Deanna Finn at September’s “Party on the Sidewalk”.

DEANNA FLINN
Community Engagement
Through Art

You may have last seen multi-disciplinary artist Deanna Flinn in September when she organized a “Party on the Sidewalk” on the plaza at Bute and Davie, inviting you to join her and other West Enders in creating a community-based temporary sidewalk mural at Davie and Bute in front of Blenz. Deanna provided the chalk, and folks channeled their inner-chalk-artist to create some imaginative imagery around the theme of life in the West End. And you’re sure to have seen her stunning eight-foot-high panels hung earlier this year at Gordon Neighbourhood House (GNH) entitled “The People In Your Neighbourhood.”

Several years ago Deanna began experimenting with ‘continuous line’ drawings, which is when a pen or pencil stays in uninterrupted contact with the surface of the paper during the entire illustration process. This experimentation led to the creation of the GNH panels, working in collaboration with her West End neighbors.

Deanna started the project, after receiving a $500 Neighbourhood Small Grant, by asking dozens of West End neighbors to draw a self-portrait using just one continuous line, with their eyes closed! Despite some hesitation from the folks she approached (would you be up for it?) she finally collected a total of 47 portraits, including her own, then she used a projector to enlarge the images, and painted them onto five wooden panels.

Born in Halifax, Deanna’s life as an artist began at age 12 when her artist stepfather gifted her a camera, to put an end to her constantly sneaking off with her mother’s. Using that 35 mm Russian film camera, she later entered college to study photography. At 15 she had started to collect fashion magazines and study them, and this led to work in fashion photography, creating images that have been published internationally.

A multi-media image from Deanna’s online gallery.

Now a long-time Vancouver resident and West Ender, Deanna never leaves home without a camera. She has had solo exhibitions in the US Virgin Islands, Toronto, Vancouver, and Halifax. During the 2019 Project Instant, an exhibition at Science World featuring images made on all types of instant film, her trio of Polaroids won best creative series.

In 2020 she participated a photojournalism project with seven women who work in STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Math) titled “In Plain Sight” which was also shown at Science World.

Deanna has worked as an instructor in photography at Arts Umbrella, Henry’s Camera in Toronto, and is now an instructor with Skillshare, an online educational resource.

Deanna is bound to come up with another engaging community art project soon. In the meantime, you can see more of her work here, and here.