Despicable dooin's in Dufftown

With the whisky festival now in full swing there are many new strange characters around the town. But none are stranger than a particularly strange looking crauter doing a highland fling on top of the 'Welcome to Dufftown' and twin town signs on Balvenie Street. Where he came from no one knows, it could be that he is an escapee from Tattie Boggle week over in near by Rothes. But regardless he seems to be pretty well settled in for the weekend at least. 

Quite appropriately given the national flag on the twin town sign, he was there on Thursday morning to welcome our latest residents, Trevor Mahovsky and Rhonda Weppler. the recipients of the 2014 Canadian Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Prize.

The artistic team of Winnipeg-born, self-proclaimed nomad, Weppler and Calgary-born, Toronto-based Mahovsky, have been working as an artisitic collaboration for a number of years and their work takes an innovative sculptural approach to still life. By combining handmade craft and improvised materials, their inventive work is an artistic translation of the complex identity of everyday objects as cultural artifacts. The pair's sculptural still life has been described as, "wickedly inventive, event-studded, inexhaustibly suggestive" and "mesmerizing, beautiful and surprisingly profound."

http://wepplermahovsky.com/

The pair were chosen from almost 200 applications by a distinguished jury panel comprising of Dr. Sara Diamond, president of Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University, Gaetane Verna, director of The Power Plant, Kitty Scott, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Julian Sleath, programming manager of special events, economic development and culture at the City of Toronto, the Canadian 2008 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Prize recipient, Dave Dyment .

One of the residency projects planned by Rhonda and Trevor are a series of free coin making workshop to be held in the gallery at Glenfiddich from mid May. Participants will sculpt a coin of their own design which will then be used to make a mold before being cast in copper.

The workshops will be run in four sessions for full details or to book a place mail rhondaweppler@gmail.com