Current Residents

Macaulay House Studio Residency

Jake and Luca at Macaulay House

Luca Jesse Apel is a sculptor whose practice centers on wood bas-relief as a medium for cultural memory and storytelling. Working with rescued and off-cut wood, he embraces the knots, cracks, and textures of each piece as collaborators in the creative process. Drawing from his upbringing as a first-generation Polish immigrant, Apel’s tactile works invite viewers to engage through touch and scent, offering an intimate encounter with the stories held within the wood.

At Macaulay House, Apel will continue his exploration of traditional Polish carving techniques while weaving personal narratives. Inspired by his parents’ experiences growing up in Soviet-occupied Poland, he plans to craft a series of bas-reliefs reflecting themes of scarcity, resilience, and daily ingenuity.

During his time in Dawson City, Apel intends to work with locally sourced, imperfect wood, allowing its natural features to shape each piece.

Jake Kimble is a two-spirit Indigenous artist and curator whose multimedia practice blends photography, performance, and archival intervention to confront the colonial narratives that shape public memory. Working at the intersection of personal expression and historical critique, his work channels humour, vulnerability and unapologetic rage as tools of reclamation. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Lori Blondeau, Shelly Niro, and Adrian Stimson, Kimble’s practice challenges imposed identities while asserting an uncompromising commitment to self-representation.

During his residency at the Klondike Institute of Art & Culture (KIAC), Kimble will develop a new multimedia photographic self-portrait series grounded in early 20th-century RCMP patrol reports—documents steeped in the harmful language of colonial surveillance. Through research, performance and digital manipulation, they will confront and subvert these archival records, transforming them into material for an embodied and ceremonial act of personal processing. This work will involve both direct engagement with the documents and experimental visual interventions that redact, distort and reframe the original texts.

In Dawson City, Kimble plans to begin by tracing the origins, authors and intentions of these patrol reports, allowing that research to shape the conceptual and emotional contours of the project. The resulting images will challenge enduring colonial representations, offering instead a fierce and deeply felt expression of Indigenous presence, agency and resistance.

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE EVENTS

OPEN STUDIO at Macaulay House with Jake Kimble and Luca Jesse Apel

Sunday, December 7th, time TBD
at Macaulay House, 907 Princess St