These artists are rooting for the arts community to flourish in Calgary

The Alcove Centre for the Arts, a local arts group has been hard at work pitching to build a YMCA-like facility for the arts. CBC Calgary had the opportunity to mix and mingle with some of their patrons and supporters and here's what some of the artists had to say about the arts community in Calgary.

The following interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

Aashna, photographer and poet 

What inspires your art?

What inspires my art is my living experiences. I am first generation immigrant here in Calgary – who is not born here, but raised here; living in between two cultures.

What is your experience as a migrated artist in Calgary?

It's been pretty good — bittersweet, I would say. It's a lot of work to put yourself out there and be brave enough to show people your art. But I was welcomed with lots of warmth, especially from The Alcove, which made it a lot easier to come in and have a community that's already open for you to display your art.

What's your story been as an artist? What inspired you to get into it?

I've always been a creative individual but what really lifted off was I was in therapy and my therapist encouraged me to write. And that's kind of how the poetry all started off, was just writing about my emotions as an outlet. And people seemed to like it. So, I just kept doing it. And I've always had a passion for photography, and I just use my friends as guinea pigs, and I just loved how I could capture their emotions and their joy in photos.

Dwight/Tribe 1491, rapper, M.C.

How do you define your music?

My art is rap music and it's about finding who you are and your self-worth. Sometimes the way I look at music is that it's an armour that you put on for the day, maybe when you're driving in your car or going to work. With my songs, I want to put on an armour for people, and sometimes I want to tell stories as well. I'm from the Siksika nation and I'm half Blackfoot, quarter Palestinian and Welsh. A lot of that comes through my music as well. Being a mixed race person, growing up in Calgary and trying to figure out who I am and what I am, really.

You run an organization called the Tribe Artist Society. What was your inspiration behind it?

I've been working in community development since 2009 and I started out teaching rap. My background was in social work but I started to find that there aren't any indigenous led or P.O.C. led hip-hop agencies that have a space where we can be loud because hip-hop needs that. There are art studios in Calgary, there are spaces, but there are not many places where we can be loud. My main goal is to obtain a space where we can be loud and run day to day programs, where we can teach song writing, rapping, etc. 

How do you envision physical space the Alcove is advocating for? How will it help your arts practice? 

Just having a place where you can leave your songs and music — that's your space, that's your spot — without having to carry a whole P.A. system in the winters to some random spot. To have a place where hip-hop has a home in Calgary is really important to the community. Right now, hip-hop in Calgary is somewhat homeless and we're going to change that. 

Athena Cooper, visual artist 

How would you describe your artistic practice?

I'm primarily an acrylic painter these days. I recently received a grant from Calgary Artist Development, so I'm working on researching and developing a future solo exhibition, and the subject is going to be the extraordinary, ordinary nature of inter-abled love. So inter-abled love is a relationship, a romantic relationship between an able bodied person and disabled person. I feel like this is something that people think has so much stigma and so many things attached to it when really, it's just like any love story. And it'll be a lot of paintings now showing the everyday life between myself and my husband.

Tell us what it's like being an artist in Calgary?

So, we moved here back in 2018, and I found the community to be really inviting and really supportive. I mean, we came from Vancouver, which is honestly a bit more of a cutthroat kind of community and I felt there's an opportunity here to be in a bit of a smaller pond and be really supported in that way.

How is a physical space dedicated to arts going to help the arts community? 

Well, I think it's going to be a great assistance to Calgary. I think that there is a real opportunity for artists to connect with regular people, and I think the more that they're able to do that, the more opportunities we have as artists.

Nasty G/Sasha, DJ

What is your artistic practice and what inspires you?

I started DJing a few years ago and now I'm primarily focused on two things — I volunteer with a variety of groups and one of them is a monthly dance party that features dancers and dance groups to bring more awareness to the dance community in Calgary. I also volunteer with Antyx Community Arts and Tribe Artist Society. We do youth-focused events and have youth come in and learn core elements of hip-hop like break dancing, DJing, hip-hop writing, hip-hop graffiti and all that, too. 

What inspires you to be an artist?

What inspires me to be an artist is just trying to be an individual, I've known from a very young age that I was always different. I've always stuck out. I've always had these particular interests, but not a lot of people really vibe with that.

And until I actually became an adult and started exploring the city and sort of meeting more people, who actually did vibe and mesh with me on a very artistic level, they keep me going. A lot of my friends keep me going, a lot of things that I see in day-to-day life and a lot of beauty and see that nature makes me happy. And I want to express that in some way, whether it's dance or music or just the feelings of everyday life, really.

And what do you feel about the artistic community here, and how do you think The Alcove this helping with that?

The artistic community in Calgary, I feel isn't taken seriously by non-artists sometimes. For a lot of artists to shine, you really have to be a strong campaign leader for your art. But it is here. It is popping. Sometimes we need more non artists, more onlookers to actually give a better platform for artists — giving more space and more of a chance to grow. Especially being a DJ, there's a lot of competition. If you're a DJ and sometimes when you have a gig, it's hard to share because if you want to make a full-time living as an artist, you're also disabling like another artist or even a fellow artist from that same opportunity.

It's rough because it could be a friend. It can be somebody who actually taught you what you're doing. So, I think for the arts to grow in Calgary, we need more things like The Alcove. We need more organizations that are actually empowering artists and are creating more space and platforms so that it isn't a competition anymore.

The Alcove offers monthly programming for artists to network, connect, learn and create together. To learn more about how you can get involved, get in touch with them here.