On Mentorship

Walter Bachinski worked closely with Frederick Hagan at the Ontario College of Art. Graduating in 1965, he went on to complete his master’s degree at the University of Iowa under the direction of Mauricio Lasansky in 1967. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching drawing and printmaking at the University of Guelph until 1994.

Bachinski’s very early work was primarily black and white and concentrated on drawing and printmaking. Throughout his career he worked in sculpture in the round and relief, expanded his practice to more seriously investigate colour, and explored themes of the Mother and Child, the Artist and Model, and the Still Life. Since 1994, Walter Bachinski has devoted himself exclusively to his art in his studio in Shanty Bay, Ontario, and in 1996 he established Shanty Bay Press with Janis Butler.

Please note: due to the quality of the audio, this interview has some static and background noise.

Wendy Cain holds an Honours Degree in Fine Art from the University of Toronto and is an Associate of the Ontario College of Art, where she was introduced to printmaking by Frederick Hagan. Since 1972, she has had nineteen solo exhibitions, the most recent, Shipwreck Dreaming, Art Gallery of Northumberland, Cobourg, ON, MVS Gallery, Brockville, ON, Out in the Sticks Cultural Association, Yarker, ON, and John M. Parrott Gallery, Belleville, ON and Growing Up and Living in the Landscape, L & A Museum and Archives, Napanee, ON.

She has participated in over two hundred and ninety group exhibitions, most as a Canadian printmaker and papermaker. Recently, her work has focused on the practices of hand papermaking, and she has established a paper studio in Newburgh, Ontario. She recently retired from teaching printmaking and papermaking at OCAD University in Toronto as Associate Professor of Art and Past Chair of Printmaking.

Over the last quarter of a century, Sean-William Dawson has maintained a consistent and engaging practice mining the richness of pop culture and experimenting with a wide range of media, from drawings and prints to paintings and cast relief reproductions. As a result of working outside of the traditional commercial and public art gallery system, Dawson has established himself as an inventive art educator.

Dawson feels he was born with a natural love and drive for the arts, but it was the mentoring of Ted Fullerton that helped refine his work ethic, focus, and mental clarification in achieving professionalism in the field. Dawson has often said “Next to my father, Ted has been the biggest artistic influence in my life.”