Gem Salsberg

An Intermedia artist based in Vancouver BC.

When you’re a kid living in the woods with your momma, small money, no electricity, and toys that include a favorite stick in the shape of a steamship, there is little choice but to start becoming an Intermedia artist.

Her momma put a camera in her hand at five years old, and the camera has been there ever since. In the other hand pencil-crayons and ink, and in her mind were wild stories. The crayons and the stories have also been hard at work ever since.

Gem was raised in the wilderness landscape of treeplanting camps throughout Canada, spent much of her life exploring the wildlands, leading packs of crazy mongrel dogs and drawing in the sand. She could often be found digging in the woods where she’d discovered such treasure as a fur-trapper’s bone-cemetery, or on the river’s edge catching minnows and tadpoles in pasta strainers.

Gem completed a BFA at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2002. Awards and recognition have risen along the way. From films being in international festivals to magazine articles being selected for book compilations, the work is getting out there and inspiring people.

Gem works with film, moving and still imagery, with ink, paint, and composite writing in variegated forms. Mediums of consistent engagement: photography, video-films, moving paintings, 16mm experimental film, prose, storytelling - visual and aural, poetics, celluloid, the art of conversation, collage, drawing.

Gem is currently teaching fine-arts to young people, and in the process… loving it.