RML1 Communities and Connections – Light Factory Publications

RML1: Communities and Connections, the first phase of Reading the Migration Library (RML), took place in the years 2016 to 2018 (with an additional title in 2023), in partnership with organizations in New Westminster (BC), Santa Fe (NM), Vancouver (BC) and Kingston, (ON). The publications that were produced included simple folded pamphlets made in community workshops as well as elaborate chapbooks using innovative binding and printing by writers from SFU’s The Writing Studio.

Partner organizations and sponsors for RML1 Communities and Connections included, Anvil Centre Artist-in-Residence Program (City of New Westminster Cultural Services), Santa Fe Art Institute (Immigration/Emigration Artists in Residence program), Canada Graduate Scholarships—Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplements (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada), Graduate Dean’s Travel Grant for Doctoral Field Research (Queen’s University, Canada), Graduate Research-Creation/Community-Based Research and Action Fund (Cultural Studies Program, Queen’s University).

Public presentations:

2023 – 37 Looe Street (Plymouth, UK)
2020 – Ever Elsewhere: Siting a Mennonite Imaginary (group exhibition), The Reach Gallery Museum (Abbotsford, BC)
2019 – Union Gallery Vitrine Project: Reading the Migration Library, Union Gallery, Stauffer Library, Queen’s University (Kingston, ON)
2018 – Temporary Dwelling, Fragile Structures: Sukkot 2018, Canada, with Sala-Manca (Lea Mauas, Diego Rotman), Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, ON)
2018 – Readings: New Work from Anvil Centre AiR (Artist in Residence), workshops, and exhibition at Anvil Centre Community Art Space (New Westminster, BC)
2017 – Bruna Press & Archive (Bellingham, WA)
2017 – Reading Flow, exhibition, YACTAC (Vancouver, BC)
2016 – SFAI140 performance (Santa Fe Art Institute, NM)
2016 – KFSR’s Santa Fe Radio Cafe with Marie-Charlotte (Santa Fe, NM)

Henry Frederick Terry (1907-1980) ~ I Remember

Migration, Law & the Image

We are all living history

zarf (containers)

When Food Tells Stories: A Tale in 12 Courses

Repetition and Texture and Pattern in National Geographic

Paisanos

A Long Story, this…

Charlie Henry Workman (1897-1976) ~The Unspoken

Inventory for a Voyage [Da capo sin’ al Fine]

The Migration Pattern of a Single Human

Train Country Emigrant

Flow

Waves

My Nomadic Family

Workin’ for the Yankee Dollar

Reading the Migration Map

Tweed Curtain Passport / Visa

Communities and Connections

Imagine the world’s entire migration library as a vast archive that, like its subject, refuses to be confined within a single location. Reading the Migration Library is an art project that provides opportunities for people to make books; and to read and discuss the contents of this library in public settings. The project, hosted by Vancouver-based artist Lois Klassen, is comprised of workshops, one-on-one interviews, exhibitions, readings and performances. Participants are invited to make books (during interviews or workshops), and join reading or exhibition events.

Meet some of the artists and contributors to RML1 Communities and Connections:

Deanne Achong

Deanne Achong is an artist who works across disciplines, including digital and lens-based projects, installation and public art. She has a daily drawing habit, one which acts as a counterpoint to her digital practice, playing with the boundaries of domesticity and technology. Growing up in a multi-racial family, her work is influenced by stories she…

Oana Capota

Oana Capota came to Canada as a refugee from Romania. She comes from a family of pastry chefs and grew up in restaurants. She can only cook breakfast. Capota is a museum curator for City of New Westminster’s Museums and Heritage Services at the Anvil Centre. RML Books with contributions from Oana Capota When Food…

Frederick Cummings

Frederick Cummings is an artist living on Coast Salish Territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, in what is known as Vancouver, Canada. His drawings, paintings, videos and performances have been shown at VIVO Media Arts Centre, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Gallery Gachet and The…

Margaret Dragu

Margaret Dragu was the recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2012, the 2012 Éminence Grise for 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival (Toronto), and, in 2000, the first artist in FADO’s publication series Canadian Performance Art Legends. Dragu works in video, installation, web/analogue publication and performance. Spanning relational, durational, interventionist…

Alan Hill

Poet Alan Hill served as New Westminster’s fourth Poet Laureate (2017 to 2020). He is co-manager of the Poetry New West reading series and has been a regular on the Vancouver reading circuit for over ten years. He has been published in North America and Europe in numerous print and online journals. Publishing highlights in…

Sandeep Johal

Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose bold, colourful forms and intricate black and white line work is aesthetically and conceptually inspired by her South Asian heritage. Website RML Book with Contribution by Sandeep Johal When Food Tells Stories: A Tale in 12 Courses

Lois Klassen

Lois Klassen is the hosting artist of Reading the Migration Library (RML), co-host with Deanne Achong of RML3: Undercurrents and Folds, and founder of Light Factory Publications (publisher of RML and Present Cartographers). In that capacity she collaborates with artists, writers, and designers, and edits the final bookworks. Klassen is a second generation immigrant/settler, born…

Franci Louann

Franci Louann (Fran Workman) was born in Stratford, Ontario. Her poemoirs are often based on travel. Ekstasis Editions is publishing her poesia from Argentina. Franci Louann describes and reads from The Unspoken in this video that was recorded at a Reading the Migration Library event during Art Book Month, on October 8, 2020. https://player.vimeo.com/video/515979938 RML…

Ginger Mason

After studying journalism and photography at a community college in the late 70s, Ginger spent the subsequent decades dabbling and deep diving into an eclectic variety of occupations. She has worked as a chef, a baker, a letter carrier, a music reviewer, a personal care attendant, an interviewer, a gardener, a radio host, a baby photographer,…

Graham McGarva

Graham McGarva is a migrant who found settlement in False Creek. Here, over forty years he has crafted the art of community building, slowly learning of origins and replacements – including his own. Website RML Book by Graham McGarva A Long Story, this… List of Books by Artist Title / Link (manually add for now)Title…

Christine Leviczky Riek

Christine Leviczky Riek is a poet and photographer from Surrey BC. Her poetry has been published in The Capilano Review, Pulp Literature, and Emerge17. Besides Inventory For A Voyage [da Capo sin’ al Fine], Riek published the chapbook, hard hack flat: songs of the nicomekl, vol. 1, by her own Water Moth Press. Riek was a semi-finalist for the Capilano Review’s…

Natasha Sanders-Kay

Natasha Sanders-Kay writes from unceded Coast Salish territories in Burnaby, BC. Her work has appeared in Poetry Is Dead, subTerrain, PRISM international, and untethered magazine, at Spacing.ca, and in emerge 17. Natasha is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU, where she was mentored by Betsy Warland. She is a member of subTerrain magazine’s…

Lib Spry

Lib Spry has been making theatre for most of her life, enjoying the pleasures and challenges of this live art. She specializes in political and physical theatre as a director, playwright, producer and teacher. She completed a PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University in 2020. Website RML Books by Lib Spry We Are Living…

Elisa Yon

Elisa Yon is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver. Her interest in site, place and community-responsive work is explored through architecture, critical design, social practice and public art. In 2018, she established MAU (Makers Artists United) an artist-initiated project that aims to re-imagine the way souvenirs function as objects and as vehicles to examine lesser-known…