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| This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(December 2020) |
Tanton was born on October 25, 1961, in Oshawa, Ontario, and is the daughter of George and Jacqueline Tanton. Her birth parents were Doug Hunter and Louise Brown, both deceased, of Toronto. After graduating from R.S. McLaughlin C.V.I., she attended the BFA (Acting) program at the University of Windsor for two years [1] and continued her post-secondary education, graduating from the Graphic Design Program at Durham College. [2] Tanton continued her interest in the arts, working professionally in theatre, graphic design, and sales, and launched an art publishing and design company in 1989. [3]
She sold her original and published artwork in Canada and the United States, while operating two commercial galleries in Burford and Stratford, Ontario. She was a delegate to the first 1999 Businesswomen's Summit between Canada and the U.S. She has held membership in the Society of Tempera Painters, Organization of Women in International Trade (OWIT), and WEC (Women Entrepreneurs of Canada) and has participated on Team Canada Trade and Export missions.
From 1996 to 2006 she was the creative director and illustrator of Country Home Candle. She illustrated the series, "Some Beary Nice Places" and "Christmas Memories" of plates for the Bradford Exchange. In 2010, Tanton, along with Chrissy Nickerson, Landon Giauque, Pascale Ouellet (Bigoudi), Susan Padula, were a part of the Corridor Collective Studio and Gallery founded by Cheryl Baxter and Chris Beck. [4]
Tanton mentors and instructs a number of Canadian artists and youth community arts programs, and maintains a studio practice in Canmore, Alberta.
She works primarily in oils.
Moving to Canmore, Alberta with her family in February 2005, Tanton became the Program Manager for Indigenous Leadership and Management in Leadership Development at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. [3] [5] In April 2008, and Elder Tom Crane Bear of Siksika First Nation (Blackfoot) designed the tipi to mark the 75th Anniversary of The Banff Centre a few weeks ahead of the apology by the Canadian government to Aboriginal people. The design was transferred to her and Brian Calliou (Program Director for Aboriginal Leadership) and their families in a ceremony conducted by Blackfoot Elders Bruce and Anne-Marie Wolfchild, and witnessed and attended by Governor General Michaëlle Jean and her husband Jean-Daniel Lafond. Tanton and her family were adopted by Elder Tom Crane Bear and she was given the Blackfoot name, "Iniskimaki" (Buffalo Stone Woman). [6] [7] [3]
In 2008, she was named an Alumnus of Distinction by Durham College. [2] In 2009, she received a Canada Council for the Arts individual visual arts project grant to produce The Community Fusion Project.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie 18 km (11 mi) west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, on Highway 785. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture. Joe Crowshoe Sr. (1903–1999) – Aapohsoy’yiis – a ceremonial Elder of the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, was instrumental in the development of the site. The Joe Crow Shoe Sr. Lodge is dedicated to his memory. He dedicated his life to preserving Aboriginal culture and promoting the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and in 1998 was awarded the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for "saving the knowledge and practices of the Blackfoot people."
Canmore is a town in Alberta, Canada, located approximately 81 kilometres (50 mi) west of Calgary near the southeast boundary of Banff National Park. It is located in the Bow Valley within Alberta's Rocky Mountains. The town shares a border with Kananaskis Country to the west and south and the Municipal District of Bighorn No. 8 to the north and east. With a population of 17,036 in 2023, Canmore is the fifth-largest town in Alberta.
The Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts) is a public art university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution that operates four academic schools.
The Three Sisters are a trio of peaks near Canmore, Alberta, Canada. They are known individually as Big Sister, Middle Sister and Little Sister.
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is an arts and culture educational institution in Banff, Alberta. It offers arts programs in the performing and fine arts, as well as leadership training. It was established in 1933 as the Banff School of Drama. It was granted full autonomy as a non-degree granting post-secondary educational institution in 1978. Banff Centre is a member of the Alberta Rural Development Network.
The Galt Museum & Archives Akaisamitohkanao’pa is the primary museum in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, and is the largest museum in the province south of Calgary. In 2006, the museum cared for a growing collection of over 20,000 artifacts and 300,000 archival documents and photographs record the history of Lethbridge and southern Alberta. It attracts over 50,000 visitors every year.
Alberta's Rockies comprise the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada. On the southwestern part of the province along the British Columbia border, the region covers all but the south of Census Division 15.
Rebecca Belmore is a Canadian interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang. Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Faye HeavyShield is a Kainai First Nations sculptor and installation artist. She is known for her repetitive use of objects and writing to create large-scale, often minimal, site-specific installations.
Kirsten Lillian Abrahamson is a Canadian ceramic artist.
Ursula Johnson is a multidisciplinary Mi’kmaq artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her work combines the Mi’kmaq tradition of basket weaving with sculpture, installation, and performance art. In all its manifestations her work operates as didactic intervention, seeking to both confront and educate her viewers about issues of identity, colonial history, tradition, and cultural practice. In 2017, she won the Sobey Art Award.
Cheryl L'Hirondelle is a Canadian multidisciplinary media artist, performer, and award-winning musician. She is of Métis/Cree (non-status/treaty), French, German, and Polish descent. Her work is tied to her cultural heritage. She explores a Cree worldview or nêhiyawin through body, mind, emotions, and spirit; examining what it means to live in contemporary space and time.
Joane Cardinal-Schubert LL. D was a First Nations artist from Alberta, Canada. She was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She was an activist for Native sovereignty.
Nancy Tousley is a senior art critic, journalist, art writer and independent curator whose practice has included writing for a major daily newspaper, art magazines, and exhibition catalogues.
Helen Stadelbauer was a Canadian painter and educator known for her establishment of the Art Department at the University of Calgary.
Brittney Bear Hat is a half Blackfoot, half Cree artist. She makes work in a variety of media, including photography, installation and video, as a means to explore how memory and personal identity construct her Native identity.
Richelle Bear Hat is a Blackfoot and Cree artist, based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Treaty 7 territory. Bear Hat's work explores the ancestral transmission of knowledge, memory, and Indigenous relationships to land. According to curator Kristy Trinier, "her practice investigates ideas surrounding family relationships and the types of knowledge that are capable of being passed through them. These ideas are explored through the use of photography, transfers, video and paper based works. It is important to use materials and means of production that support the transference of memory and provide a platform for storytelling."
Zainub Verjee CM, is a Kenya-born Canadian video artist, curator, writer, arts administrator and public intellectual. She began her career in the Vancouver arts community of the 1970s, which was steeped in interdisciplinary, intermedia, and intercultural practices. Having made her mark as an emerging artist, she shifted the emphasis of her work to curatorial, administrative and policy arenas. Applying the insight, creativity and criticality of an artist, she has brought “institutional critique” into the workings of the institution itself. Deeply engaged with the UK’s British Black Arts, Tactical Video Movement, Third Cinema and the post-Bandung Conference decolonization, Verjee has been embedded in the history of women’s labour in British Columbia. In February 2020 she was awarded the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for “outstanding contribution to the arts”. In 2021 she was conferred an honorary doctorate by the OCAD University recognizing her outstanding contribution to arts, racial and gender equity She was elected as a Senior Fellow of the Massey College at University of Toronto in the fall of 2021. Earlier she was appointed as McLaughlin College Fellow at the York University. In 2022 she was conferred Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa, by Nova Scotia College of Art and Design NSCAD University, Halifax She was the recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts given by Simon Fraser University, Burnaby in the Spring Convocation of 2023. Her contribution to the pioneering prison theatre program in Canada and for integral role in the formation of the British Columbia Arts Council was recognized by University of Victoria by conferring her with an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts in Spring Convocation in 2023.
Âhasiw Maskêgon-Iskwêw (1958–2006) was a Cree and French Métis theorist, curator and artist. Maskêgon-Iskwêw was a significant figure in the field of contemporary Indigenous arts, and a formative proponent of digital media within Indigenous communities. In their 2015 book dedication to him, Steven Loft and Kerry Swanson describe Maskêgon-Iskwêw as "one of the foremost thinkers and practitioners of Aboriginal new media art."
Marie Smallface Marule was a Canadian academic administrator, activist, and educator. She served as executive director of the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB), chief administrator of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), and secretary of the Indian Association of Alberta. Marule was president of Red Crow Community College for two decades, and led the creation of several indigenous studies programs. She was previously an assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of Lethbridge.