Studio Updates

• It was more than two years in the making! JAJ: a Haida Manga launched at the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival on Friday, May 19th with an on-stage conversation between Michael and Dr. Nicola Levell.
  
  Looking for a copy of JAJ? Order one from your local independent bookstore or ask your public library to add it to their collection so it's there for everyone to read!


• In connection to the ICAF conference which took place at UBC in mid-April, we are happy to share with you the UBC Anthropology 431C class exhibition Haida X Manga, which features Michael's work. This exhibition runs until June 11th at UBC and is also open to the public.


• The creative team of Maxime Goulet (Composer), Glynis Leyshon (Dramaturge), and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Librettist) is expanding the children's version of the Flight of the Hummingbird Opera for a family audience. The team is hard at work with the Vancouver Opera and Pacific Opera Victoria to prepare the work for a future premiere.
  
  Meanwhile, we are also thrilled that the opera companies are relaunching their BC school tour of Opera's original version. This tour was cut short by the pandemic in 2020, and the new road trip is being planned for early 2024. For more information about this BC tour, please contact the Studio.


• Michael was in New York City for the Outsider Art Fair from March 3-5 for a limited show and sale of paintings presented by Donald Ellis Gallery. The works included preparatory drawings for A Tale of Two Shamans, original paintings from A Lousy Tale, and watercolour paintings, including several from the Flesh Tones series.


• Michael was honoured to be featured in a chapter in a new book by Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies by Katherine Kelp-Stebbins. Her chapter on Michael is entitled "Border Thinking and Decolonial Mapping in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s Haida Manga." The book is available from your local bookstore or directly from The Ohio State University Press. The chapter by Kelp-Stebbins is an excellent complement to the work by Dr. Nicola Levell in Mischief Making: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Art, and the Seriousness of Play published by UBC Press in 2021.


• Much of 2023 has been and will continue to be very busy with working (and playing) with a mural commission for the Vancouver Art Gallery. This mural and its story have been brewing for over 20 years... the work is now well underway.


• Thoughts in the Studio continue to touch on memories of friendships our delegation made in Berlin last September. Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for helping to fund our productive trip to Germany. Thank you to fellow delegation members Florence Hageman, Lisa Hageman, Tracy Auchter, and Chris Auchter for their many contributions to the conversations.