will be consulted to develop themes that might inspire the live art processes. Other community-engaged outputs include positive role modeling for young people, support for young First Nations artists, positive community events and a strengthened partnership between all the partners.