Maralynn Cherry is a Metis artist and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She has studied at the University of Toronto and traveled to the West Coast. She spent a year wandering from California, through Washington State and up to the Queen Charlotte Islands in BC. This was a wandering trip through the landscape while reading the works of conservationists, John Muir, John Burroughs and Thoreau. 

Cherry has taught courses involving art, science and nature for many years throughout Ontario, designing special outdoor education courses. From 1994 to 2000 she has received Ontario Arts in Education Grants, working on programs in  Kasabonika and Big Trout Lake, and various schools in the Toronto and Durham Regions. She has exhibited throughout Ontario in solo and group exhibitions at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Cataraqui Creek Millennium Project and in various galleries in Toronto and Whitby. She also participated in a performance piece in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1998 she curated, Dream Ecology at the Koffler Gallery in Toronto and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa.  She has created and published a book work for the Millennium outdoor project called Ecological Diaries.  Cherry teaches two fine art studios in the Cultural Studies Department at Trent University in Peterborough and is Curator at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. She continues to pursue her artistic practice as she wanders the rivers of the Oak Ridges Moraine. As curator of the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington she has curated numerous exhibitions including artists, Anne O’Callaghan, Penelope Stewart, John Dickson, Cybele Young, Doug Guildford etc. She co-curated a traveling exhibition for Doug Guildford in collaboration with the Thompson Gallery and St. Mary’s Gallery.  Recent exhibitions include, Edge at  the Red Head Gallery in Toronto and the upcoming exhibition Fluid 11 at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in Minden. Most recent exhibition of wool works, video, paintings and stone installation can be seen at the Nexux Gallery in Orono.  Cherry continues to work on a multi media work titled Garments that includes, paintings, video, text and movement…She has been traveling back to Manitoulin, Island and Wikwemikong for the past two years retracing histories that interweave the landscape, memories and the body.

    Rowena Dykins studied fine art at the School of Art & Design at the Montreal School of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Montreal, and in London, England. Since 1976, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto, Montreal and throughout Ontario. In 1992 her work was featured in a solo exhibition, Ancient Shadows and Other Footprints, at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. In 1998 she participated in The Real McKay, curated by Margaret Rodgers and Carolyn Bell-Farrell at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. She was part of a group show titled Watershed at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Dykins was chosen as an artist in residence in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland in 2005. More recently, she worked as an artist in residence on Toronto Island during September 2010. In the summer of 2007, the artist was featured in a dual exhibition with Wolfgang Kohler in Recent Works, curated by Maralynn Cherry at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. Dykins’ work is in the collections of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Station Gallery as well as numerous corporate and private collections in Canada, United States, England and Wales.

    Throughout her practice Dykins continues to experiment with the act of painting. Colour, spontaneity of gesture and the constant working back into the surface involve this artist in a rich and ongoing process. It is key to Dykins’ practice to wander in a habitat, exploring shorelines near lakes and rivers as well as the deep woods. In doing this, she internalizes and reconditions the memory of being in nature, a process that subsequently emerges in the studio. Thus landscape, environment and habitat play a major role in the topography of the paintings. Over the past five years, Dykins’ work has further been informed by mapping; in the gathering of historical and current maps of a region, and in the rough outlines of maps that are used to initiate paintings.

Dykins’ vital relationship to the natural environment feeds the purity of her abstract studies and large canvases. The studio is a site for the layering of textures, over-painting, scraping and smoothing. Overall colour field and layering boldly shapes the terrain of the canvas as though fragments of earth were being remembered in the making. The plasticity of colour and formal relationships are engaged in a struggle that positions the ethereal nature of atmosphere in contrast to the bold raw weight of the elements.

    It is in this relationship between the experience of environment and the work of painting that the term riparian comes into play. Riparian zones are found where land and water meet; they function to filter and purify the water as it permeates the soil and passes through to rivers and streams. Rich in nutrients, the processes that occur in these borderlands are critical in supporting the health of the larger surrounding ecosystem. Dykins’ work in Ontario, in residencies in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, and most recently at Artscape on Toronto Island, have put her in contact with such areas. In a metaphorical sense, we begin to see parallels with her work—in the movement between internal experiences and memories and the experience of the external environment, in the filtering of memory through gesture.

    There is a visceral memory encased in the paint itself as strokes unlock the supple light of flesh, the fluid action of the sea or the sheer essence contained in volcanic surfaces. Perceptions are transformed into a language that mirrors the turmoil of, and junctures in, our relationships to things from moment to moment. Each painting is a page representing volumes of accumulated experience.

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Laura is an honour graduate of the Creative Arts Program at Georgian College School of Design and Visual Art, Barrie, Ontario.  Hair explores the morphogenesis of organic form in her multi-media installation artwork.  Laura has exhibited her art in solo and group shows throughout Ontario including; The MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie, The Redhead Gallery, Toronto,  The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, The Station Gallery, Whitby, and The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington.  Laura is an art instructor at The Oshawa Arts Resource Centre and The Visual Arts Centre of Clarington.  Recent exhibits include; IRIS in the Adirondacks - BluSeed Studios, Saranac Lake, New York, The Last Taboo, Zoomer Show – Exhibition Place, Toronto, Fluid ll- Agnes Jamieson Gallery, Minden, Deviant Detours– Kunsthaus Gallery, San Miguel, Mexico, The Fiction Project and The Self Portrait Project - Brooklyn Art Library, New York.  Laura designed and created the stage sets for the Fundraiser, Dance For It, Atlantis, Ontario Place, Toronto, 2008. and Dance For It, Windreach Farms, Whitby, 2010.  Laura Hair is a founding member of The IRIS Group. http://art.lmh.googlepages.com

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Judith Mason is a practicing artist and art educator.  She holds a BA in Cultural Studies; a BA in Education and is currently completing an MA in Art Theory.  In conjunction with her academic work Mason has spent many years teaching art workshops using numerous approaches. Additionally she has studied textiles, ceramics, drawing and printmaking, sculpture, photography and has been involved in curatorial practice.

Much, if not most, of her work over the past three decades has been completed in and around Peterborough and in the Clarington area, not far from the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, known for its outstanding collection of Painters Eleven.  Like Painters Eleven, Mason’s work is characterized by tensions between formal abstract minimalism and recognizable topographies. Her paintings draw parallels between structural abstraction and more conventional visualizations that might be likened to architectural blueprints or biological diagrams that illustrate cell division.  Mason's work is rich and eclectic, reflecting both the influences of other contemporary artists and the panoramic scope of her multi-media exploratory history.

Holly McClellan’s photography offers a suburban viewpoint and is rooted in the familiar and everyday.  Inspiration comes from sources such as consumerism, industry and their relationship to the environment.  Time and space are addressed by pushing technical boundaries with the medium, using either analog or digital techniques.  References to visual art, especially abstract painting and the medium of photography itself, play an important role during the shooting stages.  She received her fine art degree from York University and her applied photography diploma from Sheridan College.

Recent exhibition activity includes participating in Percolate, a group exhibition for Toronto’s 2010 CONTACT photo festival, with Nicholas Tinkl and Tricia Dunk Tinkl. 

In 2009 a number of public events were done for the Garbage Dress Series.  Members of the public are asked to bring in their unwanted clothing.  A sculptural dress is created against a custom fabricated metal frame, using the unwanted clothing. Each dress and photo shoot are site specific.  Disposal of the clothing is also part of the process.  Through this series and another related body of work, Holly McClellan’s artistic practice is starting to expand beyond photography, into other mediums such as installation and sculpture. 

Moments Intercepted (labspace studio project)

McQuay’s photographic practice includes black and white film and original silver gelatin prints. Recently she has made digital files from her silver gelatin prints and created large archival inkjet prints and installation works.”

Studied undergraduate fine art at Sir George William’s University (Concordia) in Montreal, PQ and fine art photography at The Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport Maine, USA. Since 1983 she has participated in over 30 solo and group exhibitions, including: 2007 Order Inside Chaos, Station Gallery, Whitby ON,  2004 Markings Gallery Vertigo, Vernon, B.C., 2000 Memory and Nature: The Iris Group at the Millennium The Art Gallery of Northumberland, Cobourg, ON, 1998 Gros Morne by Foot, Sherman Hines Museum, Liverpool, N.S., 1994, 1991, 1990 Sacred Silences: Stone Circles and Megaliths  The Station Gallery, Whitby ON, The Latcham Gallery, Stouffville, ON and The Rail’s End Gallery, Haliburton ON, 1993 Urban Photographics Urban Photographics Projects, traveling to several Canadian public galleries. , 1992 The Experience of Place: A Silent Language The Robert McLaughlin Gallery Oshawa ON, 1986 New Photographics Gallery 44 Toronto ON.

Mary Ellen has received several awards of excellence, including: 2012 Professional Women Photographers (USA) 36th International Exhibition, 2 honourable mentions selected by juror Mary Ellen Mark; 1993 Urban Photographics (Faces of Canada) 2 selections for the archives of the Museum of Civilization and 1986 National Association of Photographic Artists (Canada), 2 Judges Choice awards.

Her work is represented in the collections the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa ON and the archives of The Museum of Civilization, Ottawa ON, as well as numerous corporate and private collections. Images and writing have been featured in many publications including:  

1996 The Callanish Standing Stones: A Stone Age Mystery The Globe and Mail
 1996 Journeys Beyond the Lens Art Impressions
 1992 Faces of Canada Urban Photographics Projects
 1989 Oh Victoria! EnRoute
1986 As You Are Camera Canada

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An honor graduate of Georgian College and The Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, with a year’s study in Florence, Italy. 

Janice has been trained as a printmaker and painter with a focus on portraits in oils.  Her recent work continues to create portraits in other media.  Included below is “A History of Small Gatherings”, which displays hand prints collected from the International Women’s Day Celebrations.  She is also an apprentice-electrician.

Recent exhibits include Iris in the Adirondacks at BluSeed Studios, Saranac Lake, New York, and Artsweek Peterborough 2010.

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Rodgers is an artist, writer, curator and educator in Oshawa, Ontario. She writes essays, articles and reviews for several art publications and is the author of Locating Alexandra (Toronto: ECW, 1995). She is the founder of the IRIS Group. Recent exhibition activity includes Money etc,  RED, IRIS at BOLA, Oshawa, liminal spaces: new century of the city, Hamilton Artists Inc, New York Story, Clarington,  IRIS in the Adirondacks, Saranac Lake, NY, Fluid  2 at Agnes Jamieson Gallery, Minden,  Deviant Detours, Kunsthaus Gallery, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, EDGE at Red Head Gallery, Toronto. She is a former Director/Curator of the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington.
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http://www.margaretrodgers.ca

http://www.outtolunchwithmargandlina.com

Sally Thurlow is continuing work on a multi-media, landscape-inspired series of sculptures coming from a six week Artist in Residency program at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland. She exhibits in all the Iris Group shows and has continued to exhibit in small group shows since the 1990’s. Next exhibitions are at Nexus Gallery in Orono, Ontario, and with the Iris Group at BluSeed, Saranac Lake, NY. Both are in June/July 2010. Her solo sculptural show, Canoe Dreamings finished two years touring six Ontario public galleries in 2008.  Thurlow has given frequent guest artist talks and has often been a guest artist instructor at Trent University, Peterborough, Ont.  She has been the recipient of many Ontario Arts Council Awards.  Thurlow holds a BA with Honours majoring in studio art, from University of Toronto, with Cultural Studies and Environmental  Science courses from Trent University and many courses from Ontario College of Art and Design.  Before an earlier seven year career in fashion design and manufacturing, she received an Honours Diploma in Creative Fashion Design from George Brown College.  She has work in private collections scattered across Canada.
www.sallythurlow.com

Wendy Wallace is a graduate of the University of Toronto and Sheridan College where she received a Bachelor of Arts with a Specialist in Visual Studies and Major in Art History (1984). She received a scholarship in 1985 from the Banff Centre's School of Fine Arts where she completed an independent study session. In 2009 Wallace continued her studies receiving a Bachelor of Education from the University of Ontario, Institute of Technology.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in 1994 purchased A Cultural Symbol Of life in Durham Region, for their permanent collection.
In 1997 her work was chosen for Art on Public Lands Competition, and the resulting work, Symbiosis, was exhibited at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, 1998-99. This work was installed on the exterior grounds of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery during her solo exhibition Evolving Artefacts, 1999 and remained there till 2005.
Wallace's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions  including The Station Gallery, Whitby Arts Inc., Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto, Scarborough College, Durham Art Fest, Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Art Gallery of Northumberland, Kent Farndale Gallery, Latcham Gallery, Downtown Oshawa, Red Head Gallery, Toronto, Kunsthaus Gallery, Brooklyn Library, New York and recently at Hamilton Artists Inc.
Wallace has received individual artist grants from the Ontario Arts Council and project grants from the Canada Arts Council to create and further develop bodies of work. Since 1999 Wallace has received the Ontario Arts Council, Artist in Education Grant sharing her art practice with students across Ontario.

Wendy Wallace's images reflect on subjects that play with the metaphorical narrative. Her work challenges environmental relationships of living creatures, plants, architecture and the manufactured object resulting in a residual imprint of activities.  Wallace’s work creates narratives of these observations and challenges the interrelationships of architecture, industry, people and nature. The work embodies a social consciousness; images cruise through the consequences of roles subjects play in the landscape centered on the impact of the narrative.

Discovering the everyday in cities and towns raises the significance while searching for cultural similarities and differences.  Overall her work identifies the urban/rural/suburban landscapes as cultural symbols. www.wendywallace.ca