CARFAC National Board
The CARFAC National Board of Directors is comprised of volunteer CARFAC members who are practicing artists and represent all areas of Canada, from coast to coast to coast.
THERESIE TUNGILIK – President and Spokesperson
Photo credit: Charlene Panigoniak of Rankin Inlet
Theresie Tungilik was born on the sea ice during the month of March in an iglu while her parents were traveling by dog team to get to Nauyaat, from Harbour Island, Nunavut. Her artistic parents have been her driving force to help other Inuit artists within Nunavut and Inuit Nunagat. Theresie is an artist and an Inuit art collector. Theresie’s work and being on committees, boards of directors, governors and serving as a knowledge keeper have enhanced her knowledge and ability to work towards helping and improving the lives of artists.
Being a Member of the Reconciliation Council for the Canadian Museums Association gave Theresie new insights of indigenizing Indigenous artifacts and creations, and the protection of such, through museums. Being on the Board at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Qaumajuq, as well as an Inuit Traditional Knowledge Keeper on their Indigenous Advisory Council, has seen the empowerment of Indigenous People to voice and ask for changes that are necessary for the Truth of Inuit art history to be told. The Indigenous Advisory Council was integral to the establishment of Qaumajuq, and provided Indigenous input into how the INUA Museum displays its Inuit art.
Theresie has been a member of CARFAC’s board since 2017, becoming National President and Spokesperson in Winnipeg in May, 2023. Within CARFAC, Theresie has been on the Indigenous Advisory Circle for the Indigenous Protocols for the Visual Arts. Her main interest has always been the Artist’s Resale Right, as well as Indigenous Intellectual Property. Theresie was also the founder of Inuit Art Society in Rankin Inlet, and under this organization had Ivalu Ltd. established in 1992. The Inuit Art Society also held its inaugural Kivalliq Arts & Craft juried exhibition 1994.
KRISTEN PIERCEY – Secretary
Kristen Piercey is a Newfoundland-based fibre artist who studied at Concordia University in Montreal to obtain a degree in Fibres and Material Practices. Within her work, she explores the self and how the body and mind adapt depending on the circumstances it is put in. This means she approaches a broad spectrum of ideas including things like fat bodies and chronic pain conditions. She works largely with crochet and embroidery but explores many varieties of fibre-based practices. Piercey has spent several years working for VANL and currently works at Memorial University.
PADDY LAMB – Past-President
Paddy Lamb considers himself to be a Canadian, Irish, Ulster-Scots, Quaker, Huguenot, Celtic, Proto-Indo-European citizen of the world. Born in Armagh, Northern Ireland, he studied Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin, and Physical Education and History as a post-graduate at the University of Alberta. He moved to Canada in 1985 and subsequently worked as a historian and archivist before devoting himself to a full-time career as a visual artist. His work is strongly influenced by history, memory, and social culture, offering a personal narrative concerning human migration and attachment to the land. Paddy is the recipient of several scholarships and awards from the City of Edmonton and the Province of Alberta. In 2009 and 2011 he received a fellowship and residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle, Co. Mayo. He has also been awarded
residencies at the Thomas Gushul Studio in Blairmore, Alberta, The Ortona Armoury in Edmonton, and 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects in Newfoundland.
LYDIA POURMAND
Lydia Pourmand is a queer mixed Iranian-English interdisciplinary designer currently residing on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Lydia seamlessly merges design with technology, drawing from a diverse background that includes motion design, gaming, AR, blockchain, immersive installations, and entertainment. Dedicated to creating with purpose and working with intention, Lydia is committed to using her skills to unite art and technology for the collective benefit of her communities. They actively stand against exploitative practices within this intersection, striving to make a positive impact through her work. https://www.lydia-pourmand.com/
ZANDI DANDIZETTE
Zandi Dandizette is a nonbinary interdisciplinary new media installation artist and cultural worker living on the Coast Salish Peoples’ unceded land known as Vancouver, BC. They have a Bachelor of Media Arts in Animation from Emily Carr University (2014) and likens their medium as space, whether 2D or 3D. They explore concepts around communication breakdown, identity, and liminality while trying to bring the values built from those explorations into their development of community & connection. Demonstrating unwavering support for nonprofit arts, Zandi is a Founder and Executive Director of The James Black Gallery (2014), a founding member of the and Arts and Cultural Workers’ Union IATSE 778-B (2020), a previous CARFAC BC & National employee, current board member (and past president) of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (2018), and has served on the board of VIVO Media Arts Centre (2018-2020).
JUSTIN WADDELL 
Justin Waddell graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design and received his MFA in Integrated Media from the University of Windsor. He has worked in various capacities at several Artist-Run Centers, Festivals, Galleries, and Magazines in Canada. Waddell has served as the Director of Programming at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, the Director of the Stride Art Gallery Association, and a Board Member of the Calgary Cinematheque, M.S.T. Performative Art Festival; EAR (Elephant Artist Relief), a society that provides practical resources to visual artists to help sustain their wellbeing and livelihood; LUMA, a quarterly online publication about independent film and media art; and as a founding Board Member with the every-age art and music venue, Local Library. Waddell is a member of the Board of Directors at Stride Art Gallery, the Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation, the New Media Caucus, the Advisory Board of Peripheral Review, and the Faculty Association Representative on the Board of Governors of AUArts. He is currently researching the history of inventors killed by their own inventions. Waddell lives in Mohkinstis, colonially known as Calgary, Alberta, where he is an Associate Professor in the School of Visual Art at the Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts).
JENNIFER RAE FORSYTH
Jennifer Rae Forsyth is a Vancouver-born artist, independent curator, and museum professional. She has exhibited and curated internationally. Forsyth spent her early years living on a sailboat on the coast of British Columbia. Her work reflects and contradicts both the nomadic and minimal lifestyle she grew up with. Self-defined as a painter, she uses objects and images as a painting medium relying heavily on colour over material.
Forsyth holds a MFA from The University of Calgary, a BFA from UBC, a Diploma in Visual Art from Camosun College, and a Professional Certificate in Collections Management from the University of Victoria. She has worked for and volunteered at, museums, galleries, and Artist Run Centres, in Alberta and British Columbia for the past twenty years and is currently Executive Director and CEO of the Alberta Museums Association (AMA). Forsyth currently serves on the board of directors for CARFAC Alberta, and CARFAC National. Forsyth maintains several collaborative projects and collectives including: fast & dirty Artist and Curatorial Collective, The Inventstories Project, and Part and Parcel. These ongoing collaborations include collage, painting, and mail art using found objects, images, and writing. Forsyth maintains an active practice out of her home-based studio in Edmonton, Alberta.
GUY LAVIGUEUR
Guy Lavigueur has more than 40 years’ experience in photography. Since 2011, he has also been working with video. Born in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, he spent his career in Montreal from 1981 to 2021. He began his artistic career in 1999. In 2004, he was admitted to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA). He was a member of its board of directors from 2010 to 2015. He has had 38 solo and group exhibitions. His works are included in private and public collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He has received grants from the CALQ for artistic residencies in Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories. After focusing on the abstract interpretation of landscape, mainly through aerial photography, his artistic approach now explores the action of seasonal variations and time on plant and human environments, in connection with the material and spiritual presence of trees. Guy has been a member of RAAV since 2005, and on its board since 2019.
JUSTINE STILBORN
Justine “Tini” Stilborn is a Regina-based artist. She was born in 1988 of Indigenous (Swampy Cree: Sapotaweyak Cree Nation Band No. 314), Romanian and mixed European descent, and identifies as bisexual. She earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree from the University of Regina, majoring in Visual Arts (Drawing) with a Minor in Art History. Stilborn has designed a bus shelter for Transit Saskatoon and the City of Saskatoon, inspired by the stories of residential school survivors, The Survivors/Elders Called to Action Group (now known as Saskatoon Survivors Circle). She also has her art featured on a Regina Downtown Business Improvement District’s Traffic Box, and exhibited a solo exhibition called ‘POP! Now it’s Superflat’ at the Fifth Parallel Gallery, and several group exhibitions; the ‘Group Art Show’ at ComicReaders, ‘Re-Art’ at the Fifth Parallel Gallery, and several more. She has been on the CARFAC SASK Board of Directors since 2014, and currently holds the Past-president position.
Inspired by animation & cartoons, comic books, pin-up models, graffiti, video games, and popular culture as a whole. Often she can be found online under the guise of Tini0069 paying homage to her love of spies, female sexuality, and all things campy. Her work explores notions of identity from different perspectives, and through the scope of consumerism and pop culture, appropriating the contemporary globalized visual culture and the new possibilities of manufacturing to create a flawless mix of high art and the lowbrow. Stilborn employs watercolours, pencil, and digital mediums to create works with playful layers of meaning, contain tongue-in-cheek, and offer social critique.
CHARLOTTE MCGREGOR
Charlotte McGregor is a painter and installation artist working on Treaty 1 Territory. She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours. She has been on the CARFAC Manitoba board for two years. Her art practise revolves around nostalgia and curiosity. Through works in installation, the artist seeks to incite a sense of fascination in her viewer, allowing them to touch and explore a narrative. Working with found objects and outdated technology, her practise touches on concepts of voyeurism and surveillance. Her work in painting focuses on colour theory. Creating her own oil paint colours by hand, she aims to build on the discipline of traditional oil painting through an expanded colour palette. She also works in printmaking, written word, photography, and with found images.
RACHEL BUTLER
Rachel Butler is an art organizer, former labour activist, and lover of arts and culture from T(ka/o)ronto. She has worked at the Toronto School of Art, Akin Collective (as a Project and Studio Manager), and as an eyewear consultant at Rapp and Frankly. Rachel’s primary passions are championing emerging artists, advocating for the rights of artists, and striving for equality and awareness. Rachel exhibited at Black Cat Showroom.
KATIE GREEN
Katie Green is an artist, a social entrepreneur, and a community connector at heart. For over 10 years Katie has worked in various capacities developing programs and opportunities for professional artists to connect with youth in a mentorship capacity. As Co-founder and former Executive Director of inPath, a non-profit organization based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, Katie and her team work alongside Indigenous communities, schools, and organizations across Turtle Island to co-develop, implement and sustain creative programming. Katie’s passion for developing youth-centered, contextually relevant, and responsive ‘living’ programs is carried throughout inPath’s work, adapting to the needs voiced by the communities they serve. Katie holds relationships at the center of everything she does, working to inspire agency, build resilience, and create environments for shared experiences to collectively learn, grow, share, and even fail within a supportive network of creative peers. Katie has a BA and MA in Art Education, and is now a MBA Candidate at the University of Victoria. She has a passion for out-of-the-box thinking and a tendency to question and push the boundaries of most existing structures.
JULIA PURCELL
Julia Purcell is a full-time visual artist. She paints and draws regularly in her studio in Clyde River and paints plein air around the Maritimes frequently. Julia is a developing printmaker and is teaching herself linocut. Her works range from representational pieces to non-objective explorations of colour and texture and pattern. She shows and sells her work from her home gallery in Clyde River and from a mini gallery at a weekly market. She teaches painting from her own studio, the Purcell Parlour Gallery, and drawing through the Seniors College of UPEI. Her artwork has been purchased by the City of Charlottetown, UPEI, the Art Bank of PEI and by private collectors. She has always believed in the importance of volunteering her time, talent and energy, whether it was designing for amateur theatre or fundraising for the local symphony, to name a few. She is currently serving as Chair of CARFAC Maritimes and is the Island rep for IWS Canada. She grew up in Lunenburg NS and has lived in Vancouver and Halifax, NS but calls PEI home now. She earned a BA with Honours from Dalhousie University in Scenography (stage design) and Music. She is the mother of four grown children and lives with her husband, Dr. Douglas Dahn here on Prince Edward Island. “Where others are inspired to write poetry, I choose to paint.”
EMILY PITTMAN
Emily Pittman is a visual artist and writer based in St. John’s, NL. She earned an Honours BA (with Distinction), majoring in Studio Art and English from the University of Guelph. She is an instructor in the Art & Design Essentials program with the College of the North Atlantic and is represented by Christina Parker Gallery (NL) and Jones Gallery (NB). She was a finalist for Arts NL’s 2019 Emerging Artist Award and has exhibited at venues including The Rooms (NL), Confederation Centre for the Arts (PEI), Eastern Edge Gallery (NL), and Boarding House Gallery (Guelph, ON). She has been featured on the cover of Visual Arts News, as well as in Riddle Fence, The Overcast, and The Telegram. For more detailed information, visit www.emilypittman.ca
CARFAC National Staff
APRIL BRITSKI – Executive Director
April Britski is the Executive Director of CARFAC, Canada’s national association for visual artists. She has worked and volunteered as an arts administrator since 1998, and joined the staff of CARFAC National in 2005. She is a co-founder of Artists’ Legal Services Ottawa and the Visual Arts Alliance, and she has served on several boards of cultural policy and artist-run organizations. April’s primary responsibility at CARFAC is the development and implementation of organizational policies and strategies related to artists’ legal and economic rights. She is actively involved in the research, development, and coordination of advocacy efforts, including CARFAC’s Artist’s Resale Right campaign. She assists with negotiating collective agreements for visual and media artists under the Status of the Artist Act, as well as other national voluntary agreements with presenters. Originally from Saskatchewan, April currently resides on the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish Nations including the Kwikwetlem, Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples.
SHELBY MILLWATER – Communications Director
Shelby Millwater is an artist and arts administrator who was born in Calgary, AB. Shelby received her B.F.A. in Visual Arts, with a minor equivalency in Art History and Visual Culture from Memorial University, Grenfell Campus in 2017. Since then she has worked and volunteered in many roles throughout the arts sector with organizations such as VANL-CARFAC, Eastern Edge Gallery, and The Ottawa Art Gallery. Shelby has worked with CARFAC National since 2019, most recently as the Artist Services Director, before moving into her current role as Communications Director. Shelby’s art practice is grounded in painting, photography, and design which she uses as tools to look inward as she explores her connection with the human condition. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at venues such as Grenfell Campus Art Gallery in Corner Brook, NL, Eastern Edge in St. John’s, NL, and Gatehouse Gallery in Harlow, UK.
LARISSA DESROSIERS – Programs Director
Larissa Desrosiers is an Ojibwe Queer Singer/Songwriter and Beadworker from Couchiching First Nation in Treaty #3. She has been living as a guest on Unceded, Unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe Territory since 2014. She is in the process of finishing her Bachelor of Music Degree at Carleton University with a Minor in Indigenous Studies where she had the opportunity to study under Singer/Songwriter Lynn Myles, as well as Guitar Virtuoso Don Ross. Upon taking a break from school in 2019, Larissa started a beadwork microbusiness: Bangishimon Beadwork. Whether on stage howling with her guitar or at her desk with her beads, Larissa’s goal has always been to create space for healing, grieving, imagination, and social growth. She has had the opportunity to do so through projects like the National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Cities: Ottawa and FemmeVox, where she collaborated on an original song with Amanda Rheaume. Larissa was formerly the Workshop Manager for indigenousprotocols.art, and is excited to now move forward with CARFAC National as Programs Director. Whether it’s the arts, advocacy, or aunty-ing her nieces and nephews around the dinner table, Larissa moves through life with an unwavering passion to help people.
EMILY ZHANG – Artist Services Director
Emily Zhang is an arts administrator with a BA in Art History from the University of British Columbia, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Museum and Gallery Studies. She has been heavily involved in the arts and culture sector within the lower mainland for the past couple of years, is currently the Membership & Communications Coordinator for CARFAC BC, and was closely involved in their provincial projects like the Artist Toolkits series and the BC Gallery Catalogue which features an interactive digital database of BC Arts Organizations. She also does cultural and educational programming for Coquitlam Heritage, and has had experience with various cultural organizations like VIFF, the Craft Council of BC, and the Port Moody Arts Centre.
SYDNEY LANCASTER – Community Relations Advisor
Sydney Lancaster is a visual artist and writer living in Mtapan/Wolfville, in unsurrendered and unceded Mi’kmaq territory. Her practice considers the intersections of place, history, memory, and identity through the lenses of ecology and settler-colonialism. Her approach to making is rooted in the senses and the body in space. Often work in site-responsive ways, she responds to her environment through printmaking, sculpture and installation, video and sound.
Sydney holds an MFA in Studio Practice from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador and she has also held several artists’ residencies, including at Gros Morne National Park ,Her most recent publication was a chapbook of poetry co-authored with Jannie Edwards, entitled Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place, published by Collusion Books in Kjipuktuk/Halifax NS in 2022.
She is a member of VANS, CARFAC Maritimes, Eyelevel, and volunteered for over a decade on the Boards of CARFAC Alberta, CARFAC National, and Copyright Visual Arts.
MICHAEL BUTLER – IT Director
Michael is an art advocate born and raised on the East Coast of Newfoundland. He studied for his BA in the Humanities at Grenfell Campus of Memorial University where he focused on the human condition throughout history where it pertains to art, music, theatre, and philosophy. During his study, Michael was awarded the Alexander Doull Award for Excellence in the Humanities and became the president of the Humanities and Philosophy Society. He was a founder of the Parmenius Society, which is a collective of interdisciplinary Students and Professors who would gather once a week to discuss various artistic and philosophical bodies of work. Michael has recently worked in the Legal Field and Web development, and he now uses his critical reading, writing, and thinking skills to provide the best service and advice as a young professional.