Audra Balion

Audra Balion is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist from Saskatoon, SK. She started drawing when she could pick up a crayon, and obtained a BFA in Studio Art with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2013.

She works in many art spaces, including theatre and film design, comics, puppets, painting, sculpture, theatre, wearable art, and more. She has worked in design for the Saskatoon Opera, design, acting, and choreography for Off Broadway Children’s Theatre and Orange Jacket Kid’s Theatre, been a puppeteer for Wide Open Children’s, was part of “peephole” with BAM at Nuit Blanche, props for short film “The Tinwife,” and cover are and graphic design for local authors.

For personal projects, she wrote directed, designed, and choreographed “The Duet of the Mermaid and the Mine,” which was a wordless play with several types of puppets, she has won several award at the Sask Fine Arts Showcase, including Best of Show Sculpture twice. One of these awards was for a Hooligan, one of a series of small sculptures expressing mental illnesses and unfortunate emotions. Her aim with the Hooligans is to make mental health a more accepted topic of conversation, as well as a less scary “monster” to battle. Audra often combines her theatre and visual art work, and usually includes mysterious narratives in her work.

Her main project currently, is a silent graphic novel called “Flight Nineteen,” in which she uses her knowledge derived from theatre, such as gesture and design, to convey narrative. It is set in a fantastical steampunk-like world, a favourite genre in Audra’s work, as well as fantasy, science fiction, myth, and surrealism. To occasionally get out of the studio, Audra enjoys taiko, D&D, and video games.