Category: Interview

Local artist Lucy Koshan will be featured at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery as the 2020 Studio Watch Exhibition Emerging Artist.

The exhibition will be on display at Gallery on Queen in Fredericton starting September 26 and will run until mid-October.

Koshan will feature work from 2016, the third year of her BFA at Mount Allison, to her most recent work from the past winter.

LK: So having a solo show that’s like this, where I have quite a bit of space to show works in, is really unique. I work in a relatively small studio space, it’s just an extra bedroom in my apartment, so I’ve never seen all of my paintings or laid out in one space together. That’s just going to be really amazing in and of itself. Especially because of the way that work, where I work, in theory, in a sort of larger series where paintings build on one another. There are a lot of cross references, most paintings share a color scheme or a color relationship with one another. Whether [they are] in the same setting, or they kind of look like they could be and in my mind, they kind of all work together to create this really indirect narrative or some version of a specific tone or story that they bring up. That’s my intention, but I’ve never actually seen my works all in one space together to see whether that’s what they achieve together.

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September is Suicide Awareness Month, and with coronavirus and global uncertainty on the rise, mental health is in the spotlight this year.

CHMA reached out to the Mental Health and Harms Reduction Educator for Mount A, Maggie Brewer, to discuss the mental health resources available for students this year. 

Brewer has worked with Mount Allison since 2018, but has worked in the mental health field for 15 years.

She is pleased to share that the Wellness Centre adapted their services to function online or over the phone.

MB: So we have a ton of resources available, I think we have a ton of resources available, and we really want to get the word out there and educate students on what resources are available to them. I’m going to name a few highlighted resources, or some of the top ones I think students should be aware of. So counseling, counseling is free to all Mount Allison students. We have two wonderful full-time counselors who are offering virtual sessions by phone or by Zoom for healthcare. These sessions can be by appointment, or during virtual walk-in counseling hours. We also have myself, the mental health educator, who does wellness and self-care planning with students offered weekly by appointment. Again, this is free to all Mount Allison students. I really would like to take a moment to talk about Navigate MTA wellness support program. We have a great new initiative this year called Navigate MTA, and it’s a wellness support program that is student-to-student and the program’s goal is to take a proactive and collaborative approach to enhancing the knowledge of mental health and wellness supports available to students, and to promote help-seeking behavior among students by reducing obstacles to using resources and increasing awareness of wellness center services.

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Recent Mount Allison graduate Emma Delaney is a queer conceptual artist from rural New Brunswick.

She is one of the many Bachelor of Fine Arts grads who had to suddenly pack up her studio and leave campus due to COVID-19.

Without a graduation ceremony or the annual Owens Art Gallery grad show, Delaney had to find other means to create and present her work. 

With the help of Struts Gallery and Faucet Media Center, Delaney connected with two video artists in America to participate in a mentorship program. 

The mentorship, also known as the Time Share program, involves Dani Leventhal and Sheilah Wilson, also known as Dani and Sheila Restack, who live in Ohio. 

Delaney says that due to her sudden isolation, the subject of her work changed from her original plan and instead focuses on how she relates to her surroundings.

ED: I live in Albert County, which is not too far from Sackville. Living there has really influenced the work that I’m making. I identify as a queer female artist and having that in a really rural community where there isn’t a large queer presence. I’m trying to find a place and space within these rural landscapes. I’m in a queer body so that’s where my work has gone to exploring the idea of the vulnerable body, especially because a lot of my work is nude, and nude in these landscapes.

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MASU president Jon Ferguson says that the students’ union was receiving nonstop messages about voting difficulties all day.

JF: We’ve been in touch with students all day. We’ve gotten dozens and dozens of messages on social media emails, calls, visits in the office, and many students have been turned away. I’d be willing to say based on the sheer number of inquiry messages we’ve received, a majority of students in the first half of the day least, were turned away for any number of reasons. This includes students who are in their second year of residence, students who have lived in Sackville for four years and in their fourth year, and they were with their lease everything. This also includes even New Brunswick residents being told no, you can’t vote in this riding, even though that’s incorrect. You can vote in this riding in fact, if you go to the Civic Center, you can only vote in this riding. 

MC: Okay, who were they turned away by? Poll workers? 

JF: Yep, poll workers. Just so we’re totally clear. So at one point later in the day, there was an individual associated with a party who basically indicated to certain students that they could be charged for using a letter, provided by Michelle Strain by the way, for Mount Allison. This was false. That’s one part of the story and we’re very disappointed that misinformation from an individual affiliated with a party was spread, but the the main issue, I guess the first issue, and the the theme here today has been has been throughout the day, poll workers specifically at the Civic Center but also at the returning office have been turning away students.

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Daybreak Activity Centre did not slow down for a minute during this pandemic. 

The peer support center provides cultural education and recreational activities for adults with mental illness in the Tantramar area. 

Executive Director, Melody Petlock, says that she is busy making sure that members of Daybreak are not alone. 

MP: Mental health doesn’t shut down because of a pandemic. So although we were unable to have in person activities, starting around the middle of March, we never actually stopped. So right away we switched to pretty much daily telephone calls with anybody who wanted that, we hopped on Zoom and got ourselves an account but that wasn’t limited, the free accounts are only so much time, we got an account so that that would be good to have unlimited length of time in meetings. We already have various private support groups, so those carried on on various media or virtual platforms. That’s what we were doing for a while and we started putting together care packages. I was running around. I was probably busier than ever driving around dropping off food packs, snack packs, cards so people could order things. We started moving to what we call driveway visits. So I would go around and  I have a six foot social distance stick and lawn chairs and I would go around and literally visit with people in their driveways.

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New Brunswick students will return to school this Tuesday, September 8th. 

This will be the first time students are in a classroom since schools were shut down province-wide in March.

The government of New Brunswick says that school will be different this year due to COVID-19, but the plan is changing all the time.

With less than a week to go before the first bell, CHMA checks in with some local parents to see how they feel and what they know about back-to-school. 

First day jitters more intense than usual

Freelance writer Shoshanna Wingate will be sending her two daughters to start grades three and seven this year.

She says that she and her husband Peter are doing their best to prepare them for a turbulent year. 

MC: How are you explaining this to your children? One of them is as young as the third grade.

SW: We’ve been really open with our kids since April, and we talk through what’s going on, what we know, what we don’t know. The thing that we emphasize with our kids the most is that everyone’s doing the best they can. There’s some information that we just can’t know, and nobody can know, and that we need to be… we need to accept that this is change, and that it’s going to be disruptive,.

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With the Fall Fair canceled, Open Sky came up with a COVID-friendly way to have fun, and raise some funds this fall

In this instalment of the Check-In, we hear from Helen Douglas, chair of the board at Open Sky Cooperative.

Open Sky is busy preparing to host the Amazing Scramble, a new, COVID-friendly event that Douglas hopes will bring the community out on September 19th.

The Sackville area scavenger hunt will help raise funds for Open Sky’s local programs, and also provide a chance for interactions and connections, something that Open Sky will be missing this year with the cancellation of the Fall Fair.

You can find out more and register for the Amazing Scramble at the event’s CanadaHelps page.

ERICA BUTLER:
All right, Helen. So for those of us who might not know what opens Gaia cooperative does, can you introduce the organization?

HELEN DOUGLAS:
Open Sky is a farm cooperative in Sackville. It serves autistic youth and people with mental health challenges and barriers to employment in the southeastern New Brunswick and northern Nova Scotia region. It was started in 2011. And it has grown to provide unique programs and assessment tools for people that are transitioning out of high school and need to learn to work in group environments. And in fact we have an employment program which has led to many of our clients creating their own employment. So we teach everything from mental health first aid, how to get along in a workplace, how to cook in a commercial kitchen, how to farm.

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