Artist Info
April Dean
Edmonton-based drawing, video, installation, and print artist April Dean earned her Diploma in Photographic Technology (2002) from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, her B.A. with Distinction in Art and Design, Printmaking (2008) from the University of Alberta, and her M.F.A. (2012) at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD).
With much of her work exploring intimacy and alienation, Dean says of her Raw Materials suite that it “develops conceptually around themes of containment, isolation, intimacy and temporality.” Through her photography and printmaking, Dean transforms objects to be “familiar… with aspects of estrangement and alienation.” Such visual and emotional transformations arise from her “attraction to objects which seem worn and weathered by love [and] whose fragile nature and delicacy force me to consider my own physical construction.”
Dean’s artwork appears in Pretty Much Black & White. Her solo exhibitions include Soft Light, Hard Landing (2012) at NSCAD’s Anna Leonowens Gallery, UNRAVELLING (2011) at NSCAD’s Port Loggia Gallery, Raw Materials & Rose Coloured Glasses (2009) at Edmonton’s SNAP Studio Gallery & The Works Festival, and Pororoca (internal) at Edmonton’s Louie Photography Gallery for Nextfest 2008.
Her many awards and scholarships include the Media Art Scholarship from Halifax’s Centre For Art Tapes, a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (2011), and the Undergraduate Award for Excellence in Printmaking at the University of Alberta’s Department of Art & Design (2008). The public collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the University of Alberta’s Printmaking Department, and the Provincial Archives of Alberta include her work.
Dean continues to advocate for the arts as a writer and teacher.
