Beam, Carl, 1943-2005 : Carl Beam was born Carl Edward Migwans on May 24, 1943, in West Bay on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, among the Ojibwe First Nation (renamed later M'Chigeeng First Nation), and died there on July 30, 2005. At 10, Beam was sent to the Garnier residential school in Spanish, Ontario, where he remained until he was 18. He then went to the Kootenay School of Art in British Columbia in 1971 and transferred to the University of Victoria, where he graduated with a BA. He received his MFA at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1976. By the late 1970s, Beam was already working with his signature photo-collages including other media such as drawings, painting and texts. This allowed him to juxtapose and oppose different ideas, often infusing them with a political commentary on the struggle of Aboriginal people in the late 20th century. Carl Beam is also known for his sculpture and pottery work. In 1986, he became the first contemporary artist from a First Nation ancestry to have his work purchased into the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada when they bought The North American Iceberg (1985). Beam's work has been included in many group exhibitions, including Indigena: Perspectives of Indigenous Peoples on Five Hundred Years, organized by the National Gallery of Canada in 1992. There was also a posthumous exhibition, Carl Beam, organized by the National Gallery in 2011. In 2000, Carl Beam was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts and in 2005 he was posthumously a recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Vazan, Bill : Canadian artist Bill Vazan was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1933, and has been active as an artist for over 5 decades. He is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist who has been seminal in the field of land art in Canada. Vazan studied at the Danforth Technical School, the Ontario College of Art, and the École des beaux-arts in Paris. He received a fine arts degree from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal in 1970. He has lived and worked in Montreal since 1957, where he has exhibited, taught, and helped establish artist-run galleries. He has exhibited nationally and internationally since the late 1960s. In 2010 he received the Paul-Émile-Borduas prize for art and design from the province of Quebec. In works that challenge our perceptions of space and time, Vazan explores the relationship between humankind and the cosmos. His works include stone sculptures, site-specific land art installations, videos, and photo-montages of cultural and historical sites around the world.
