The final workshop in the series takes place Saturday, June 8 from 1:00 – 3:00 PM. Musician, theatre artist and educator Bessie Wapp welcomes all in a supportive and playful environment to let your voice join with others in creating on-the-spot improvised grooves, textures, and flights of fancy! Using a looping station we’ll build up layers of sound to create original soundscapes together – and hear how every voice adds a unique beauty to the whole. 

The fourth workshop of the series takes place on Saturday, May 25, 2024, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM at Oxygen Art Centre. Join Myra Rasmussen to experiment with some basic printmaking techniques including carving rubber stamps, tetra-pack intaglio printing, and jelly-plate monotypes. Using the beauty of spring as our inspiration, flowers and leaves will be provided in the space to inspire our creations.  We will work small–about 3×5″–the perfect size to make handmade greeting cards. Participants are welcome to drop-in or to stay the whole two hours depending how far they want to explore the different processes.  Suitable for all ages (Children must be accompanied by an adult).

The second workshop of the series takes place on Saturday, November 4, 2023, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM at Oxygen Art Centre. Clown, actor, playwright, and teaching artist Marya Folinsbee leads the workshop, which will guide participants in experimental participatory theatre practices. 

In this workshop, participants will be guided in the use of theatre and clown techniques to create and embody an original character.  Those characters will then gather for an improvised, hour-long “dinner party” where the collective maintains their fictional characters for a performance art “meal.”  

Props, costumes, prompts, and wrinkles will be provided by the Host to enhance the improvisatory experience. The goal of this workshop is to create a safe container for a bizarre and committed theatrical improvisation where participants can play with creative character building, improvisation, and collective performance art.
All materials provided. No experience necessary. Interested participants are expected to take part in the full two-hour session.

The first workshop of the series takes place on Saturday, September 23, 2023, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM at Oxygen Art Centre. Artist and filmmaker Brian Lye leads the workshop, which explores phytograms on 16mm film. 

Participants will make camera-less films using plants, vitamin C, washing soda, and motion picture film. We will use an eco-processing technique that involves laying plant matter directly on the film strip. The plant matter will leave an imprint on the film that will be projected at the end of the workshop. Participants need to be present for the entire two-hour workshop.
The public are invited to attend the first Lost Cat! event at Oxygen Art Centre on Saturday, September 23, 2023, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. All materials provided. No experience necessary. Interested participants are expected to take part in the full two-hour session.

Event #1: Saturday, September 23, 2023 – Phytograms with Brian Lye

Event #2: Saturday, November 4, 2023 – Experiments in Improvised Dinner Party Performance Art

Brian Lye is a filmmaker, artist and educator living as an uninvited guest on the Traditional Territory of the Sinixt people.  His lens-based works are preoccupied with magic, humour, and the everyday. He holds a BA in Film Studies and Japanese Studies from the University of Victoria, a Diploma in Screen Production from Sydney Film School, was a guest student at The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and recently completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in visual art from The University of British Columbia. His films and animations have won awards and screened internationally at venues such as Sundance Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, The Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona, and LIVE! Vancouver’s performance art biennale. He has been an artist in residence with the Klondike Institute for Art and Culture, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, and Oxygen Art Centre. 

brianlye.com

Marya Folinsbee is a clown, actor, playwright, and teaching artist from Edmonton/Amiskwaciy Waskahikan, who now lives in the Slocan Valley/Sinixt Territory, in the West Kootenays.  Marya loves to explore the confluences of theatre and everyday life, seeking to cultivate interactive, flexible, curious, and open-ended performance spaces that blur the lines between performer and audience, art and the ordinary. Marya studied theatre at the Victoria School of the Arts and McMaster University, and independently with artists including David Diamond (Theatre for Living), Jon Davison (London Clown School), Deanna Fleysher (Don’t Call it Clown), and others. Writing credits include “In Transit” (Nextfest 2001); “Be/Longing” (2018, co-written with Martina Avis); and “Domesticated Disputes” (2020, AKA “Immaculate”). Marya devises and performs interactive theatre performances and installations, facilitates clown and theatre workshops for all ages, and is currently writing several new works – Buttons & Pockets, PLAY! and The Mosquitos.  www.materialtheatre.ca

Event #3: Saturday, February 24, 2024 –
Altered Books with Rayya Liebich

Rayya Liebich (she/her) is a writer and educator of Lebanese and Polish descent. She is the author of the award-winning chapbook Tell Me Everything (Beret Day Press) and full-length poetry collection Min Hayati (Inanna Publications). Passionate about writing as a tool for transformation and changing the discourse on grief, she has recently completed a hybrid memoir on her simultaneous experience of motherhood/mother-loss. A finalist in 7 CNF contests in the past two years including the CBC Nonfiction Prize, she is the 2022 winner of The International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir, and, The Federation Of BC Writers Literary Contest. She finds joy in community engagement and is looking for ways to get out of her head and into her hands. She believes kids are natural poets and that the world needs more poetry.

www.rayyaliebich.com

Event #4: Saturday, May 25, 2024 –
Basic Printmaking: Flowers and Foliage with Myra Rasmussen

Myra Rasmussen is a community engaged artist, who focuses on the role of festivals and celebrations in bringing people together. Originally trained in sculpture, she graduated from Wesleyan University in 2004, where she was awarded a degree in studio arts with high honors.  Since 2009, she has been based in Nelson, British Columbia, where she is the artistic director of the Polka Dot Dragon Arts Society, which focuses on creating multidisciplinary events that link the arts, nature, and community.  In addition to her work with festivals, she also has extensive experience with lino and woodblock printmaking and is part of the ink + moon calendar collective.  She teaches in schools through the ArtStarts program and at the Oxygen Art Centre.  

Musician, theatre-maker, educator andNelson’s 2015 Cultural Ambassador, Bessie Wapp (she/her)has been working professionally since 1993. Following visual art and music studies at Emily Carr, Vancouver Community College, and Selkirk she worked with many of Vancouver’s most innovative interdisciplinary groups, becoming a core member of two, Mortal Coil (stilt-dance theatre) & Zeellia (Eastern European traditional music), with whom she performed extensively across N America and in Europe. Tour highlights include Lincoln Centre (NYC), Kennedy Centre (Washington DC), Festival D’Ete (Montreal), and Zagreb Danceweek (Croatia). In 2006 Bessie returned to her hometown, Nelson BC, where she has continued to develop & perform original theatre works (Hello, I Must Be Going, Loco Phantasmo, Letters from Lithuania), and starred in local stage productions (Hedwig, Pontius Pilate, Orpheo). Bessie conducts the Taghum Hall Women’s Choir, performs with the Bill Lynch Trio and Klezmeridian, and is a faculty member of Oxygen Art Centre.