artist profile

Artist explores faith through scrap-metal sculpting

Don Engbrecht has built around 200 works, including this Easter sculpture. (Photo courtesy of Don Engbrecht)

Don Engbrecht has been sculpting and welding scrap metal for 20 years. (Photo courtesy of Don Engbrecht)

This special Easter sculpture now sits in Whitewater Mennonite Church in Boissevain, Man. (Photo courtesy of Don Engbrecht)

The outer circle of the Shalom sculpture indicates wholeness, while each segment represents an aspect of shalom: physical wellness, right relationships and healthy spirituality. The pattern of threes symbolizes stability and harmony. (Photo courtesy of Don Engbrecht)

One of the sites in the Engbrechts’ Anchorage Gardens. (Photo courtesy of Don Engbrecht)

Old agricultural equipment left to languish in junkyards or alongside highways gets a second life in Don Engbrecht’s workshop. He has created approximately 200 works over the 20 years he has been sculpting in Boissevain, Man., with scrap metal and welding tools.

The 'poet of ironwork'

Pickup truck bookends by John Wiebe. (Photo by Laura Wiebe)

John Wiebe, a ‘poet of ironwork’

The Wiebe-Neufeld family displays one of the iron doves made by John Wiebe while watching this year’s Inter-Mennonite Good Friday service and preparing for communion in Edmonton. (Photo by Tim Wiebe-Neufeld)

Horseback bookend by John Wiebe. (Photo by Laura Wiebe)

Curling bookend by John Wiebe. (Photo by Laura Wiebe)

If you are Mennonite and live in Alberta, you may not know John Wiebe, but you’ll recognize his work. Kate Janzen calls him the “poet of ironwork.”

A lifetime of taking pictures

Henry Harms proudly displays a camera that once belonged to Esther Patkau, former missionary to Japan and long-time spiritual care director at Bethany Manor, where Harms lives. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

Henry Harms holds up the Baby Brownie Special he bought when he was nine years old. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

Henry Harms shows a damaged old photograph taken at a Sunday school picnic near Hague, Sask. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

Henry Harms shows his restored version of the same Sunday school picnic photo. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

Henry Harms’s photo of the demolition of a grain elevator in Osler, Sask., was taken in 1999. (Photo by Harry Harms)

Henry Harms restored this historic photograph of the sinking of the S.S. City of Medicine Hat when it struck the traffic bridge in Saskatoon in 1908. (Photo by Harry Harms)

Henry Harms displays the original glass negative he used to restore the photo of the sinking of the S.S. City of Medicine Hat. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

Henry Harms enjoys using digital technology to create new photographs. Here he shows a composite photo he created depicting five Boldt brothers from Osler, Sask. (Photo by Donna Schulz)

This picture of a Baltimore oriole shows Henry Harms’ skill as a nature photographer. (Photo by Harry Harms)

This photo of the UofS Huskies men’s basketball team shows Henry Harms’s skill at capturing athletes in action. (Photo by Harry Harms)

Henry Harms once owned a thousand cameras. He still has a closet full of them. They bear witness to a life-long love of photography.

Harms was 9 when he bought his first camera—a Baby Brownie Special. As a boy growing up on a farm near Hague, Sask., he would go to Saskatoon to watch ball games at Cairns Field. He purchased the camera at a store next to the ball diamond.

Langham artist finds connection through painting

‘Created in His Image’ by Valerie Wiebe.

‘A Coat of Many Colours’ by Valerie Wiebe.

‘Down in the Valley’ by Valerie Wiebe.

Painted for MC Canada’s Assembly 2016, ‘Called Out’ by Valerie Wiebe depicts the church (the tiny black marks representing the people of God) leaving the church building and walking toward the setting sun.

Her parents called her Dynamite. Although she didn’t care for the nickname when she was a child, Valerie Wiebe has come to appreciate its layers of meaning.

Exhibit features professor’s paintings of historic Anabaptist sites

Gareth Brandt, an Anabaptist history professor at Columbia Bible College, stands beside ‘Strassbourg,’ one of his ‘simple folk art’ works at the Mennonite Heritage Museum, where his ‘Stories of the Anabaptists’ collection is on display until Nov. 1. (Mennonite Heritage Museum photo by Julia Toews )

Patrons at Mennonite Heritage Museum view the paintings of Gareth Brandt depicting ‘Stories of the Anabaptists’ that are on display through Nov. 1. (Photo by Amy Rinner Waddell)

Paintings of Gareth Brandt depicting ‘Stories of the Anabaptists’ that are on display through Nov. 1. (Photo by Amy Rinner Waddell)

A love for the arts, combined with an interest in Anabaptist history, has inspired a professor at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford to create paintings depicting early Anabaptist history. The exhibit of Gareth Brandt’s water-colour paintings, “Stories of the Anabaptists,” was introduced Sept. 11 at the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Abbotsford.

Making art ‘like breathing’ for B.C. illustrator

Dona Park painted a mural at a school in Cambodia during her term with MCC. (Photos courtesy of Dona Park)

For Dona Park, making art is the equivalent of eating, sleeping and breathing. She does it every day because she needs to.

The 24-year-old attended Goshen (Ind.) College, from which she graduated with a double major in fine arts and history in 2017. She is now a freelance artist based in Abbotsford, B.C., where she attends Emmanuel Mennonite Church.

From mould to masterpiece

A mosaic of mushrooms captured in Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur’s film, Wrought, coming out in summer of 2019. (Photo by Joel Penner)

Joel Penner is a time-lapse filmmaker based out of Winnipeg’s West End neighbourhood. But he doesn’t capture typical scenes like sunsets or the bustle of the city. 


Joel Penner.

Swords into ploughshares, guns into art

Irian Sittler-Fast works as a blacksmith in Floradale, Ont. (Photo by Paul Dimock)

Sittler-Fast sits by her sculpture, ‘Gun Shy’ at her first public showing at Hawkesville (Ont.) Mennonite Church. (Photo by Elo Wideman)

(Photo by Paul Dimock)

(Photo by Paul Dimock)

(Photo by Paul Dimock)

Irian Fast-Sittler spends her days hammering hot steel and welding metals together at a forge in Floradale, Ont.

Recently, the 20-year-old blacksmith created a modern-day take on the analogy from the Book of Isaiah of turning swords into ploughshares. Instead, she turned her grandfather’s shotgun into a work of art.

Worth the wait

No stranger to the stage, Kenzi Jane grew up performing music with her family. (Photo by Lynette Giesbrecht)

Kenzie Jane recorded her EP in Altona, Man., where she grew up. (Photo by Robyn Adam)

‘Love Me From Scratch [means] love me for who I am,’ Kenzi Jane says. (Cover art by Sydney Friesen)

If good things come to those who wait, exciting times are ahead for Kenzie Jane.

The Winnipeg-based singer-songwriter recently released her debut EP, Love Me From Scratch, more than three years after she first started recording it.

‘Just doing my best’

Grace Kang has made art since she was a child. (Photo by Aaron Epp)

Grace Kang’s installation at Bethel Mennonite Church in Winnipeg consisted of 400 prints depicting different pairs of feet suspended in the air using twine and surrounding a large ceramic bowl. (Photo by Aaron Epp)

‘Suffering will always be a part of my art, because it’s such a big part of being human,’ Grace Kang says. (Photo by Gabrielle Touchette)

‘I wanted people to face the places they had been and realize . . . Jesus wants to meet us where we’re at,’ Grace Kang says of her installation at Bethel Mennonite Church in Winnipeg. (Photo by Aaton Epp)

Grace Kang isn’t sure what her future holds, but she knows it will include making art. (Photo by Calvin Strong)

Grace Kang can’t remember a time when she wasn’t making art.

As a child, “I was always drawing, I was always writing stories,” the 22-year-old says. When she learned that art is not something everyone does or is interested in, “I realized it was a unique way I could contribute to the world.”

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