Summer plans

Posted on May 14, 2013 by john threlfall

It’s summer, which means the majority of our Fine Arts faculty have broken free of the classroom and are now engaging on their own creative research or practice. As always, here’s a quick roundup of what various faculty members are getting up to this summer.

Lewis Hammond & Monteverdi

Come August, new School of Music director Susan Lewis Hammond will be researching Claudio Monteverdi and music of the baroque period at the University of Toronto. Her travel is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant and the results will appear in two forthcoming books from Routledge Press: Claudio Monteverdi: A Research and Information Guide and Music of the Baroque: History, Culture, Performance.

Over in History in Art, the husband-and-wife research team of Marcus Milwright and Eva Baboula will be tackling the last phase of their SSHRC-funded fieldwork in Greece, continuing their search for Ottoman-period buildings and hydraulic engineering in the Peloponnese. Milwright also plans to spend some time in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart working on the Egyptian puppets in their collection. However, his main task for the summer—and forthcoming study leave—will be to complete a book on the seventh-century mosaic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Busy digital media technician and filmmaker Dan Hogg is heading off to the Cannes Film Festival in May with his new short film Floodplain—and you can watch the trailer here. Created in association with equally busy filmmaker, Writing grad and returning Cannes guest Jeremy Lutter (whose Joanna Makes A Friend was at Cannes last year) and based on a story by Writing grad and current Can-lit star D.W. Wilson, Floodplain has been invited by Telefilm Canada as part of their annual Not Short on Talent short film program. Check out this short interview with Hogg, written by fellow Writing grad Will Johnson on his dandy Literary Goon blog. Floodplain stars Victoria-based actor Cameron Bright (Twilight, X-Men 3) and Sarah Desjardins. But as if that’s not enough, Hogg is also currently writing Rip My Heart Out, a tongue-in-cheek creature feature for Movie Central.

Writing professor David Leach will be working “with six or so students” to produce issue #2 of their well-received Concrete Garden urban agriculture magazine—which will also feature a bigger print run—and will shortly be launching the Campus Confidential anthology. And, muse willing, he’ll be finishing up his second book, which currently has three working titles: Look Back to Galilee, The Shouting Fence, or Who Killed the Kibbutz? On the international front, Leach will also be giving a paper and workshop on sustainable suburban design at the International Communal Studies Association conference being held at the spectacular Findhorn Ecovillage in northern Scotland. (Keep a sharp eye open for the fairies!)

The always busy performer and head of Voice for the School of Music, Benjamin Butterfield, has a full lineup of international activities this summer, including performing at the Aldeburgh Connection as part of Toronto’s Britten Festival, singing with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem at the Bach Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, participating at the local Friends of Mengo Hospital Africa Benefit in May, and appearing with the American Classical Orchestra at New York City’s Lincoln Center for a concert of Mozart and Rossini Arias/ Duets. Butterfield will also be part of the Summer Vocal Programs faculty at the Opera on the Avalon in Newfoundland, Opera Nuova in Edmonton, the Vancouver International Song Institute and the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy.

Music instructor Anita Bonkowski will be on tour performing in Western Europe throughout June, before she returns in July to teach her summer film music course Let’s Go To the Movies. She’ll also be performing at both Butchart Gardens (July 13 and August 7) and Filberg Festival in Comox (August long weekend). All this in addition to her regular weekly gigs and more summer performances with various groups and ensembles.

History in Art professor Erin Campbell is also currently on study leave, finishing up her book on “Old Women and Art in the Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior.” (There is absolutely no truth to the rumour we just started that Meryl Streep will be starring in the book’s film adaptation.) She’ll also be heading to Bologna, Italy, for a few weeks in June to do some research and reconnect with the art. Send us a postcard!

Theatre instructor Leslie Bland is finishing the editing of his all-female comedy series She Kills Me for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and is in the process of putting together the financing for his feature-length documentary Gone South: How Canada Invented Hollywood, created in association with writer Ian Ferguson. Also on Bland’s summer to-do list is attending the Banff World Media Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and working a number of writing projects.

Busy new Writing professor Kevin Kerr is heading into a new production with his always groundbreaking Vancouver-based theatre company, Electric Company. The new piece is called You Are Very Star and it’s being staged at Vancouver’s HR MacMillan Space Centre & Planetarium. “We’re billing it as a transmedia event that plays with the boundaries of where theatre begins,” explains Kerr, who conceived the project and is co-writing it. “Participants start their journey with the piece prior to performance in an online encounter. The play then continues through public and private exchanges with the audience through social media, and in performance the two-act structure takes the audience on a bit of time travel—back to 1968 and ahead to 2048—and in the middle invites them on a narrative scavenger hunt inside the space centre building.” If you’re in Vancouver, You Are Very Star June 12 – 29. Also stay tuned for a production of Kerr’s Governor-General’s Award-winning play Unity (1918) at Phoenix Theatre next season, which he will be directing himself.

In addition to helping her Writing 420 filmmaking class crowdsource the funds they need to complete their current project, ‘Til Death—directed by Connor Gaston—Writing professor and busy filmmaker Maureen Bradley will be making her own feature film. Bradley was recently announced as one of four winning teams for the National Screen Institute’s Features First initiative, and her project will be going in front of the camera this summer. Stay tuned for details!

Kirk McNally (centre) with his group The Krells (photo: Darren Stone, Times Colonist)

Finally, School of Music audio specialist and recording engineer Kirk McNally will be recording a CD project with adjunct faculty member Colin Tilney on harpsichord this summer. “This will be the fourth project that Colin and myself have collaborated on,” says McNally, who has previously recorded Preludes and Dances for a French Harpsichord, Fugue: Bach and his Forerunners, J.S. Bach: The French Suites and Froberger 1649. “I’m also working with Dave Broome and a student from the joint major program in music and computer science to realize an online ‘library’ of the school’s concert recordings—similar to the DIDO slide library. It will be a secure, streamable presence for the School’s recordings on the webpage.” (This project is a follow-up to the Fall 2012 class Special Studies: Project in Digital Media Storage & Dissemination.)

Anne Heinl now officially excellent

Posted on April 23, 2013 by john threlfall

With her ready smile, sympathetic ear and vast storehouse of campus knowledge, Anne Heinl may be the most important person a Fine Arts student ever meets. Now, the veteran undergraduate advising officer has been honoured with the Award for Excellence in Service, presented by UVic president David Turpin at 2013’s Distinguished Service Awards.

Award for Excellence in Service winner Anne Heinl (UVic Photo Services)

“I’m very honoured that I received this award,” says Heinl. “I’d like to thank the people who put my name forward and wrote the reference letters: the Dean’s Office, especially Samantha Knudson and Lynne Van Luven, the faculty and staff who wrote letters of support—they did a lot of work and that’s the only reason my application was looked at and approved.”

“But it’s not just me—there’s also all the people I work with,” she continues. “I’m doing a good job because I have a great team: Maureen and Beth in Records, the people in Admissions, Norm Thom, each of the Fine Arts department secretaries . . . I kind of feel embarrassed about the award being just for me. Everybody works hard; I don’t see myself as special.”

Heinl, who has worked at UVic for 22 years, had been in Earth and Ocean Sciences for two years when she was hired as secretary to then-Dean of Fine Arts Tony Welch. “Advising students just started as a side thing off my desk back then,” she recalls, noting that each department had their own undergrad advisor. It was a later Dean, Giles Hogya, who created her position.

Heinl started out working with 750 students; she now deals with about 1,500 and sees everyone “at least once . . . but some I see every month. It’s important for students to know that they can come and talk to me anytime; the door is always open for what they want to do, what they want to change.” And given her role, it seems inevitable that she would form lasting connections. “I have a whole batch of letters and cards from parents and students,” she chuckles. “Because you’re not just helping them with their academic life, you’re also helping them find what they need on campus: counseling, a letter for a job . . . I’m even starting to see the kids of parents who were students. A mother just emailed me the other day saying that her son is coming to UVic—and I was her advisor!”

Sometimes Anne takes the idea of serving students literally!

In addition to her advising duties, Heinl also works with policy and curriculum committees, recruiters, transfer credits, appeals and the Senate Committee on Re-registration and Transfer—all of which is what makes her so valuable, says Acting Dean Lynne Van Luven. “She is truly a repository of knowledge about process, history and especially curriculum. One is never afraid to ask her a question—nor to seek her advice in a complicated matter involving student grades or academic concessions. Her support is immediate and unstinting.”

Heinl’s biggest reward? Helping out with the robing ceremony for graduating students each year. “It gives me great pride to see that—they’ve done it, they’ve accomplished it, they’re off to bigger and better things,” she says. “I love having them leave satisfied, with smiles, feeling they can conquer anything. Or having students come back and say ‘You really helped me through my degree, I couldn’t have done it without you’—which they could have, of course, but it’s great to feel you’ve made a difference in someone’s path.”

Heinl says she learned this commitment to students from her days working with Tony Welch and the late Jean Shannon. “Tony was the one who expected the Dean’s secretary to be compassionate and be there for students, to advocate for students. Tony was really in tune with student needs, and knew that’s why we’re here. And Jean’s influence was where that attitude really started for me—that told me why we were here, why we’re doing it. She was the one who really encouraged me. Without them, there is no university.”

Heinl still sees this “students first” mandate as being the key to the overall university experience. “We should all be open and receptive and helpful,” she says. “As soon as a student comes in with a problem, we have to stick with it until it’s solved; it’s really important to not say, ‘Sorry, that’s not my job’ or ‘I’m busy’. We should be here for the students all the time. We need to make sure they have a good experience and their education is what they expect, and what they should have.”

All of which explains why she feels more like a team captain than the star quarterback. “It’s never just one person who makes things so good,” Heinl insists.

But it can be one person who makes all the difference in a student’s life.

Summer art courses

Posted on April 17, 2013 by john threlfall

Looking to broaden your visual horizon? Check out these summer courses offered by the departments of Visual Arts and History in Art.

Detail of Sara Graham’s “StreetFinder: Halifax” (2012, Photograph mounted on dibond)

Reconfiguring the City (Art 351) — Tired of seeing the city in the same old way? This course will reposition the city as a place, as a space and as an idea for artistic experimentation, intervention and critique. In addition to introducing current dialogues about urban space and the interrelationships between art and the city and between public and private realms, students will conceive assignments focusing on interdisciplinary artistic approaches to social mapping, site specificity and the creation of real or imagined strategies for artistic interventions. This project-based class is open for students to explore in any medium and it should be regarded as a means for extending independent research and studio practices into considerations of the urban context of contemporary art.

If that sounds daunting, however, keep in mind that the groundbreaking and super-cool Arcade Fire video The Wildness Downtown influenced the development of the first assignment and is required viewing for this course.

Reconfiguring the City runs daily 9:30am – 2:50pm June 12 – July 5

Art 351 is taught by Sara Graham, who has been primarily concerned with the issues and ideas of the contemporary city. Mapping has long been a central tenet of her artistic practice, and over the past several years she has created a series of diagramatic drawings and sculptural models that describe and represent urban networks, traversing that liminal space between the real and the imagined. “I’m really excited to experience Victoria through the eyes of my students,” she says.

King Tut’s burial mask

Meanwhile, over in History in Art, check out the Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt: New Kingdom and Late Period (HA 355B). This course provides an introduction to the material culture of Egypt, focusing on the late 18th dynasty—which includes, but is not limited to, the reigns of Amehotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Monuments and art objects will be considered in their historical and social contexts, and some emphasis will be placed upon archaeological procedures in terms of the rediscovery and conservation of specific sites/artifacts.

Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt runs daily 10:30am – 12:20pm June 12 – July 5.

HA 355B is taught by Dennine Dudley, who believes in tracing threads through time. She is also interested in history from the big bang through to tomorrow, and her current focus is mainly on early modern visual culture. She’s also a textile arts and technology aficionado.

England’s Stonehenge

But if architecture is more your thing, check out Architecture: The Sacred and the Mythical (HA 392 A03). From the beginning, certain natural formations—mountains, caves, springs, and so on—were thought to be the earthly dwelling-places of the Divine. Typically, temples were built on these sites at an early date, and in many cases those first temples have been replaced by buildings that are still standing (some in a ruinous state). From these, in turn, most modern sacred architecture—and much that we think of as secular— has developed.

Vienna’s Church of the Most Holy Trinity

This course will reflect on the anthropological and theological phenomenon of sacred space and sacred architecture, and on case studies drawn mainly (but not solely) from the history of Euro-American architecture. In the “secular” modern age, from which the sacred has supposedly vanished, this is a highly complicated question, with, instead, temples to national heroes and warrior-martyrs; gallery and museum “shrines” to house talismans of history, art, and culture; and even the veneration of hero-architects—Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind. These phenomena, too, will be acknowledged.

Architecture: The Sacred and the Mythical runs daily 12:30 – 2:30 pm, June 12 – July 5.

HA 392 is taught by Christopher Thomas, whose area of specialty is Modern architectural history, 1750 to the present, with an emphasis on Western architectural history, Canadian art and architectural history, art and architecture of the United States, and sacred architecture and its meaning.

Luminary Limner exhibit online

Posted on April 4, 2013 by john threlfall

Andy Warhol called him the “master of instant retrospectives.” Now anyone can view the works of Karl Spreitz as part of a new online virtual exhibition launched by UVic Art Collections.

Myfanwy Pavelic in her studio

The collection covers more than three decades and consists of over 100 reels of 16 mm film. It includes everything from a scene of Limner artist Myfanwy Pavelic talking to her friend Katherine Hepburn on the phone to the totems at Skunggwai (Anthony Island) in Haida Gwaii.

“Karl Spreitz is a compelling character—both for his larger-than-life personality and his accomplishments in film, photography and the arts,” explains Caroline Riedel of UVic Art Collections. “He was a pioneer and mentor in documentary and experimental film-making in BC as well as one of the founding members of the Limners Society, an art group that virtually defined the modern art scene here in the 1970s.”

It’s a unique project given that museums tend to digitize images of objects, not film, says Riedel, who curated the exhibit with technical support from UVic’s Fine Arts Studios for Integrated Media and some much-needed student assistance. ”This project wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of Fine Arts graduate intern Dorothy June Fraser in History in Art, and former grad intern Kim Reinhardt, as well as co-op students Alex King and Margaret Weller,” says Riedel. The project was partially funded by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC.

Spreitz, who was born in Austria in 1927 and immigrated to Canada in 1952, did not follow a linear career trajectory. In 1944, he fled across Germany on a stolen bicycle and ended up after the war holding a 16 mm movie camera to film European track and field events while serving as an Olympic coach. In 1959, he moved to Victoria where his distinctive filmic and photography style began to flourish, as a staff photographer for Beautiful British Columbia magazine in the late 1960s and especially at the height of the “underground” film movement of the 1970s.

Macauley Point outfall pipe construction, 1968-70

The online collection offers a fascinating mix of footage, from scenes with local artists to archival images of the infamous 1896 Point Ellice Bridge disaster (which utilizes the “Ken Burns effect” of having the camera move along still photographs long before Burns was making his documentaries) and the construction of the Macauley Point sewage outfall—sure to be of interest in these times of heated sewage debates.

The legacy of Michael Williams explored in new Legacy exhibit

Posted on March 12, 2013 by john threlfall

Talking about art takes on a whole new meaning with the opening of Creating [Con] text, the latest exhibit at the Legacy Gallery.

“Biomorphic” by Jack Shadbolt (1988)

Creating [Con] text activates works of art in in UVic’s Michael Williams Bequest Collection through the oral history research of Dr. Carolyn Butler Palmer and her graduate students. Over the course of a number of years, Butler Palmer—an assistant professor in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest for the History in Art department—and her students have gathered an extensive array of interviews with people associated with the late downtown businessman and art supporter Michael Collard Williams and the artists he collected.

“Untitled; Four Figures” by Angela Grossman (1984)

Featuring paintings by Angela Grossman, Jack Shadbolt and Emily Carr—all eminent British Columbia painters whose careers span more than a century into the present day—Creating [Con] text allows the stories of artists, dealers, collectors, and viewers to infuse the works of art with more deeply understood meaning.

“Oral histories provide dynamic primary source materials that describe a history not found in textbooks,” says Butler Palmer, UVic’s Williams Legacy Chair. “These interviews give us new ways of interpreting the past and shed light for viewers on the relationships and influences that a single scholarly interpretation may not provide.”

Drawing upon recorded excerpts from the Oral History project, the exhibition commemorates the life of Michael Williams and his passion for art. It also illuminates the connections between the BC artists in the exhibition—artists who share many links despite the generation gaps between them. Finally it provides meaningful access to the stories around the art, preserving them for future generations.

Creating [Con] text runs from March 13 to June 15, 2013, at The Legacy Gallery, 630 Yates (corner of Broad and Yates). Free and open to the public Wednesday–Saturday, 10 am-4 pm.

Fine Arts at IdeaFest

Posted on February 25, 2013 by john threlfall

IdeaFest is coming up soon at UVic and Fine Arts is all over the programming this year!

With more than 50 ideas worth exploring, UVic’s second annual IdeaFest looks pretty exciting. Running March 4-15 in every corner of campus, this free festival connects you to experts working on the kind of ideas that really can change everything—whether you’re a rocket scientist, artist, gamer, zombie fan or something else entirely.

New and emerging research will be brought to life in panels, workshops, exhibits, lectures, performances, film screenings and tours. Ideas up for discussion run the gamut of political upheaval, creativity, heart health, Canada’s north, urban planning, big data, #IdleNoMore and whether or not English should emerge as a global language—just to name a handful.

Take a few minutes to browse through the full program on the IdeaFest 2013 website— the hardest part will be deciding which idea to start with!

Here’s a quick breakdown of what Fine Arts has on tap:

• Enacting the Artist / Researcher / Educator: Six UVic applied theatre graduate students engaged in a theatre-based PhD research project will discuss utilizing playbuilding as qualitative research, as well as a variety of theatre conventions as a way to generate, interpret and (re)present data. The result is a devised play about enacting the artist/researcher/educator with a post-show dialogue. 2-4pm Monday, March 4, in room 109 of the Fine Arts building.

• Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards: Celebrate some of the outstanding research produced by the 2012 Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards scholars at this day-long presentation of their work. Here’s a list of who’s representing Fine Arts, but you can read abstracts of their research here: Sara Fruchtman, Alexandra Macdonald and Christine Oldridge (History in Art), Stewart Gibbs, Sarah Johnson and Jennifer Taylor (Theatre), Bronwyn McMillin and Willie Seo (Visual Arts), Claire Garneau and Liz Snell (Writing). The JCURA runs 11am-3pm Wednesday, March 6, in the SUB’s Cinecenta, Upper Lounge and Michele Pujol room.

• Mini Film Fest: Join some of the Department of Writing’s emerging filmmakers for a screening and discussion of several recent, award-winning student films—including the Leo Award-winning web series Freshman’s Wharf, and Connor Gaston’s recent TIFF and VFF-screened short, Bardo Light. 7:30 pm Thursday, March 7, in room 162 of the Visual Arts building.

• Sonic Lab: Join UVic’s contemporary music ensemble as they present two compositions that explore the sound itself as musical material. Imagine a brick wall with a human figure painted on it, which can be taken apart & rebuilt as a fence or a house—meaning the parts of painted body would show up in an unexpected context. The same happens here, where usual & unusual sounds will be taken apart and put together in a new context. 8pm Friday, March 8, in the Phillip T Young Recital Hall.

• “Have you ever had an idea?” Get in on this interactive, community-involving project aimed at enabling ideas to be more accessible and more attainable. Participants become part of Victoria’s biggest idea—a giant run-on sentence created by texting, calling or e-mailing in their ideas. It all culiminates in an installation with video & audio components of real-time projection, discussions, idea-counseling, etc. 7-10pm Friday, March 8, in room A111 of the Visual Arts building.

• “Games Without Frontiers: The Social Power of Video Games”: Join professors, grad students, undergraduates, high-school students, local game designers and curious citizens of Victoria at this mini-conference to explore, discuss and marvel at the power of video-game technology to bring people together and improve the world. Faculty and students will give demonstrations and offer a Q&A about the innovative use of “gamification” techniques in their research, including games that help to improve the lives of children with autism, teach about First Nations treaties, combat obesity and explore the ocean floor, among others.

Don’t miss the Minecraft documentary

Other events will include demonstrations of new games by students and local designers, a “journalism game jam” to apply game tools to improve public-service reporting, various competitions and panels of local experts to debate the power, the pitfalls and the future of game design. The UVic student music ensemble Flipside will also be performing a selection of video game soundtracks (1:30-3pm), and Cinecenta will be hosting a screening of the documentary Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, a look behind the scenes of the popular online game, with an Orion-sponsored talk and Q&A with the Portland-based filmmakers from 2 Player Productions to follow—that’s at 7:15 pm Friday, March 8, at Cinecenta. Games without Frontiers runs 11:30am-6pm Saturday, March 9, in the David Strong building.

• “Is There Still Potential for Human Creativity?” A good question, and one which promises a lively back and forth at this Fine Arts discussion panel featuring Jennifer Stillwell (Visual Arts), George Tzanetakis (Computer Science-Music), Lee Henderson (Writing), Victoria Wyatt (History in Art), Jonathan Goldman (Music). Moderated by the Times Colonist‘s Dave Obee. 7:30pm Monday, March 11, in B150 of the Bob Wright Centre.

• Fine Arts PechaKucha: Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled.

• Intergenerational Theatre for Development in India: After being displaced by the 2006 tsunami, a new community in India is using Applied Theatre to reconnect its citizens. The creation of an intergenerational theatre company to perform the stories of seniors and rural youth of the Tamilnadu community has the potential to create lines of dialogue across generations by positively highlighting the life experiences of residents of Tamaraikulam Elders’ Village and students of the Isha Vidhya Matriculation School. Theatre PhD student Matthew Gusul recently visited India and will tell the story of this developing project. 4:45pm Thursday, March 14, in the Phoenix Theatre’s McIntyre Studio.

HIA Christmas Quiz winners

Posted on February 12, 2013 by john threlfall

Name the artists, figure out the clue

Think back, way back, before the beginning of the current semester. (I know, it seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?) Just before the Christmas break, the History in Art department launched their challenging Christmas Quiz—a visual puzzle that was equal parts art knowledge and brain teaser.

Now, the winners have been announced. Congratulations go out to overall winner Emerald Johnstone-Bedell, who won the main prize of a drum painted by Jason Bill, plus runners-up Terry Rodgers and Atri Hatef, both of whom received gift vouchers to the university bookshop.

“It was quite a challenge but I got most of the answers right,” says Johnstone-Bedell, a fourth-year History in Art student who won a beautiful drum, hand-painted by artist Jason Bill. “I like word puzzles.”

Christmas quiz winners Atri Hatef (left) and Emerald Johnstone-Bedell

While she was familiar with some of the art, Johnstone-Bedell says she could “generally assume what style/culture/time it belonged to” when she didn’t know it. And while she didn’t always need all the clues to solve the word puzzles, she did search the Fine Arts image database in DIDO when she did need some assistance. What about next year’s quiz? “If I do my Master’s at UVic, I would probably do it for fun next year, but someone else should get a chance to win a cool prize,” she says.

Runners-up Hatef and Rodgers are also HIA students, each of whom won gift vouchers to the UVic Bookstore. Hatef is a first-year Master’s student and Rodgers is in the Honours BA program, hoping for acceptance into the Master’s this September. “I answered seven questions out of the eight,” says Hatef, who found it “really challenging.” (No kidding!) She says she knew some of the images, but looked to both the library and the internet for others. “It was really funny and exciting.”

Quiz master Marcus Millwright with runner-up Terry Rodgers

Rodgers pulled six out of eight correct answers and says she was “thrilled to win as runner-up!” When asked if it was a challenge, Rodgers agreed it was. “I had some answers right away within each question, but often had to really search for the complete answer.”

She also used DIDO, as well as other popular online sites like ARTstor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the website for London’s National Gallery. Rodgers is also keen to try again next year. “Absolutely!!” she says. “It was great fun and I was determined to finish as much as I could. Next year I’ll start earlier!”

For complete answers to the quiz, please click here.

Ready for a Christmas Quiz?

Posted on December 10, 2012 by john threlfall

There’s nothing like the winter holidays for doing quizzes, and this year History in Art has created their own Christmas Quiz for your enjoyment. Nope, it’s not a compilation of famous Santas or name-the-actor-playing Scrooge, but something far more ambitious and department-appropriate.

Name the artists, figure out the clue:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Featuring eight challenging image collages, each made up of slices of famous pieces of art, the goal of the quiz isn’t simply to name the art but to construct a word (Hangman-style) made up of letters from each image. Could be the name of the artist, could be the title of the painting, could be the subject of the work—it’s up to you to break the code and figure out the words.

For example, the word accompanying this image on the right has seven letters, which you can decipher by identifying 1) the given name of the artist of the top left image, 2) the family name of the top right artist, 3) the family name of the bottom left artist, and 4) the second name of the photographer who took the bottom right image. Get it?

Once you’ve made your guesses, just put the eight complete words—or as many as you’ve been able to complete—on a postcard along with your name and contact email, then drop it at the History in Art office in the Fine Arts building by January 7, 2013.

This quiz is open to all UVic students and yes, you may compete as teams! Winners will be announced on January 14, and the top prize is a hand-painted leather drum. (But there will be other prizes for runners-up.) The Christmas Quiz is available as a downloadable PDF on either the Fine Arts homepage or the History in Art homepage.

Good luck!

Defending a fine arts education

Posted on November 21, 2012 by john threlfall

We hear it all the time from struggling students and concerned parents alike—what are the job prospects for anyone with a degree in Fine Arts? And while those of us in the field can argue the benefits till we’re cerulean in the face, it’s always nice to hear an outside opinion singing the praises of fine arts.

Fine Arts education proponent Dr. Barbara Falk

Consider the following story that appeared on The Mark, an independent news site whose contributors include “Nobel laureates, heads of state, best-selling authors, business leaders, artists, academics and more.” In Defence of a Fine Arts Education is written by Dr. Barbara J. Falk, an associate professor at the Canadian Forces College, who specializes not in the fine arts but in political philosophy, dissent, Cold War history, war and terrorism, contemporary public policy and debates regarding globalization and global governance.

“What if there is a place in universities today where students are simultaneously acquiring job-related skills, challenged to be entrepreneurial and creative at times of high unemployment and engaging in the ideal process of human development described above?” Dr. Mark asks rhetorically. “It is happening. In the Fine Arts.”

After summarizing the usual post-secondary complaints—high cost, diminishing job prospects, too many graduates—and the standard defences (intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, challenging the status quo), Dr. Falk points out what so many of us already know: how challenging a fine arts education can actually be.

“Getting into Fine Arts programs is often considerably more difficult than general admissions into the arts and sciences,” she writes. “Portfolios and auditions are required, and our supposedly over-coddled millennial kids who reputedly want a trophy for just showing up get dished out plenty of criticism and rejection out of the starting gate. And talent is not a replacement for good grades or a tough work ethic. At York University in Toronto, the students accepted into the Theatre program outpace the business students with the highest average entry grades.”

Visiting professor Michael Nicol Yahgulannas critiques student art

“Fine Arts students—whether in Theatre or Music, Creative Writing or Visual Art—learn early on that they had better cope constructively with intense and often very public criticism, or they are not going to survive. They have to learn how to respond quickly and offer feedback to their peers—tactfully and not boorishly.

“They learn to work together in pressure-cooker situations, multi-task, and project manage—as much if not more so than in business schools, because the results are real and not imaginary. In Theatre and Music especially, students must be enormously respectful of deadlines that are not amenable to ‘the dog ate my homework’ kinds of excuses. If you’re stage managing or acting in a production, being late is not an option. An orchestra cannot begin a concert without its members present. And the variety and type of written assignments—either in traditional essay or more creative format—on top of all the audition, rehearsal, performance and skills development activity—directly contradicts the reigning campus stereotype of the BFA as the Bachelor of F—K All.”

Now, Dr. Falk does admit that her own daughter is a Department of Theatre acting student right here in UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and her extensive bio does include one tangentially fine arts-related position—as the director of human resources at Sony Music Canada—but she’s hardly someone you would turn to as the first line of fine arts defence. But her points are incredibly valid.

Piano professor Arthur Rowe well knows talent alone often isn’t enough to guarantee success

“Students in the Fine Arts are prepared from day one that there are no automatic job guarantees once they graduate from university,” she writes. “They know they have to think entrepreneurially about their work, that it’s not demeaning to take other jobs while you hone your craft, and that you often have to work as a team and take risks to be successful. Because the arts are perpetually under siege, students are acutely aware that you had better learn to make your own opportunities in life, and when things don’t turn out, that you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going.

“Artists are also an inherently interdisciplinary bunch, learning—out of desire and necessity—to research and understand time periods, characters, conflicts, and methodologies, in order to complete their work. In a sense, they are part-time sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and historians. Ultimately, they are students of the human condition, and realize that learning is lifelong and does not stop at graduation day.

“Artistic examination of a subject is hardly arid, but meant to provoke, inspire, generate catharsis. In that respect, artistic endeavor is deeply community oriented, requiring a public and respecting an audience. Moreover, historically it’s those pesky artists who are often the most dangerously insightful, taking risks in creatively speaking truth to power, and suffering the political consequences. It’s no accident that artists are disproportionately overrepresented in dissident groups who often crazy enough to fight for and then successfully achieve some measure of societal change. We need artists to act as a mirror—to reflect back to us our shortcomings and failures—and demand that we deliver, and do better.

“Finally, Fine Arts programs combine the practical with the theoretical. The skills they learn—whether in marketing or the use of power tools—are transferable in ways not immediately evident in traditional university offerings. Of course not every student with a degree in Theatre is going to become an award-winning playwright, actor or director. But it bears worth mentioning that, during the financial meltdown in 2008-2009, the entertainment industry kept generating jobs while many at the bottom of the food chain, armed only with their Bachelor of Commerce degrees, were left pounding the pavement. And a large proportion of arts-related jobs—from the menial to the celebrity—are not easily amenable to outsourcing to export-processing zones overseas.”

Read the full article here.

History in Art in the news

Posted on October 19, 2012 by john threlfall

One notable aspect of UVic’s 50th Anniversary celebrations that’s getting some attention this month is the University Art Collection. With the exhibit The Collections at 50: Building the University of Victoria Art Collections running through to November 24 at the downtown Legacy Art Gallery, guest curator, former Maltwood Art Gallery director and retired History in Art professor Martin Segger hosted an illustrated talk on Wednesday, October 17 at the Legacy.

Retired History in Art professor Martin Segger speaks with Victoria College of Art director Peter Such at the UVAC retrospective

Current Collections curator Caroline Riedel was quoted in a recent Saanich News article about the exhibit. “One of the biggest challenges in representing 50 years of collecting was paring down the list to fit in the gallery,” Riedel says in the piece. “What began as a small group of works by Canadian and European artists has blossomed into a rich and varied teaching and research resource, thanks mainly to the generosity of individual donors.”

With approximately 27,000 pieces collected over more than 50 years, Collections at 50 includes a spectacular array of artwork and artifacts—from First Nations masks by Henry Hunt to works by Emily Carr, William Morris, Lawren Harris and Eric Metcalfe—to trace the development of the collection in tandem with the development of academic programs and research interests at the university.

Collections at 50 runs to November 24 at Legacy, and the gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm.

In other History in Art news, professor Allan Antliff has been invited to London, England for some speaking engagements. He’ll be at the University of London’s Goldsmiths College on October 26 as part of an “Anarchism Today” workshop, alongside the likes of Mohammed Bamyeh, Alexandre Christoyannaopoulos, David Graeber, Carissa Honeywell, Ruth Kinna, Carl Levy, Saul Newman, Chris Rossdale and Judith Suissa. The day-long workshop will explore the meaning and significance of anarchism today in the humanities and social sciences, as well its relevance to contemporary struggles and movements such as Occupy and the Arab Spring.

While on the far side of the Atlantic, Antliff will also be speaking to the Anarchism Research Group at Loughborough University, near Leeds, on October 31. The topic of that seminar is “Pacifist-Anarchism and the Arts”, and he’ll be joined by Kenneth Patchen, Jackson MacLow, John Cage and Donald Judd.

Antliff was also quoted in the Victoria News recently about Camas Books, of which he was a founding member—not that he’s let that go to his head. “I do a lot of grunt work,” Antliff told Black Press reporter Edward Hill. “I mop the floor and clean up. I leave the leadership to others. There are very talented people in the collective. I’m interested in art and social change. For me, it’s a good fit.”

Emerald at work in the Firefighters Museum

Meanwhile, in student news, History in Art Co-op student Emerald Johnstone-Bedell entered this video of her experience working at the Firefighters Museum of Calgary in the annual Co-operative Education and Career Services video contest. It’s an interesting look at how you can find history in art in just about any topic.

Finally, History in Art alumna Dianne Carr made the news recently in her role as guest curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s exhibit Back to the Land: Ceramics from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. Both the local Times Colonist and Focus Magazine wrote articles about Carr, who once owned the local studio The Potter’s Wheel and was the founding director of Vancouver’s Cartwright Street Gallery which became the Canadian Craft Museum.

From the October 2012 article about History in Art alum Dianne Carr

“There was a terrific growth in ceramic practice,” Carr told the TC. “And there’s been no history written about it . . . . People were looking for a simpler way of life and they were starting to do things like grow gardens and can—it was all about sustainability. And so along with those things went a resurgence in the crafts. People wanted to work with their hands and people wanted the products of people working with their hands.”

Local visual art writer John Luna interviewed Carr for the Focus article. “The pots exhibited here represent a short period in which there was a remarkable explosion of ceramics activity on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands,” she says in that piece. “It was a brief era in which the modernist and Anglo-Asian influences that prevailed were beginning to give way to the contemporary post-modern influences that would revitalize ceramic practice in this region.”

Back to the Land features works by 31 artists who created ceramics between 1970 and 1985. The exhibit runs through to February 3, 2013.

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UVic's Faculty of Fine Arts: Thinking with the right side of your brain

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