Art Gallery of Newfoundland and |
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Pam Hall
Born in 1951 in Kingston, Ontario, Pam Hall has made St. John's, Newfoundland, her home, and has taken a wealth of inspiration from her rugged surroundings. After receiving her B.F.A. from Sir George Williams (Concordia) University in Montréal, Québec, in 1971, she went on to receive her Masters of Education from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Hall moved to St. John's in 1973 to become a teacher of art for the Avalon Consolidated School Board. Hall is well known for her work as an educator and arts consultant on a local and national level. During the 1970s she was provincial art consultant for the Newfoundland government's Department of Education. In 1979, she was appointed chairperson of the Provincial Task Force on the Arts in Education, which produced a report, Comin' to Our Senses, containing over 100 recommendations for improvements in provincial art education programs. In 1981, she became Director of the Communications Division of the Newfoundland government's Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat. Since becoming a full-time professional artist she has been active on behalf of the Canadian Conference of the Arts and was a member of the Canadian Advisory Committee on the Status of the Artist.
Her artistic career began to take off in 1977 with the publication of the children's book Down By Jim Long's Stage, by Newfoundland writer and humorist, Al Pittman. For her illustrations Hall won the Amelia Frances Howard Gibbon Award, presented by the Canadian Library Association. In 1982, she wrote and illustrated her own children's book, On the Edge of the Eastern Ocean. Her first major exhibition of large paintings and drawings was titled Saltwater Rock and was presented by the Memorial University Art Gallery in 1984. She has continued to exhibit in solo and group shows in Newfoundland and elsewhere in Canada, and her work is found in public and private collections. Hall is a prolific artist and has explored a number of different art forms and media. Her installation piece The Coil was exhibited as far away as Japan, and was eventually bought by the National Gallery of Canada in 1996. Her first film, Under the Knife: Personal Hystories, won the Rex Tasker Award for Best Atlantic Canadian Documentary at the 1995 Atlantic Film Festival. Hall is currently the artist-in-residence at the School of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She lives and works in St. John's, where she is married and has one daughter. |