Quick Facts
Biography
Phyllis Grant is a Mi’gmaq artist from Pabineau First Nation, New Brunswick, Canada.
Her artwork was exhibited in Canada at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (2007), and in the US with Honor the Earth’s “Impacted Nations” which toured New York City, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, and Chicago (2005–2008). Her work is currently exhibited with “Irréductibles Racines“ -an exhibition partnered with Le Congrès Mondial Acadien (2009–2010).
She is a Canada Council grantee for Writing and Publishing, and a multiple grant recipient of the New Brunswick Arts Board. Her memberships include the Writer's Guild of Canada, the East Coast Music Association and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN).
In 2004, Grants was nominated for an East Coast Music Award for her work with rap artist Red Suga. She is also a rap and spoken word artist. Her first solo cd titled Up Risin' was nominated for a 2009 ECMA.
In 2006, she completed her first film, Maq and the Spirit of the Woods -a children’s animation produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It was selected and screened at several festivals, including the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, the American Indian Film Institute’s Film Festival in San Francisco, the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and National Geographic's All Roads Film Festival in Los Angeles and Washington DC. It was also screened at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York City.
Grant's work is also featured in Pearson Canada’s Literacy in Action textbooks, launched autumn 2007. In 2008, she was a finalist in the 4th Atlantic Ulnooweg Development Group's Aboriginal Entrepreneur Awards in the category of Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.
She released her second animated film Waseteg with the NFB in 2010. The film premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Festival, 2011, and recently selected and screened at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival (2011).
Grant is also one of 15 artists across Canada who designed and painted a six-foot Coca-Cola art bottle for Coca-Cola Canada’s “Aboriginal Art Bottle Program” for the 2010 Winter Olympics.