Winter 2026
Briar Craig (Canadian, b. 1961) is based in Kelowna, BC. He received a BFA from Queen’s University in 1984 and an MFA from the University of Alberta in 1987. He has held positions as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris campus, and Okanagan University College. He is currently a professor in the Department of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan.
Michelle Sound is a Cree and Métis artist, educator and mother. She is a member of Wapsewsipi/Swan River First Nation in Northern Alberta, her maternal side is Cree and her paternal side is Métis from central Alberta. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University, School for the Contemporary Arts, and a Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University Art + Design. Michelle is a 2021 Salt Spring National Art Award Finalist and has had recent exhibitions at Daphne Art Centre (Montréal), Neutral Ground ARC (Regina) and grunt gallery(Vancouver).
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun lives and works on unceded, traditional and ancestral xʷməθkʷəyə̓ m Musqueam), Sḵwxw̱ ú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səli̓lw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. An artist of Coast Salish and Okanagan descent, he graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in British Columbia. Influential as both artist and activist, Yuxweluptun merges traditional iconography with representations of the environment and the history of colonization, resulting in his powerful, contemporary imagery; his work is replete with masked fish farmers, super-predator oil barons, abstracted ovoids and unforgettable depictions of a spirit-filled, but now toxic, natural world.
Patrick Lundeen was born in Lethbridge, Alberta (Siksikaitsitapi [Blackfoot Confederacy] territory). He currently lives and works in Kelowna, BC (unceded Okanagan Syilx territory) where he teaches drawing, painting, and sculpture at UBC Okanagan University. His interdisciplinary artistic practice includes explorations of sound, video, music, food, performance, and public art. Lundeen’s visual strategies employ humour, sensory experience, and a rough and visceral aesthetic as a means to unpack social and political contexts.
Alexandra Goodall is a multidisciplinary artist from the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. In her studio practice, her passion lies in sculptural textile and installation. In her facilitation work and individual sessions, she aims to bridge the disciplines of art, psychology and bodily presence. Danielle Savage is a composer/ songwriter who loves working in various folk traditions, field recordings, modular synth, and editing. He work ranges from multichannel fixed media, collaborative exhibitions, chamber works, to synth-pop, folk, and music for film.
Katherine Pickering is a visual artist based on syilx territory in Kelowna, British Columbia. Rooted in material experimentation and the poetics of abstraction, her paintings explore the intersections of drawing, sculpture, and textile, emphasizing the material and conceptual fluidity between mediums.
Bree Apperley (b. Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Treaty 4 territory) resides in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, Okanagan sylix territory. She holds degrees in both Fine Art and Design Art, from the Alberta College of Art + Design and Concordia University respectively. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at ARTSCO gallery (Kelowna, November 2024), and Kamloops Art Gallery (January 2026). Past exhibitions include Shrine On, Alternator Center for Contemporary Art (2024) and Keeping It Real, Lake Country Art Gallery (2016). Recent publications include VUU Studio: Super Special Volume 2 (2017), and Crystallizations Zine (2016). Previously, she has worked as a graphic designer for NYC-based companies Pentagram and Princeton Architectural Press.
Matt Rader is an author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. His published poetry collections include Fine, Desecrations, and Ghosthawk, which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Rader teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC, where he lives.
Evan Berg is an emerging artist based in Kelowna, British Columbia. He holds a certificate in Documentary Film Production from Capilano University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UBC Okanagan, where he received the UBC Medal of Fine Arts. As a visual artist, Berg is interested in power structures and their influence on our relationship to, and the creation of, space and place. He investigates this through the mediums of video, installation, sound, photography, and animation. Berg’s work has exhibited in Canada, Germany, Bulgaria, and the United States. Evan is currently the Creative Director with Nixon Hospitality Group.
Fall 2025
Shawn Serfas is an Associate Professor of Visual Art and Head of the Creative Studies Department, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies. His research interests include contemporary painting concerning relational abstraction, environmental aesthetics, religion, the landscape, as well as issues bordering abstraction and representation.
Andreas Rutkauskas was born in Winnipeg (Treaty 1 territory, the ancestral and traditional homeland of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation) and currently resides on the unceded traditional territory of the syilx (Okanagan Valley, BC). His projects involve photography and video, often focusing on landscapes that have changed due to a range of technologies; examples include surveillance along the Canada/U.S. border, cycles of industrialization & deindustrialization in Canada’s oil patch, and most recently, the aftermath and regeneration following wildfires in Western Canada.
Emily Geen’s work navigates our relationships to images: as portals, as surfaces, as archives, and as objects. Her hybrid artistic processes have included personal image collections, scanning, found/readymade objects, casting, image transfers, video, reflections, laser engraving, cross stitch, stained glass, bookmaking, painting, text and sound. Embodied inquiries of nostalgia, temporality, phenomenology and architecture are prevalent in her work. Emily completed her BFA at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (2012), followed by her MFA at the University of Victoria (2015).
Tania Willard is a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist/curator whose research intersects with land-based art practices. An Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBCO in Syilx territories (Kelowna, BC Canada), her practice activates connection to land, culture, and family, centering art as an Indigenous resurgent act, though collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery and support of language revitalization in Secwépemc communities.
John Hall received his formal training in the 1960s at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary and the Instituto Allende in Mexico. Since completing his studies in 1966, he has lived and worked in Calgary, Alberta; Delaware, Ohio; New York, New York; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and, most recently, West Kelowna, British Columbia.
Nasim Pirhadi is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded, traditional territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation in Kelowna, BC. Her practice spans video, sound, olfactory elements, performance, and sculpture, forming multisensory installations where each component is interwoven. She activates space with scent, sculpture, and moving image, inviting audiences into direct sensory interaction and embodied presence. Nasim completed her MFA at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (2023).
Samuel Roy-Bois (Quebec city, 1973) is an award-winning artist and Associate Professor in Sculpture at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Laval University in 1996 and a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University in 2001. Roy-Bois’ practice encompasses installation, sculpture, and photography, focusing on the built environment, vernacular practices, and art as an emergent phenomenon.