Meet the judges of the 35th Pierrefonds-Roxboro Art Competition

Shelley Miller

The artist Shelley Miller lives in Montreal. She specializes in the creation of public art as well as street art. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design (1997) and her Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University (2001). She is also the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec and the Commonwealth Foundation. Shelley has exhibited her ephemeral installations and site-specific designs across Canada, as well as in Brazil, India and Australia.

Shelley Miller’s creative process is one of inclusion and collaboration, and as a result, she always considers her audience and the users of a particular space. Her creations are developed with consideration for the architectural style and materials of the surrounding area, giving each piece a site-specific character.

Her work can be found in the collections of the City of Montreal, the Just for Laughs Museum, the Bahia Museum of Modern Art in Brazil, Reliance Industries in India, as well as in numerous private collections.

Marie Louise Pépin

A professor of visual arts and art history, Marie Louise Pépin taught for many years at Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne in Montreal. She now gives specialized courses at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

In 2004, as an exhibition curator, she set up a project of collaboration and artistic exchanges on an international scale.

She is co-recipient of the Prix novateur en enseignement des arts 2021 from the Conseil des diplômés de la Faculté des arts de l’UQAM.

Sabina Rak

Sabina Rak works and lives in Montreal. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in art history as well as an undergraduate degree in fine arts. She has been exhibiting her work since 2011 and is interested in the intersection of science and art.

Winner of the 2012 Albert-Dumouchel Award for Emerging Print Media Artists, she is also a finalist in the 2017 Untapped Emerging Artists of the Artist Project, Toronto, as well as the winner of the Curator’s Award at the 2017 Symposium en arts visuels d’Anjou.

Working with drawings, digital printing and linocuts, her areas of interest are systems of life and creation, the limits of human perception, the physics of time, and the definition of the concept of life. She is interested in how everything is physically composed and mentally interconnected.

Brief history of the Pierrefonds-Roxboro Art Competition

Since 1985, the Art Competition has been a visual art event that Montreal artists, both amateur and professional, hold dear.

Initially, the City of Pierrefonds only welcomed artists who resided in the West Island. With the merging of the boroughs into the City of Montreal, the Pierrefonds-Roxboro Art Competition has been welcoming artists from the greater Montreal area since 2006.

Always eager to further promote the work of artists, the Art Competition created new disciplines in 2005, namely photography and sculpture. The latter was presented in 2006 and 2007.

From 2004 to 2011, participants registered for the Art Competition had the opportunity to take part in duo or trio exhibitions in three small, intimate rooms set up at the Pierrefonds Cultural Centre.

Then, in 2012, a new exhibition room was opened at the Pierrefonds Cultural Centre. From then on, the participants were able to exhibit their work in a professional showroom. This citizen’s exhibition is much appreciated and eagerly awaited by artists.

Over the years, because of its reputation, the Pierrefonds-Roxboro Art Contest has largely gained in popularity.