News

AHOY – you can walk the heartbreaking, heart-stopping, tender-hearted walks at the Arboretum or right here online! Richelle Forsey created gorgeous virtual versions! Please give me feedback !!

https://howtodrawatree.ca/tour-type/virtual_walks/

Saturday Sept 9, 2023

The Launch of the FINAL sound walks for How to Draw a Tree… and the opening ceremony and tree planting for the Tree Wellness Circle on Johnston’s Green, University of Guelph , is happening SATURDAY SEPT 9! Free and all welcome. Please come!

THE SITE IS LIVE!!! you can listen to the soundwalk online or in the forest: (www.howtodrawatree.ca)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2022 AT 1 PM

How To Draw A Tree– Sound Walk launch (mental wellness and trees) 

University of Guelph Arboretum

(free event- launch rain or shine indoors)

FINALLY the launch of my year long love story with trees as told through a Sound Walk onsite at the Arboretum Uni Guelph (sound walk will be up for a year)(. Come meet the TREE team- of artists, elders, poets, musicians horticulturalists, eco-psychologist.. 
The panel ends in a tree planting with live music (SOUND BOUND) on Johnson’s Green… 

Matheson’s participatory art project brings individuals living with mental illnesses together with trees for a yearlong creative, care-taking, reciprocal engagement culminating in an immersive public sound walk. 
Matheson’s own Sound Walk launches this day!! as well as 
the second phase of the project, incorporating students in the How to Draw a Forest project.
Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council support! 

Just got word I have received both a Canada Council and an Ontario Arts Council Grant for my multiyear project HOW TO DRAW A FOREST !!! wahooooo. Soundwalk at the UG Arboretum partnered with UG Grounds, Arboretum and the Wellness Centre..

I have a wonderful young student helping me get this site in shape- so it is “UNDER CONSTRUCTION”

In mean time: TWO projects are live RIGHT NOW! Make-Do Studio Tour and Mind the Gap (Guelph Museums)

CHECK OUT the TEASER VIDEO!

Make-do Studio Tour by Dawn Matheson
Live ZOOM presentation
March 16, 7-8:30pm. Artist Talk and Studio Tours, followed by Q and A with ALL artists in attendance.
ASL interpretation provided

Click HERE to Register

Dawn Matheson will visit four female artists in their “make-do studios.” Each artist has collaborated with Matheson through participatory projects in the past, but who themselves do not get to ‘live as artists’ as they are marginalized in society through poverty, disability or cultural difference, yet, make art everyday for personal meaning-making, creative expression and survival. These are true artists.

Matheson will discuss the rich community collaborations that inform her work as a social-practice artist, followed by video tours of the “Make Do” studios of four former co-creators.

Following her talk, Matheson will be joined by the artists themselves for an open Q and A.

Dawn Matheson’s art is about relationships. She is a Guelph-based multimedia artist with a socially engaged practice, specializing in video and audio art, installed, broadcast and performed in public spaces. Her work can be found at festivals, galleries, museums; in national publications and on broadcast stations; but lives best in forests, train stations, fountains, barns and alleyways in your neighbourhood. Through inclusive artistic practices, Dawn seeks to interrupt civic and social spaces with unexpected moments of beauty, curiosity and joy. Her relational interventions hope to offer liberation from everyday suffering and to dismantle barriers between individuals by creating alternative stories that build compassion and kinship. You can find out more about her work at thiswasnow.com

Featured Artists

Talia Baskin-Kesselman
Talia Baskin-Kesselman has performed at several Guelph Jazz Festivals with musicians including Jane Bunnett. She’s also performed with Guelph Glee Choir (directed by Katie Hampton) at the Red Brick Café. She has sung with The Ok Chorale and with Meditation and Music groups at Silence Guelph. She also enjoys singing Karaoke whenever possible.  Talia’s favourite musical artists include Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and One Direction. Talia says, “I like to make up harmonies to songs. I like to sing loud and proud.”

Judy Noonan
JUDY NOONAN is a Guelph artist, writer and disability activist… “Art releases emotions. You can tell when I’m in a good place and when I’m not by the colours I use in art. … “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

Judy Noonan is of Italian and Irish descent and was adopted into a very artistic family who made everything!

Cheryl Turner, an artist of several mediums including making reborn babies and pottery. Cheryl’s mom is of Scottish/Irish descent with Barbadian heritage on her dad’s side.

Nora Stasiukieiwcz, is a 14-year-old Deaf actor who is currently in Grade 9 at E.C. Drury School for the Deaf in Milton.

Nora LOVES theatre and performance and hopes to have more opportunities on the stage to perform in her native language of ASL. She lives in Guelph with her sister and her Polish-Canadian parents.

MIND THE GAP Guelph Museums and Centre{3} Hamilton: Mind The Gap: Intergenerational Connectivity Seniors and Youth. … connecting lower-income seniors with youth living in poverty for an interdisciplinary project. 3 Videos screening NOW at Guelph Museums plus workshop: Link

Check out my CV for the LOAD of new projects and work for 2020- 2022, mostly in the field of mental health and creativity in community. 

PUBLIC TALK: https://www.thiswasnow.com/how-to-draw-a-tree/

Saturday, Sept. 11, 11AM – Noon
Myself and the very diverse TREE team (arborists, eco-psychologist, Jesuit, Indigenous elder, tree planter, medical psychotherapist, eco-acoustic artist.. ) will be talking about this project- the process so far and the larger community engagement we are developing. PLEASE COME! “

https://arboretum.uoguelph.ca/educationandevents/plantsale

2020- FRIDAY OCTOBER 16, 2020- I’m talking at X-Camera. Come join at 12

FALLING IN LOVE: THE ART OF RELATIONSHIPS IN SOCIAL PRACTICE

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/x-camera-dawn-matheson-falling-in-love-relationships-social-practice-tickets-124446806749?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch

2019: Working, once again, (5th collaborative project!) with Action Read adult literacy students. Performance piece at the annual FOR THE LOVE OF WORDS– Transported: Objects of Literacy. Videos to come!

2018: Earlier this year, I led 6 very fun diversity and arts workshops, also at Action Read. Here is a blog on the activities: Action Read.

2018 meant the end of the Sense of Wonder multi-year project (weep) where I was  commissioned lead artist at Art Gallery of Guelph plus Artist in Education with Ontario Arts Council at EC Drury School for the Deaf in Milton, collaborating with a fantastic bunch of Deaf youth and kids with hearing loss. The works we created were featured in a solo show at Art Gallery of Guelph and in a video installation at 10C/ Carden Street in Downtown Guelph, screened at the Hot Docs Cinema for the Toronto International Deaf Film and Arts Festival, for Culture Days at the First Ontario Arts Centre/Milton, featured at CAFKA 2018, plus the 2018 Summerworks OPEN STUDIO Toronto,  and as presented at the Waterloo Culture Summit, AMPLIFY 2018.

I was in residence with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation Summer residency in Gaspe, Quebec (on the ocean!)  collaborating with improvisors in sound and music recording dreams.

2017 -I worked with the Guelph Film Festival again- this time producing a series of short videos accompanying a gallery exhibit at Guelph Museurms called “Transported: Objects of Meaning and the Immigrant Experience.” Collaborator Erin MacIndoe Sproule at Anthroscope Media made this trailer: Transported

I produced a little radio series called “Two-way: Kids and Seniors Conversations” which will air on CFRU in JUNE. Come have a listen right here: 2-way

With Guelph Life Magazine’s last publication (see my final cover story here on the wacky kids at Making Box Theatre here), I am now writing for Grand Magazine– with three features… one on artisinale Ontario CHEESE, another profiling an Olympic Gymnast and a third an adventure in OTTAWA coming up in a double issue in July.

For the true-blue Ed Video Media Arts Centre I was lead researcher for “Open Access” on finding ways to make Ed Video more accessible for Deaf and Disability communities.