Region Category: Winnipeg

Vi Houssin is a transgender beadwork artist and drag performer. Her family is of white settler and Red River Métis ancestry. Her Métis family names are Ritchot, Poitras, Larence and Plante, and her ancestors held scrip in St. Vital and St. Boniface. She is a proud member of the Two-Spirit Michif Local and a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. Vi works and lives in Winnipeg, Canada on Treaty 1 territory where she was born and raised.

Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

I have an eclectic mix of interests reflected both in my personality and work. From Japanese pop culture and history, folklore, gaming, to gothic/cute street fashion and more! If I find it engaging and fun, I want a piece of it; I want my creative practices to be centered on joy!

I was raised on books and visual arts in all their myriad forms. So, of course, that's where my creative outlets flourished! From as early as grade one I was writing and illustrating, surprisingly tragic and dramatic, stories to share with my classmates and teachers.

I have one novel self-published, with more on the way, and several small pieces published in local libraries and such. My inspiration derives from whatever emerges from my head, be it in the form of dreams, random thoughts, or unexpected eureka moments.

I am a freelance pattern drafter, cutter, tailor, stitcher and general textile person. I mostly specialize in for trade era and war of 1812 British clothing, but I’ve also explored several different time periods, including the modern era. I work individual clients, historic sites as well as theater and film productions.

Natalie Mark 麥月明 is a local Winnipeg/Treaty 1 illustrator and cartoonist.

In 2023-4, Natalie received an award for emerging cartoonists and made a comic for CAKE Chicago. They have also facilitated various community and public art projects for Winnipeg’s Chinatown, and run many art and comics workshops in Winnipeg and beyond including the Snoopy and the Red Baron traveling exhibit from the Charles M. Schulz Museum, at VanCAF in Vancouver, and MICE in Boston.

Natalie’s comics are somewhere between a reflection of life and small curiosities. Their work plays with myth-making and whimsical fantasies projected onto social realism. Storytelling is Natalie's primary tool for understanding themselves and exploring the world around them.

When they are not drawing, Natalie loves going to their local library, playing TTRPGs, and going on picnics! Visit their site: https://nataliemark.ca or follow along with their art journey @floodkiss across the internet.

Joseph is a Winnipeg playwright, composer and designer. His works include the play How the Heavens Go, and the musical Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare, which received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Outstanding New Musical. A veteran of the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, Joseph is a two-time winner of the Harry Rintoul Memorial Award for Best New Manitoban Play, and the author of several hit Fringe musicals including Bloodsuckers!, Illuminati, and Lucrezia Borgia. He is a Playwriting graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.

As a composer, arranger and sound designer, he has worked on several Winnipeg productions, including Jabber and Danny, King of the Basement for Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Ordinary Days for Winnipeg Studio Theatre and Liars at a Funeral for Prairie Theatre Exchange.

A lifelong computer geek with a B.Sc. in Computer Science, Joseph is also an avid coder, and is currently exploring the world of video game development and interactive storytelling.