Visual arts & new media

Don’t let your art hit a wall — paint it! This course, taught at Red Deer Polytechnic, is designed to deconstruct the mystery and trepidation around mural-making for new-to-it artists. Learn practical mural-making skills, and how plan & propose your own murals to granting organizations. We’ll look to visual projects from around the globe for inspiration and learn from talks by local mural artists. Throughout the week, class-mates will create their own collaborative group murals.

Taught by Amber Solberg, a muralist and project facilitator for not-for-profit kindness society, Altruistic Current. To date, Amber’s worked on a handful of murals, bringing together the work of 200 Community Members and 15 Professional Artists in making community murals for the Halifax Regional Municipality, the Downtown Halifax Business Association, and Parks Canada.

Registration deadline: July 7, 2025
Dates/times: July 14 – 18, 2025, 9am – 4pm
Location: Red Deer Polytechnic, AB
Cost: $695

Learn more and register online at RDP Continuing Education.

April 17 at 5:30 pm

Have you ever wished you could use the Royal Alberta Museum’s collections for sketching inspiration? Now’s your chance! We'll be showcasing rarely seen museum objects to create a still-life setup for you to practice your drawing skills.  

This month there will be a huge migration of birds from our collection rooms! Everything from owls, penguins, sparrows, and turkeys, you’ll have a chance to draw birds from Alberta and around the world.  

Learn more: www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/node/648

Faye HeavyShield
blood, 2004
cotton, cotton string, acrylic

In celebration of International Women's Day we are proud to share, blood—the work of  Kainai artist Faye HeavyShield. 

Bold Women

Two of HeavyShield’s installation artworks, blood and homecoming, from the AFA’s Art Collection have been selected for Bold Women, a landmark exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. 

The show features over forty primarily Indigenous, Black, Newcomers and LGBT women artists as well as those of gender non-conforming identities whose visionary ideas and experimentation demonstrate the concept of boldness through challenging dominant institutional, cultural and social boundaries and reshaping historical narratives. 

Set to open February 18 and running through to July 6, 2025, the exhibition includes 75 artworks from various disciplines including photography, sculpture, textiles, paintings, video, installations and is organized across four galleries each exploring one element of boldness:

• Portrayal / Resistance: ways that portrayals can deny visibility
• Collective Preservation / Liberation: women preserving, healing, and liberating communities across generations
• Nature / Erasure: the erasure of women’s contributions, in conversation with nature
• Wisdom / Knowledge-keeping: transmitting knowledge and women as connectors

The exhibition was curated by Susan Earle, the Spencer Museum’s curator of European and American Art, along with a team of diverse curatorial collaborators from across North America including the Brooklyn Museum’s Curator Dr. Kimberli Grant and Wanda Nanibush, an Anishinaabe curator from the Beausoleil First Nation in Ontario among others. 

About the artist

Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Blood Nation. She graduated from the Alberta College of Art in 1985, and continued her studies at the University of Calgary. Gaining prominence and recognition in the past few years, her work has been the subject of many solo shows including major exhibitions of First Nations contemporary art. HeavyShield's work is a fusion of highly evolved personal and powerful imagery influenced by her Christian and Blood upbringing. Her minimalist installations are metaphors of the human body and a reflection of her personal experiences.

Bold women accelerating action at the AFA

Meet the bold women of the AFA's Board of Directors that are passionate about the arts and work steadfastly to support a vibrant Alberta arts community that sparks innovation, bursts with creativity, fosters understanding, and promotes belonging.  

Click the names of the board members and watch as they share their personal takes on the importance of the arts in Alberta.

Cynthia P. Moore AFA Board Chair Calgary	Yasmin Jivraj Edmonton	Melody McKnight Red Deer	Shana Yang Calgary

About International Women's Day

International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on March 8 around the globe. IWD has been celebrated globally since 1911 and is an important day that highlights the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

This year’s IWD theme focuses on accelerating action for gender equality. We encourage you to take part in an IWD event within your community and continue supporting women in the arts throughout the year.