Title: Board President
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
Email: vitoriamont4@ gmail.com
Ask them about: community art workshops, why they love grunt gallery, sourdough baking, fidget toys at galleries, games (any kind).

Name Pronunciation: V (like the English letter V)-e (like the English letter E) toe (like the word toe) Monteiro (mon-TAY-ro)

Biography

veto, Board President, is an artist and cultural worker whose practice investigates the materiality of language through papermaking, sculpture, and textual intervention. Their citational research explores how meaning can exist beyond conventional language structures while interrogating inherited systems of fluency. Born in Belém do Pará and raised between Recife and Turtle Island, they hold a BFA from Simon Fraser University. With over a decade of experience working with non-profits, their community practice centers accessible, care-based, and joyful approaches to existing within art and cultural spaces. veto currently serves as Artistic Engagement Director at WePress Community Arts Space Society.

Contact Information

You can email our board directly at board@grunt.ca, or leave a message with the gallery by calling 604-875-9516

Visual Description

veto is a 5’2 human with a fair olive complexion. They have wavy shoulder-length dark brown hair that is shaggy and messy (in a cool way) and is often up in a clip or hat. They have various piercings around their head, including one in their septum and five in their ears, all gold hoops (think “pirate”). You will often encounter them with a hat on, wearing well-loved Dr. Martens, headphones around their ears, and a knitting project on the go.

Title: Creative Technologist: Storykeeper of Art & Process, MPCAS Technical Coordinator
Pronouns: she/her
Email: tech@grunt.ca
Ask them about: MPCAS, videos and photography

Name Pronunciation: Şebnem is an original, Persian female name meaning “morning dew”. The “Ş” is pronounced like the English “sh”, and “e” is short. The stress falls on the first syllable: SHEB-nem. Phonetic Spelling:[ Shaebnaem ]

Biography

Şebnem Ozpeta, Creative Technologist, is an immigrant filmmaker, multimedia artist, mentor, and curator. She has worked mostly on community-focused projects and collaborations with artists on stolen land. At grunt gallery, she supports the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen as a technical coordinator, working closely with programmers since 2018. She also co-facilitates the Digital Storytelling workshop alongside lead filmmaker Lorna Boschman. Additionally, she applies her filmmaking skills to produce Tactile Residency Videos with Kay and the AEP team and document gallery events and artist talks.

She is passionate about experimenting new techniques in digital and analog filmmaking—from hand-processing film to crafting data-driven visual narratives. She is part of “Our World Language Film Programme” led by Lisa g Nielsen where she travels remote areas to share her skills with Indigenous youth and elderly “how to make films” and curate their works. 

Contact Information

Email: tech@grunt.ca
Best way to contact Sebnem : Email or call the gallery 604-875-9516

Visual Description

Şebnem is a middle-aged woman with brown eyes and self-cut funkish wavy black hair from the Middle East, with brown skin reflecting her mixed roots from both Eastern and Western Turkey. She is 5’4 and carries her in balance. You will see her generally wearing casual anything black.

Image Description: Sebnem wears all black, standing in a busy-looking industrial hall. She takes her photo using a reflection in a mirror with her mobile phone. She has a canvas tote bag with a Coast Salish image of an animal, and a yellow bag strapped to her waist.

Title: Archives Intern
Pronouns: she/her
Email: kira@grunt.ca
Ask them about: Archives, Creative Access Descriptions, crochet/knitting

Name Pronunciation: Key-ra. Last name: Sa-ra-geeh

Biography

Kira Saragih, Archives Intern, is a tan-skinned, Indonesian woman and artist living on the unceded territories of the Xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. At grunt, she works at the intersection of archives and access, writing image descriptions for images on grunt’s archives website as well as captions and transcriptions for videos. Kira also maintains a textile practice, drawing inspiration from her hometown, Jakarta, she makes crocheted tapestries about common everyday objects and spaces that speak on their essentiality and how these elements contribute to community-making in underappreciated ways. Kira holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Simon Fraser University.

Contact Information

Email: kira@grunt.ca
Best way to contact Kira: Through email or visit the gallery on Tuesdays. You can also call the gallery, 604–875–9516, and leave a message.

Visual Description

Kira is a 5’1”, tan-skinned Indonesian woman with a short, average build. She has long, black hair and wears rectangular pink glasses. She is often dressed in blue jeans, a white t-shirt, a dark olive-green fleece cardigan and white slip-on shoes.

Image Description: A tan-skinned, Indonesian woman with long dark hair wearing rectangular, pink-framed glasses, a sky-blue hand-knitted hooded scarf, and a beige coat. She poses and smiles, looking towards the camera while standing against a lush, green, grassy hill lined with shrubberies and a cloudy blue sky in the background.

Title: Archives Digitization Assistant
Pronouns: she/her
Email: jessica@grunt.ca
Ask them about: grunt Archives, digitization, CollectiveAccess, her dog Emmy and cat Hank

Name Pronunciation: Jess, rhymes with Stress. Fletch-er, rhymes with Sketcher

Biography

Jessica Fletcher, Archives Digitization Assistant, is a white settler of British and Black Sea German descent, born and raised on the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa, and currently living on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Xwməθkwəyə̓m, and Səlilwətaɬ. She works at grunt gallery digitizing documentation from the past 40+ years of the gallery’s programming and populating and maintaining the archival database. Her larger digitization projects have focused on grunt’s many performance art series, spanning from the early 1990s to the LIVE Biennial series in the mid-2000s. Jessica holds an Associate of Arts from Langara College, a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of British Columbia, and a Professional Specialization Certificate in Collections Management from the University of Victoria. When not a grunt, you can typically find her deep in a book, at a concert, on a mountain, or at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery where she also works as Exhibitions and Collections Assistant. Through digital databases, collections care, and exhibition installations, Jessica’s career focuses on assisting artists and communities in telling their stories and on audiences finding and accessing those stories.

Contact Information

Email: jessica@grunt.ca
Best way to contact Jessica: Email or visit the gallery on Wednesdays or Fridays

Visual Description

Jessica is 5’8” with long bleached hair and very pale skin. She typically wears black boots, large earrings, sunscreen year-round, and a bold lipstick, usually red.

Title: Gallery Attendant
Pronouns: she/her

Name Pronunciation: Head-dy

Biography

Hedy Wood, Gallery Attendant, has been working with/in artist run galleries since the 1980s; first at the Unit/Pitt Gallery and also at grunt. She’s been the Saturday gallery attendant here at grunt for the last 12 years or so.

Contact Information

Best way to contact Hedy :Call the gallery 604-875-9516

Visual Description

I am 5’6”, usually wearing jeans and boots. I have glasses and shoulder length light brown hair. I often wear a scarf or a sweater that I crocheted, and that usually has some cat hair on it.

Title: Archives Manager
Pronouns: he/him
Email: Email dan@grunt.ca
Ask him about: grunt history, community archives, research, images/video/documents in the archive, technology, where things are, how things were, skateboarding, cats, bikes, gardening

Name Pronunciation: Dan (rhymes with can, pan, ban, man), Pon (rhymes with dawn, lawn, gone)

Biography

Dan Pon 盤大明, Archives Manager, is a librarian and archivist of mixed Cantonese and European settler ancestry, living on unceded Coast Salish territories. He is the Archives Manager at grunt gallery, where he works to preserve and share material and non-material culture, support research and creative interventions, and platform imaginative models at the intersection of visual arts and information science. His recent work includes facilitating the collaborative public programming series Recollective, creating a digital collection documenting the early years of LIVE Biennial of Performance Art, and managing the migration of grunt’s collection into a new database platform. His work has been published here and there, but he is most interested in supporting artists and art workers labour toward a more equitable and caring arts sector. Dan holds an MLIS from UBC and also works as a librarian at Langara College.

Contact Information

Email: dan@grunt.ca
Best way to contact Dan: Call 604-875-9516, or visit the gallery Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm

Visual Description

Dan is a 5’11” or 180cm tall middle-aged mixed-race Asian man with short dark hair, brown eyes, and thick eyebrows. He typically wears jeans or slacks, a plain hoodie, a baseball cap or toque, and black sneakers. 

Title: Administrative Assistant
Pronouns: he/him/his
Email: leslie@grunt.ca

Name Pronunciation: First name: LES-lee, Middle name: Ken (rhymes with den, pen), Last name: Chu (like to “chew” food).

Biography

Leslie Ken Chu, Administrative Assistant, is a writer and arts organizer of Chinese descent living, working, and playing on the unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Xwməθkwəyə̓m, and Səlilwətaɬ Nations. He has worked in live event marketing and publicity at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and Rickshaw Theatre. He currently serves as a juror for the Polaris Music Prize and Prism Prize. He also co-curates an annual sound art residency program through the Media Arts Committee and is an active co-founding member of Canadian music journalism co-op New Feeling.

Contact Information

Email: leslie@grunt.ca

Visual Description

I am a 5’9” Chinese man in his mid-30s, usually wearing mostly black, including graphic t-shirts of bands and Vancouver-based visual artists. I have black-rimmed glasses, short black hair, and usually no facial hair. I often wear a black, worn-down leather jacket.

Title: Program Director
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
Email: katrina@grunt.ca
Ask them about: any general information about grunt, our programming, including exhibitions, the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen, and the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency, calls for submissions, special projects, and partnership opportunities.

Name Pronunciation: First name: kah-TREE-nah. Last name: or-LOV-ski

Biography

Katrina Orlowski, Program Director, is a cultural worker, curator and artist who has spent over a decade in the artist-run communities of Vancouver and Toronto. They are a white, queer, disabled settler of Eastern European and Irish descent who has lived most of their life on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Their background includes a decade in academia and a couple of decades working and dreaming in DIY community arts spaces, with particular focus on film, video and media arts. They are excited by collaborative processes, intersectional knowledge exchange, and experiments with language and storytelling. As Program Director, Katrina oversees all aspects of grunt’s programming and planning.

Contact Information

Email: katrina@grunt.ca
Best way to contact Katrina: Please email or call grunt gallery at 604-875-9516 to leave a message for them. They work both from home and at the grunt office.

Visual Description

Katrina is 5’9”, white, with very short auburn hair, large glasses, a silver nose ring, and many black ink tattoos mainly on their arms and one on their left hand. They dress in a casual style that suits their comfort and fun, almost always have bright coloured nail polish, and generally wear highly cushioned and supportive sneakers.

Image Description: A close-up photo of Katrina with a slight smile on their face and one hand casually curled in front of their chest. They have big, dark green plastic-framed glasses, a nose ring, a silver chain necklace and orange-painted nails. Behind them is a big sunny window with plants hanging.

Title: Operations Director
Pronouns: she/her
Email: meagan@grunt.ca
Ask Meagan about: grunt operations, administration, human resources, board of directors, budgets, contracts, strategic planning and facilities

Name Pronunciation: Mee-ghan Koos, First name: Meee-gan (heavy on the E). Last name: K (like the English letter K), rhymes with goose.

Biography

Meagan Kus, Operations Director, is well-versed in the world of non-profits and has been working in the arts sector since 1997. With a focus on arts administration, she has worked as grunt’s Operations Director since 2009 and formerly worked at the Museum of Anthropology, Delta Museum & Archives and as the Executive Director of the White Rock Museum & Archives. Meagan is also a consultant in the area of arts administration to other non-profit organizations. Meagan is passionate about visual arts and is fortunate to be part of such a progressive organization that is creating and supporting work worthy of conversation.

Contact Information

Email: meagan@grunt.ca
The best way to contact Meagan is by email. You can also call or text me at 604. 732. 0543. I mostly work from home, but come into the grunt office on Friday afternoons when we have an exhibition on or for meetings/gatherings from time to time.

Visual Description

I am a white, female-identifying person in my early fifties. I have long, straight blonde hair, usually parted in the middle or pulled back into a ponytail. I am 5’2” and dress very casually in jeans and sweatshirts. I am often spotted with a to-go mug of tea in hand.

Title: Co-Lead of Accessible Engagement Project (AEP)
Pronouns: she/her
Email: shanna@grunt.ca
Ask them about: Accessible Engagement Project (AEP)

Name Pronunciation: Shah – nah

Biography

Shanna is a Curator bringing in experience collaborating with disadvantaged youths, emerging BIPOC artists and the Disability community in disability and BIPOC led community projects and exhibitions. She continues to work with artists with disabilities in consultation and developing transformative critical models in art spaces, expanding on inclusive curation, exhibition accessibility design, artist residencies and public programming.

She approaches projects through the disability justice lens of comfort and care practices, supporting the professional development and ongoing learning with, for and by artists with disabilities. Shanna is a Canadian-Chinese Hard of Hearing Curator, Project Coordinator and Printmaker.

Contact Information

Email: shanna@grunt.ca
Shanna is Hard of Hearing and lipreads to communicate. She responds best through email and text messaging platforms. She is an oral speaker and will speak first to communicate. Feel free to send a quick email and/or text at shanna@grunt.ca.

Visual Description

Image Description: Shanna beams at the camera wearing a pale blue silky dress with a soft cardigan overtop. She wears her long dark hair down with blunt bangs falling across her forehead. Shanna is surrounded by large bright pink and orange obscure sculptures and paintings lining the black gallery walls.

She is small in stature, and you will find her wearing earthly-toned cozy outfits with a bounce in her small steps.