Nipawin Arts

A holiday-themed evening with Saskatchewan’s own award-winning singer-songwriter pianist Jeffery Straker & band. Bring a friend, wear an 'ugly' Christmas sweater, and get into the festive spirit. Classic and contemporary Christmas songs, story-telling and maybe even an audience sing-along. Sold-out 4 years running at the Casino Regina Show Lounge. "Some of my favourite memories of Christmas when I was growing up on the farm, are about the music. People gathered around the piano, singing carols late into the evening with a glass of cheer. I hope to bring a bit of that musical Christmas magic to the stage with this concert".

Saskatchewan's award-winning banjo player, Eliza Doyle, wows global audiences with her charismatic performances, clawhammer banjo skills, and refined songwriting. After playing with The Dead South (earning a Juno in 2018), her career soared. Her latest album, "Pretty Strange," features 10 live tracks recorded in Nashville on May 4th, 2022. A 20-show US tour showcases her evolution as an artist, blending catchy melodies with alt-country/folk, infused with banjo, guitar, and pedal steel. Doyle's unique take on Americana keeps listeners engaged and excited.

The Prairie Sons, cellist David Liam Roberts, and pianist Godwin Friesen, draw inspiration from the vast Canadian West. They met at the Glenn Gould School of Music and share a deep connection to their Prairie roots. Both awarded and featured in CBC's Hot 30 Classical Musicians Under 30, their concert program reflects their expansive perspective. The Prairie Sons' energy and innovation offer a fresh perspective on their homeland, inviting you to see the everyday as a miracle in the picturesque Canadian landscape.

The Wardens don’t just sing about the land, they’re part of it. The Rocky Mountain-based band’s stories and songs rise from the very land they’ve protected as Canadian national park wardens. With haunting three-part harmonies and chilling tales, the band’s mountain music - blending folk, roots and western styles " reflects Canada's protected wilderness areas. Celebrating the return of wild buffalo, wrangling grizzly bears, lonely nights on the packtrail and reflecting on an environment in crisis, a performance by The Wardens has been dubbed "the quintessential mountain-culture concert experience."

Propagation explores the connections between plants, food, land, and people. Madeleine Greenway deftly combines drawing and printmaking to create lush portraits and still lives; each work treated with the same attention to detail manifesting as a character study for plants, family, and food. Madeleine states: "This series expresses gratitude to the matriarchal knowledge that has enabled me to provide for my family, as well as connect to plants, food, land, and people. While my inner dialogue is full of anxiety and sadness, the garden, the kitchen, and the studio give me reprieve from these thoughts. Most of the women in my family experience chronic mental or physical illness. But they were not joyless, or weak. Images of them in the garden show strong, happy, and proud women. This is the part of my family history I want to celebrate... The aim is this: to generate longing for a more intimate relationship with food, to invite the audience to the garden as a source of joy and respite, and to share a simple message of gratitude and the difference that care can make."

The exhibition The Spirit of Nature - Looking Beyond Yourself features fifteen paintings of different animals and insects. Each creature’s silhouette is filled with intricate Métis floral beadwork patterning. Swirling around the forms of the fauna is a diaphanous grey fog, a representation of the spirit world. Phyllis says "Each animal painting is adorned with a unique, colourful, symmetrical Métis floral beadwork design... Each bead, flower and animal are a part of something greater. Within each painting, the grey background and white flowers represent the greater universe. Hidden in each painting is a glass spirit bead. This bead, in traditional Métis beadwork, was an off colour or misplaced bead. The spirit bead symbolizes humility and it reminds us, humans are not perfect. Therefore, we need to learn to be mindful that each day is an opportunity to make improvements in ourselves for the betterment of "All of Our Relations"."

Omentum is a series of 10 paintings that touch on several of the major experiences faced by Indigenous people in this country within recent memory. These paintings, influenced by the works of both Norval Morrisseau and also Pablo Picasso, speak to some of the major struggles and triumphs that are part of our everyday life as Indigenous people, such as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Cultural Appropriation, the legacy of Residential Schools, the Rise and Honour of the Two-Spirited in the LGBTQ, the Return of Traditional Indigenous Tattooing, the Rise in Systemic Racism Online, and, of course, the Murder of Colten Boushie. John Brady McDonald is a Nehiyawak-Métis writer, artist, historian, musician, playwright, actor and activist born and raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nehiyawak. The great-great-great grandson of Chief Mistawasis of the Plains Cree, as well as the grandson of famed Métis leader Jim Brady, John’s writings and artwork have been displayed in various publications, private and permanent collections and galleries around the world, including the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

A Selection of Specimens is a solo exhibition be artist Kristin Teetaert. This exhibition features drawings, felt sculptures, and painted tiles. Kristin states: "The specimens came to life in 2012 in the form of a charcoal gestural sketch. The idea of sculpting them in wool followed. Wool allowed me to use bright colours and to create sculptures that were malleable. A tactile person, I wanted to play with my sculptures. This idea of being able to play with and manipulate the sculptures inspired the tiles; they are all able to interconnect with each other on all four sides. An important aspect of them was the ability to create different paths between the specimens by physically moving the tiles, or as a viewer, by following the shapes as they weave through the installation. I often alternate between two and three dimensions as I work. They are surprisingly autobiographical. I have always had a fascination with botany and nature, and a love of the unique shapes found in the natural and microscopic world. This, combined with my love of colour, has resulted in this series of playful sculptures and drawings that explore the ideas of interconnection, growth, spontaneity, and evolution."