Nancy F. Chiasson

Visual and ceramic artist Nancy Chiasson made her home and business in Cape Breton after attending Dundas Valley School of the Arts in the early 90’s. From her rural studio she has taught classes and created work both commercial and artistic for 20 years.

Nancy is currently working on a Transitions Project through the Shubenacadie Canal Commission conducting research and developing visual imagery in clay based on the lives of the Acadians along the waterway. Her working title is Acadian Surfaces.

In 2014 Nancy was awarded the Grand Pre Prize from Arts Nova Scotia for her artist in residency work at the Fortress of Louisbourg. Creating collaged landscapes inspired by the rugged coastline around the fortress she worked in a small format with space, color and perspective. She also created hand built pottery vessels inspired by eroding coastline and lost historical buildings both real and imagined, in part, by allowing her mind to wander through time at this historic site.

Nancy has worked with local artist collectives, represented Cape Breton Artists as board member with Visual Arts Nova Scotia (www.visual.ns.ca), as well as the national organization – CARFAC (www.carfac.ca) and she is a professional teaching member of PAINTs (www.paintsns.ca).

Painting with Scissors - Matisse's Swimming Pool in black light using glow in the dark paint

Artist Project

The Swimming Pool by Henri Matisse created one of the largest and most famous installations when he was 82, just 2 years before he died. After a career in painting he came to collage or as he called it ‘Painting with Scissors’ after a surgery that resulted in living out his remaining years in a wheelchair. Using brightly painted blue paper he cut into the colors creating organic swimming shapes that are larger than life. This work now lives on in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. In this project, local visual artist Nancy Chiasson will recreate a version of the Swimming Pool in professional quality neon/glow paint under black light.

Lumière Arts Festival 2026 // Metamorphosis

Lumière invites artists to explore transformations, growth, and renewal —across beings, identities, societies, and materials – through the lens of artistic expression. In the chrysalis phase, change is unseen, mysterious, and full of possibilities. Artists are invited to create/present works that examine shifts in personal identity, explore adaptation or environmental cycles and the transformation of objects and materials, highlighting not just beginnings or endings, but the unfolding of the process itself.

The Metamorphosis theme delves into the ongoing process of transformation from one life stage to another. Like renewal processes in nature, change unfolds in phases, some visible, and some hidden. How do we hold space for the unknown phases in between growth and reemergence? How do we honour the process of becoming?

In response to an ever changing world, the festival offers a space to reflect on how we adapt, change, and evolve. The festival is a space for collective transformation and activation of unconventional spaces into interactive and imaginative art installations.

Lumière asks: How does art mirror transformations? What guides us forward through unknown processes of becoming? In the glow of shared experience, we celebrate the beauty of metamorphosis, the mystery of the chrysalis, and the endless possibilities of becoming.

Land Acknowledgement

Lumière Arts Festival, on behalf of the board, the artists, and the communities we represent, acknowledges that we work, live and play in the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people, in Unama’ki Cape Breton, who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial.

We are grateful not only for the strong and ongoing stewardship of these lands we call home, but also for the stories, music, and art that Mi’kmaq people continue to create and share, carrying ancestral voices, sacred teachings, and legacies of interconnectedness and resilience forward into the present and on to the future.

We aspire to reflect that sense of connection between past and present in our festival. We are inspired by L’nu artists to foster connection and self-reflection in our work. We will work to ensure that art is accessible, inclusive, and integrated into public spaces so that we can share our collective stories, recognizing the challenges of our past and imagining brighter futures.

We are all Treaty people.