Artist Director – Michael Burtt
Michael Burtt is the Artistic Director of Making Room Community Arts, in residence at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre, in the West end of Toronto. Michael has developed a grounded arts practice rooted in the asking of Big Questions in a way that is a form that is radically inclusive. He brings to this practice twenty-five years of experience as a community-based organizer and cultural worker. He has recently graduated from the Master’s program at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, studying the connection between community arts and the sacred of everyday life. In addition to his role at Making Room, Michael often works with other Jumblies-related projects including the Studio, Arts4All and MABELLEarts.
Current and Past Lead Artists
Joshua Barndt
Joshua Barndt has extensive experience as both community-based artist and with his personal practice as a painter, installation artist and curator. Joshua completed his BFA in 2008 in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Barndt’s personal work plunges us into a dark dystopian landscape of dramatic images and clandestine waste. His highly multidisciplinary exhibitions weave together hyperrealist figurative paintings, raw painted animations, large-scale sculpture and performance into immersive installations. Barndt has exhibited extensively in Montreal and Toronto, and In October of 2008 presented his graduating solo exhibition “DEATH OF AN ELEPHANT” at WhipperSnapper Gallery as a part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. He has also been very active as Curator and Arts organizer, most recently working as the co-producer for Canada’s largest student art festival Art Matters.
Ian Devenney is a certified teacher, outdoor instructor and graduate student at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies. He is also one half of Tangled Wood Industries, a boat-building company. His interest skin-on-frame boat building began with the joyful accident of finding a book about traditional arctic kayaks on his grandfather’s bookshelf as a child, but only years later did he team up with his grandfather to build his first West-Greenland style kayak. Skin-on-frame building was captivating from the very beginning because of its minimalistic elegance and because of the inherent possibilities for improvisation in the building process. Ultimately, though, what drew Ian to build six more skin-on-frame kayaks and canoes was the magic of seeing the shape of a hull materialize, thereby taking on a life of its own, and the deep fulfillment of traveling on the water in a craft built with one’s on hands. Although most of his building experience has been self-taught, Ian has also worked at the Skinboat School in in Anacortes, Washington.
Sonja Rainey
Sonja is an artist and designer for theatre & film with a commitment to creating immersive spaces and generative art. She is a recent MFA graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a focus in scenic design and research in the use of spatial annotation. She also holds a BFA degree specializing in Design for the Theatre from Concordia University. Design credits include the co-design of A Fool’s Life presented by Ahuri theatre, design and co-creation of The Nomadic Dream Projectpresented at the Prague Quadrennial, set design for Mac Wellman’s The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set design for Carlisle Floyd’s opera, Susannah, scenic/video design for One Night at Theatre Monument Nationale. She has also worked with the Center for Arts in Human Development as a video designer and consultant for their ongoing ethnodrama project and is working with Jumblies Theatre in 2011 and 2012 on a variety of projects and productions including Like An Old Tale, partly thanks to funding from the Cultural Resources Council of Canada.
Visiting Artists and Interns
Sisi Chen – dancer
Angelika Aitken – visual artist
Samantha Asher – facilitator
Rebecca Bruton – vocalist and musician
Maggie Flynn – multi-disciplinary artist and curator
Lucy Tishkina – facilitator
Laura Armstrong – facilitator
Helah Cooper – visual artist/designer
Shaina Lehan – educator
Julia Churchill – singer/songwriter
Genevieve Robertson
Laura Hale – prop and set design
Nicole Hergert – facilitator
Lemon Bucket Orchestra – musicians
Kris Erickson – photographer
Sand in Water Members:
Margaret
Marlene
Wendy
Mona
Alice
John
Maria
