Mentor-in-Residence

Master Class with Yolanda Paulsen

January 22-30, 2011

Five mid-career or senior artists will be chosen to work closely with Mexican sculptor Yolanda Paulsen for a one-week period. Through a peer-relationship of conversation and experience-exchange, Yolanda will provide critique, advice, support, contacts and information that can contribute to the development of your art practice. As well as group activities, Yolanda will visit your studio, discuss professional practices, and help move your art practice to the next level. Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to work and discuss with an international artist! Recharge those inspiration batteries!

A $100 fee is payable upon acceptance into the program. Participants must be MAWA members.

How to Apply
Applications must be received in the MAWA office by 4 pm, Friday, Jan. 7, 2011. Please include:

• a one-page letter describing why you are applying for the program and what you hope to achieve; make sure the letter also has information about how to contact you
• your name, mail address, e mail address and phone numbers
• a list of the images or videos you are sending with the following information about the work: title, size or length, medium (what it is made with), year made; please order your images starting with the most recent and ending with the oldest
• up to 20 images of your work on CD or up to 10 minutes of video (if you are a performance or video artist); please save images as jpegs on a CD or DVD; name the image files with numbers that correspond to you image list; again, please order your images starting with the most recent and ending with the oldest
• a current resume/c.v., from one to three pages in length describing your art activities; include things like exhibitions, classes you have taken, your educational background or other activities that are relevant or have helped to inform you as an artist
• a self-addressed stamped envelope so we can return your materials
• if you are not already a member, a MAWA membership form and payment

Remember, the number of applicants far exceeds available spaces for each program. Selection is based on several factors including compatibility with the mentor (a shared choice of media, set of artistic concerns, or content) and the mentor’s sense of whether they can be helpful to you at this point in your process.

Yolanda Paulsen comes from three generations of artists and was brought up in an environment where art, music and dance were omnipresent around the household. Having been exposed to her fathers’ profession as a jeweler and sculpture, she was inspired at an early age to pursue a career in art. As a teenager, she studied at the Arts Student’s League in New York and later in the National School of Art “ La Esmeralda” in Mexico City, her home. She has been exhibited in museums such as Museo de Arte Moderno, Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporano. This year, together with Gabriel Orozco, she participated in the exhibition “Bio Diversidad Mexicana” at the Museo de Historia Natural in México City. She has been invited to show her work in Germany, Belgium, China, United States, Colombia as well as in Canada, where, during the summer of 2009, she was a resident artist at the Banff Centre in Alberta. The theme that is predominant in her work is how all things, animate and inanimate, are interconnected and form a unity as a whole.

Yolanda is the MAWA-sponsored “Keynote” Speaker at the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s symposium, Sculptural Vocabularies, on Saturday January 22, 2011.