Jenel Shaw | Executive Director

Jenel Shaw is a self-taught visual artist. Her artistic focus is learning new ways to craft and explore artistic expression. Jenel graduated with her masters in Disability Studies from the University of Manitoba. Her dissertation, An Autoethnological Study of Art as a Tool of Empowerment, examined her own experiences with mental illness and disability art. From 2012 until 2016 Jenel was the Vice-Chair of the Board of directors for AANM. Jenel became the executive director of AANM in 2019. 

Sacha Kopelow | Programming Assistant

Sacha was born and raised in rural Manitoba.  She holds degrees from University of Winnipeg in International Development and Environmental Studies, and a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University.  Sacha has worked in social and environmental justice for most of her career and is a practising artist, primarily working in cast glass, metalsmithing, and oil painting.  To learn more about Sacha’s art, visit her website (alt text is provided on most images for the blind and those with low vision).

Nix Cristobal Calma | Communications and Volunteer Coordinator

Nix (they/them) is an abstract expressionist, mixed media artist. They were born in a small town in the Philippines northwest of Manila and were raised in Quezon City (Metro Manila). They moved to Turtle Island (colonially Canada) when they were 19. Nix has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Winnipeg and certificates in Therapeutic Art-Making, Modern Art & Ideas, and Typography & Design Fundamentals. Nix’s art is influenced by race, disability, gender, queerness/transness, and sexuality. They are interested in the liminal spaces created by intersecting identities, and the displacement, erasure, and fetishization of racialized and queer bodies. To learn more about Nix’s art, visit their website.

Sara Arenson | Newsletter Editor

Sara Arenson is a writer and performer who was born and raised in Winnipeg. She has been a theatre artist since the early 2000s when, as a young science graduate, she heard the call of the arts. She has a Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours) from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre (Performance) from the University of Winnipeg. As well as acting, she writes scripts, articles, personal essays, poetry, and autobiographical fiction, often through the lens of lived experience in the mental health system.

Diane Driedger | Chair

Diane Driedger is Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Disability Studies at the University of Manitoba. She has published 11 books, including her recent publication, Still Living the Edges: A Disabled Women’s Reader (Inanna, fall 2021). She is a poet and visual artist and her latest book of poems and art is: Red with Living(Inanna, 2016). Diane has been involved in the disability rights movement at the local, national and international levels for many years.

Ted Howorth | Vice Chair

E.J. Howorth’s passion has been Printmaking throughout most of his artistic career. He apprenticed under Wilfredo Arcay of Atelier Arcay in Paris. and received an MFA from the University of North Dakota. For over 40 years Howorth has exibited locally, nationally and internationally, received numerous commissions and is a part of many collections.  With Michael Schonke, Howorth introduced water-based screen printing to Druckwerkstatt/BBK in Berlin in 1991. In 1995 Howorth was appointed to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, R.C.A.

Bram Enan | Treasurer

Bram Enan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work offers opportunity for jubilant, explorative interpretation. Working playfully with the legacies of minimalism and hard-edge painting, Enan’s practice pushes the visual into the haptic, creating 2D and 3D paperscapes where the process of making imbues art with magic. Enan lives and works in Winnipeg and holds a BFA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba. Their work has been exhibited in Canada and the United States and is part of several private collections across the world including England and Switzerland.

Brennan Smith | Secretary

Brennan Smith is an art historian with a specialization in Canadian art and architectural history. Her research areas include early twentieth century Modernism and the confluence of art, science and religion during this era. Smith has worked extensively in collections management, research and analysis, arts administration, exhibit curation, and in writing for public and professional audiences. She is the co-author of the 2017 book Green Blankstein Russell and Associates: An Architectural Legacy. Smith has an educational background in art history, with an MA from Queen’s University and a BFA (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba School of Art. 

Erika Lincoln

Erika-Jean is an artist, researcher, and mentor living in Winnipeg-Treaty 1 territory. Over the past 20 years she has been challenging conventional knowledges and ideologies embedded in symbols, systems, and objects. Her method of artmaking speaks from a perspective of cognitive difference in the style of non-conformity, un-doing, mis-fitting, and troubling. Erika-Jean has been awarded multiple grants over the years enabling her to learn, speculate, and make. She continues to exhibit and attend residencies near and far.

A.O. Roberts

A.O. Roberts is an artist, musician, and writer whose multidisciplinary practice explores language, sound, and technology while transforming questions around disability futures into meditative new media artworks and installations. In 2024, Roberts released  Plants Properties Equipment, a downloadable virtual world and an original soundtrack featuring internationally based Deaf and Disabled artists. A 2022 MacDowell Fellow and 2021 Sobey Longlist awardee, Roberts holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from California College of the Arts. 

Kevin Grummett

Kevin J. Grummett was born in Toronto and grew up in Winnipeg where he received his Adv. B.A. in Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Having participated as a counsellor in the public health care field for several years Kevin decided to join the private sector as a computer programmer during the 2000’s working for such companies as Ceridian and IBM and later joined the University of Winnipeg Library as a Library Technician. HIs recent work explores the relationship between light and darkness, colour and shadow.  These images help him engage more deeply with my ideas and feelings about beauty, simplicity and connections. “I use photography as a means of self-expression with photographic influences such as Wayne Simpson’s story- telling and Curtis Jones’s use of simplicity”. Kevin is currently a Board Member for Artbeat Studio Inc.

Shawn Jordan

Shawn Olin Jordan is a multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer whose first language is drawing. This expressive and embodied way of seeing informs her cross-disciplinary experimentations in assemblage, photography, video, performance, and installations. Her work explores the dynamics of shifting perceptions, the nature of consciousness, and the stories we tell ourselves. 

Shawn also is an advocate for person-focused mental healthcare, destigmatization, and continual learning. She has a Bachelor of Design from the Alberta University of the Arts, and studied at the University of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Shawn has received the New Artist Media Award from Video Pool Media Arts Centre, as well as grants from Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council.