EMBASSY CULTURAL HOUSE
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Fern Helfand

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Fern Helfand in front of her work “Okanagan Log Pile” installed at the Kelowna International Airport from August 1, 2018, until March 15, 2019.
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London artists in Havana, Cuba, group exhibition, 1988, organized by Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner. From left to right: Ron Benner, Hugo Jimenez, Casa de las America staff, Jamelie Hassan, Greg Curnoe, Carmen Bedia, Cuban translator Murray Favro, Fern Helfand, Christopher Dewdney, and Canadian Ambassador to Cuba Michael Kergin, standing in front of Fern Helfand’s work in la Galería Latinoamericana.


Banner Image: Duel, 2013  (In the Broken Islands off the coast of Vancouver Island, BC)
Fern Helfand is a photo-based artist and educator living in Kelowna, BC. Helfand’s art production has always been influenced  by the environments and cultures in which she has lived, worked, and travelled. Throughout Fern’s forty years working in the arts, she has explored issues addressing cultural observation and commentary, tourism, consumerism and ecology, environmental concerns, racism, and the changing medium of photography itself. She has devoted a very large portion of her career to teaching: Western University, London, Ontario (1982–89); Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia (1989–92); University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, (1998–2018) and other positions.

​Technically, Helfand has most often gone beyond the constraints of conventional photography. In the early ’80s, she was working with montaged imagery printed onto hand-sensitized paper and fabrics using cyanotype and brown print methods. She later combined collaged  photographic prints on paper with drawing, creating large-format works like the panorama Tourists at Niagara Falls, which measured four feet high and thirty feet long. This work was first shown at the Photography Gallery at Harbourfront in Toronto and later was part of Casa de las Américas, the Cuban exchange exhibition organized by Ron Benner and Jamelie Hassan, in partnership with the Forest City Gallery and shown in Havana in 1988. It was natural for Fern to move from cutting and pasting photographs to doing the same using Photoshop during the mid-1990s, and she has worked almost exclusively with digital imaging since then.

Fern was an early supporter of the ECH and had a solo exhibit at the ECH in 1983, the year the exhibition programs began. She participated in two group exhibitions and many of the subsequent events programmed. As of today, she is part of the newly formed ECH Advisory Circle. 

Fern has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally. She is currently the president of the board of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, BC. For more information and details, please see her website www.fernhelfand.com.

Works by Fern Helfand



EDITORIAL TEAM

ONLINE FOUNDER
Tariq Hassan Gordon

COFOUNDERS & CURATORIAL ADVISORS 
 
Jamelie Hassan 
& Ron Benner

ADVISORY CIRCLE
Samer Abdelnour, Marnie Fleming, Wyn Geleynse, Fern Helfand, S F Ho, Lorraine Klaasen, Judith Rodger, Ruth Skinner, Mary Lou and Dan Smoke,  and Lucas Stenning 

COORDINATING EDITORS
Tariq Hassan Gordon & 
Olivia Mossuto

WEB DESIGN & SOCIAL MEDIA 
Tariq Hassan Gordon, Ira Kazi, Olivia Mossuto, Niloufar Salimi,  JoAnna Weil 

VIRTUAL TOUR
Andreas Buchwaldt

PRINT PUBLICATIONS
Blessy Augustine, Shelley Kopp, 
Olivia Mossuto

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Andreas Buchwaldt, Blessy Augustine, Anahí González, Ira Kazi, ​Shelley Kopp, Ashar Mobeen, Niloufar Salimi,  Jenna Rose Sands, JoAnna Weil & Michelle Wilson. 

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OUR STORY
Artists Jamelie Hassan and Ron Benner and jazz musician Eric Stach founded the Embassy Cultural House (1983-1990) located in the restaurant portion of the Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas Street in East London. Other former members of the board were: Debrann Eastabrook, Henry Eastabrook, Sharron Forrest, Wyn Geleynse, Janice Gurney, Jean Hay (1929 - 2008), Doug Mitchell, Kim Moodie, Gerard Pas, Peter Rist, Wanda Sawicki, Jean Spence and Jennie White. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Embassy Cultural House was re-envisioned as a virtual artist-run space and website. 

This project is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the London Arts Council through the City of London's Community Arts Investment Program.
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Thank you to our partners

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E M B A S S Y  C U L T U R A L  H O U S E . C A

​London, Ontario is on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Attawandaron and Huron-Wendat peoples, at the forks of Deshkan Ziibi (Antler River), an area subject to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum and other treaties.

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  • Home
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  • Background
    • Past Programming >
      • Exhibitions 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Curators
        • Index of Photographers
        • Index of Visual Artists
      • Film 1983-1990
      • Music 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Musicians
      • Performances 1983-1990 >
        • Index of Performers
    • Embassy Hotel History
  • About