Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

PAMA is the place this month to take in the Sikh arts  by Stephen Weir for the Peel Weekly News For the month of April and beyond, the rising stars in the Sikh art world have their work on display in the Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives (PAMA) in downtown Brampton. Three exhibitions of Sikh art opened today, and, media attending the Friday morning presser learned that the gallery is free for the month of April thanks to the Sikh Foundation of Canada. The shows - RUPY C. TUT: A JOURNEY BACK HOME: AMARDEEP SINGH: LOST HERITAGE: A SIKH LEGACY IN PAKISTAN and KAUM: CELEBRATING CONTEMPORARY SIKH ARTISTS embrace paintings, photography and mosaics.   The artists with works on display at PAMA hail from America, India, Hong Kong and Canada. Rupy C. Tut is a contemporary Indo-American artist based in Oakland, California. She came of age in Punjab, India but as a young child moved to the USA. The visual artist has a strong spiritual connection to her Punjabi Sikh backgroun

- Mishibinijima, The Last Artist Standing (And Still Painting Really Good Stuff) Manitoulin Island artist James Simon Mishibinijima’s life path is about survival. His mother’s stories of her harrowing past in a residential school and his own survival as one of the last working artists from the first wave of Woodland First Nations’ Art movement At a time when his contemporaries (i.e Carl Ray,   Arthur Schilling, Carl Beam and Daphne Odjig)   are falling off the mortal coil, 63 year old Mishibinijima continues to be a First Nations inspirational artistic force. His work is in constant demand from arts institutions, private galleries, museums, and currently can be seen at PAMA – Brampton, Ontario’s and Peel Region’s public gallery. A series of his paintings in the current Peel 150 exhibition is entitled “Indian Residential School Paintings”. They tell Mishibinijima’s mother’s stories as she gave them to him and as they revealed themselves in his dreams. Her stories are depict

Singh Twins in PAMA  - Brampton Art Gallery  Photo by Herman Custodio Story By KJ Mullina For Stephen Weir Blog There is a certain privacy that the Singh Twins have. They communicate in a way that few can, together from the start and best friends to the end. Creating beautifully intricate modern yet traditional paintings as a partnership, a single entity, creating an aura of mystery to their work. "Our identities are linked to each other but we also have very independent ideas on what we want to do, they just happen to be the same ideas." The Singh Twins were in Brampton last week promoting their latest show the Peel Art Gallery, Museum+Archives (PAMA) as a part of Sikh Heritage Month. It was a welcome visit for the artists who said that the same of the patrons that they saw at the museum were just children the last time they were in Ontario. The youngsters of the Sikh community came with a confidence that was not seen during that earlier visit. "PAMA is a