About the artists:

Alexis Bulman is an Island-based mixed-media artist. For Test Press, she will continue developing her ongoing drawings and sculptures centred on aluminium webbing lawn chairs, exploring themes of islandness and climate anxiety. Throughout October, Alexis plans to experiment with an interactive installation using woven webbing and push her drawings in a weirder, looser direction.

Donnalee Downe is an interdisciplinary artist from Epekwitk/Prince Edward Island. Her work centres on the creation, research, and presentation of document and object collections amassed over decades. These archives trace a wide range of habits, people, activities, and processes. During Test Press, she will revisit Super 8 footage shot in 1987 as part of her first grant-funded project - an unfinished project exploring her Acadian heritage. She will experiment with incorporating the films into her current practice, and engage with community members to discuss her work.

Sandi Hartling is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Her work explores the philosophical and scientific perceptions of truth and its application in systems of classification. Her interest in knowledge acquisition often translates into installation, performance, documentation, and text based work. Although the work strives for simplicity in format it complicates understanding through the application of abstract communication. In this way, the work is inherently humorous and often results in comical and anticlimactic outcomes. For Test Press, Sandi is presenting an interactive project called The Artist’s Painting. What makes an artwork? Is it labour? Time? Authenticity? The artist requests your assistance to produce a painting and explore these questions through a guided game of chance. Roll the dice and make a mark!

JoAnna (Jo) Howlett (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and lobster fisherman based in Souris, PEI. Her practice currently addresses tradition and superstition in the lobster fishing industry. During Test Press they will be experimenting with the installation of a pre-existing sculpture made of rope and working on a couple of pieces using netting, rope, and transparent images thanks to an arts grant from Innovation PEI.

Kirstie McCallum is an interdisciplinary artist who is based in Charlottetown, PEI, and teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCADU). Kirstie’s work draws on craft practices, organic gardening, and DIY science to explore cycles of growth and decay, material agency, and environmental sustainability. During Test Press, Kirstie will install a slip casting device in the gallery, using gravity and suspension to create fluid clay vessels. This project builds on her 2023 Art in the Open work, Cloudwell, a sculpture that filtered rainwater through earthenware cones. While in the gallery, she will engage with the public in this unique process, which reflects her ongoing interest in the forces of nature—particularly the power of water to shape earth, landscapes, and our environment.