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Anong Migwans Beam is a multi-media artist living and working in Kagawong, Ontario, on Manitoulin Island, not far from where she grew up in M'chigeeng First Nation. A show of her large format canvases opened at the Art Gallery of Sudbury on April 19 and runs until June 18.

1. Novak Graphics Inc.

Just this past month I had the great pleasure of finally working with Gordan Novak in Admiral, Saskatchewan. Recently established in a re-purposed elementary school, Novak Graphics was and is an absolute paradise of contemporary art. I knew Gordan through his great friendship with my father Carl Beam. Their collaborative work won the Ernst And Young Great Canadian Printmaking Competition and a super awesome monoprint of theirs entitled Only Poetry Remains is in the National Gallery collection. I had always wanted to work with Gordan, and earlier this month, I and my entire family (husband Mark; our sons Riel, aged three, Lux, aged one; and a rabbit named Sniper) made the forty-hour one-way drive. In an ocean of prairie, in a town with a population of seventeen, we did some of the best work I feel I've done to date. The energy of working in this place with his library (now entirely full of books on art instead of school textbooks), and the teacher's lounge (which now serves as a wonderful kitchen) was amazing. Working in collaboration with Gordan was truly like working with a gifted printer at the very top of his game combined with a kid-gloves-psychotherapist. And the monoprints we made expressed beyond image the way I feel about art and the pleasure of making it. (Contact Novak Graphics at gordannovak@gmail.com, if you're interested.)

2. Mark Larochelle

My husband. We fell in love when I was eighteen and he was nineteen, and were married in Boston a month and a half later. He has always supported me and loved me in highs and lows. I have the deepest love and respect for the man, and he remains the only person I can be with 24/7 and still always be in his vicinity!

3. Ogata Kenzan

I absolutely love the ceramics and paintings of Ogata Kenzan and his contemporary Korin. There is such a tenderness and restraint in his work. I also read somewhere that he built a small-footprint, seven-story house and called it 7 Stories From Which To View The Moon. In these modern times, with information constantly flowing past, I love to contemplate what it must have been like to see the moon from his house. Should circumstance allow I would love to build my own version.

4. Water

Ever since I was a small kid and first learned that everything created is made of atoms which are never destroyed and constantly recombine to create all matter in the world, I have thoroughly enjoyed thinking that the water in my glass was once water dinosaurs splashed in, was what my favorite writers had walked through or over as puddles, and so-on. I like to think of water as the witness to our collective humanity through time. This enduring witness to our triumphs and hard times makes me feel connected to everything I have ever loved.

5. Hip-Hop Nation 44 & Shade 45 Sirius XM Canada

Nuff' said!

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