Panel Discussion: Gift or Theft: The Paradoxical Returns of an Artistic Practice

Moderator: Maggie Shirley 

Panelists: Jim Holyoak, Susan Andrews Grace 

Join Susan Andrews Grace and Jim Holyoak as they discuss the hidden realities of a life spent making art and how the life of an artist and their work is received in today’s society. How is the value of a work of art measured? Is art valued for its political or social relevance, technical skill, market trends, or the artist’s reputation? Why make art? What value does it have for the artist?

Susan Andrews Grace is a visual artist and poet of Irish settler ancestry, maintaining her practice in Ky̓ʕamlúp (Nelson, British Columbia) on Sn̓ʕay̓ckstx (Sinixt) territory. Her visual art practice searches for the metaphysical in the ordinary, finding the poetic in the material; it includes textile installation, mixed media, and sculpture. Andrews Grace has received grants for her writing and visual art from BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Saskatchewan Arts Board, and Columbia Kootenay Culture Alliance. Her work has been exhibited in public galleries in Canada over the last thirty-five years. Her seventh book, The Waiting Bench, will be released by Gapereau Press, 2027. She was one of the founding faculty of Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson; she holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a BA in Philosophy.

Jim Holyoak’s practice consists of drawing, ink-painting and writing, artists’ books, and large-scale drawing installations. He received a BFA from the University of Victoria, an MFA from Concordia University, and was a student of master ink-painter Shen Ling Xiang, in Yangshuo, China. In parallel to his solo practice, Holyoak has orchestrated numerous collaborative drawing projects, often with fellow artist Matt Shane, and sometimes involving hundreds of people drawing together. His work has been exhibited  widely, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, La biennale de Québec, Tegnerforbundet (Drawing Association) in Oslo, KM21 (formerly the GEM Museum of Contemporary Art) in The Hague, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in Rīga, the Carnegie Mellon International Drawing Symposium in Pittsburgh, and the Teckningsmuseet (Museum of Drawings) in Sweden. Holyoak has attended artist residencies in New York, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Banff, The Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, and throughout Norway. His drawings and writing have also been featured in magazines Dark Mountain (issue # 26, 2024), FUKT Magazine (issue #21, 2023), Esse (2023 & 2017),  and Border Crossings (2015). His work has also been included in books such as Drawing in the Present Tense (Thames & Hudson, 2023) and Fire Season (Anthology published annually by Amory Abbott and Liz Toohey-Wies, 2020).  With flask publishing (Victoria), Holyoak recently released a 500-page, fully illustrated, fantasy novel entitled Book of 19 Nocturnes, as an alphabetized edition (26 / A-Z). Holyoak teaches remotely for  Emily Carr University of Art + Design from the traditional, unceded territory of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx Sinixt Arrow Lakes peoples, in the town of Nelson, BC. 

FREE EVENT—Langham Theatre