Faculty exhibit celebrates contemporary art

Posted on May 16, 2013 by john threlfall

It takes a unique artistic vision to guide the development of over 250 student artists, especially in the field of contemporary art. That guiding vision, as seen through the creative lens of seven distinct artists, will be on view at Now Art, a rare group exhibit by the Department of Visual Arts faculty.

Sculpture by Daniel Laskarin

Part of both Congress 2013 and UVic’s ongoing 50^th Anniversary celebrations, Now Art celebrates the work and wisdom of Vikky Alexander, Lynda Gammon, Daniel Laskarin, Sandra Meigs, Jennifer Stillwell, Paul Walde and Robert Youds. These faculty members exhibit world-wide and are among the top contemporary Canadian artists, with work represented at the National Gallery of Canada, commissions in Vancouver, Toronto and Winnipeg, and many pieces held in well-respected art collections around the globe.

“Red, 3011 Jackson” (detail), by Sandra Meigs

Now Art will feature sculpture, photography, painting and drawing, plus both sound works and light works. Highlights include a new series of photographs by Vikky Alexander, plus two large-scale panorama paintings by Sandra Meigs, featuring highly chromatic schematic depictions of architectural foundations. The department’s newest members, Paul Walde and Jennifer Stillwell, will also be creating new works specifically for this exhibit.

While a group exhibit by the current Visual Arts faculty may be a rare occurence, all of them have been busy with recent solo exhibitions and participation in other group shows. Department chair Daniel Laskarin, for example, had a career retrospective at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 2011 and Robert Youds had recent exhibits at both Deluge and Toronto’s Diaz Contemporary. Vikki Alexander‘s photographs were a highlight of the 2012 Nuit Blanche in Toronto, while Jennifer Stillwell was one of 13 artists invited to participate in the WAG’s Winnipeg Now exhibit, and is currently working on a new installation for her former hometown.

Lynda Gammon‘s work appeared at the 2012 collage exhibition Cut and Paste at Vancouver’s Equinox Project Space, alongside work by Alexander (who also had photographs at the recent _backspace exhibit). Sandra Meigs was on the jury for the 2012 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and collaborated with School of Music professor Christopher Butterfield on his Contes pour enfants pas sages concert in Toronto. And Paul Walde has been busy on all sorts of projects since joining the faculty in 2012, including some John Cage related field recordings, an exhibition at Museum London, a collaboration with the Royal BC Museum, and a glacier-based piece.

Visitors to Now Art will also have the opportunity to tour the Visual Arts building, as the exhibit will fill the various studios and the Audain Gallery.

Now Art runs June 1 to 8 in UVic’s Visual Arts building. Exhibit is open 10 am to 5 pm daily, with a public reception running 5 to 7pm on Wednesday, June 5.

Recent awards roundup

Posted on May 8, 2013 by john threlfall

History in Art professor Marcus Milwright‘s recent win of the 2013 Craigdarroch Silver Medal for Excellence in Research isn’t the only award-winning news in the Faculty of Fine Arts of late.

Lorna Crozier (Gary McInstry)

Recently retired long-time Writing professor Lorna Crozier—a multiple award-winning poet (including her own Craigdarroch award) and former chair of the Writing department—was just named the co-winner of the 2013 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. The award was established in 2003 to recognize B.C. writers who have contributed to the development of literary excellence in the province. Lieutenant Governor Judith Guicho presented the award to Crozier as part of the B.C. Book Prizes gala at Government House on May 4; she shares the award with young adult author Sarah Ellis.

As the jury noted, “The committee for the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence quickly agreed that among many strong candidates, two were outstanding—and, as quickly agreed, there were no grounds to choose between these two most deserving giants in their field. Both are prolific, both are recipients of numerous awards, both are passionate advocates for their literary genre and for Canadian writing, both are internationally recognized, both tirelessly mentor their literary children, and both bring the strength of oral tradition to their writing. … Both bring the highest honour to the Lieutentant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.”

That same event saw Bill Gaston—the current chair of the Writing department—win the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for his latest novel, The World. (Ironically, former student and Writing alumni Yasuko Thanh was also nominated in the same category as Gaston for her acclaimed short story collection, Floating Like The Dead.) Gaston was previously nominated for the Ethel Wilson Prize for his 2006 short story collection Gargoyles, which earned him a nomination for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. (Hmm, could a 2013 GG nom be in the cards for The World?)

And in other Yasuko Thanh news, Floating Like the Dead has also been named one of five finalists (out of 29 submissions) in the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Now in its 16th year, the $10,000 Danuta Gleed is administered by the Writers’ Union of Canada and recognizes the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author. This year’s jury includes authors Alexander MacLeod, Carol Malyon and our own Bill Gaston.

Mark Reid with Shania Twain (Photo: AEG Live)

Meanwhile, over in the School of Music, alumnus Mark Reid has been named Teacher of the Year by MusiCounts, the music-education charity associated with the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). The award, one of the highest honors in Canadian Music, was presented to Reid by country music superstar Shania Twain at a private ceremony in Las Vegas. Reid also received $10,000, which he will put toward his post-graduate studies; he is currently pursuing a master’s degree from Chicago’s Vandercook College to add to his Bachelor’s degree in music education from UVic. Reid has been teaching at Vancouver Technical Secondary School for the past seven years, and those students will receive an additional $10,000 in instrument inventory as part of the CARAS award.

In other Music news, the Canadian University Music Society (CUMS) announced that recent UVic Master’s graduate, Robert Hansler, is one of the recipients of their 2013 Student Composer Competition. He has worked primarily with Dániel Péter Biró and John Celona in the pursuit of his Master’s degree in composition. The jury selected his “Broken Branch” as one of two outstanding pieces to share first prize; both pieces will be performed by School of Music faculty members as part of a concert of contemporary music to be presented on Friday, June 7 at the Phillip T. Young Recital Hall.

And fourth-year School of Music student Lynne Penhale recently had the opportunity to attend the 19th Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. The meeting, chaired by iconic Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, offers a select group of 14 emerging composers from around the world the opportunity to exchange ideas about contemporary music. “It was the most enriching experience of my life!” says Panhale. “I learned more about society, myself and music in an experience which seemed to have lasted three weeks but was really only one.” Each composer came prepared with a three-minute piece composed for the 23-instrument ensemble-in-residence, Orkest de Ereprijs. Participants engaged in rehearsals, lectures, and lessons with composers Martijn Padding, Richard Ayers, Dmitri Kourliandski, Carola Bauckholt, and Ted Hearne. “As intense a learning experience this was . . . my favourite learning experience was getting to engage with the other young composers, and being completely inspired and challenged by everyone’s individual strengths they had brought with them,” says Penhale, who thanks UVic’s School of Music for supporting her in this opportunity.

In other student award news, recent Visual Arts BFA graduate Bronwyn McMillin received the 2013 Royal Canadian Academy of Arts C.D. Howe Scholarship for Art and Design as part of the BFA graduation exhibit Work. The Howe Scholarship is awarded annually to allow the recipient the opportunity “to pursue further formal study in a discipline represented by the RCA membership. These opportunities in Canada or elsewhere should enable recipients to develop further their studio practices while gaining a deeper understanding of the historical precedents and contemporary issues relevant to their discipline.”

Fellow BFA graduates Carson Wronko, Emma Palm and Won Seok Seo also received the Visual Arts Achievement Award, funded by the office of the VP Academic and Provost, Dr. Reeta Tremblay. And busy Writing MFA student Connor Gaston has been nominated for a Leo Award in the “Best Student Film” category for his TIFF & VFF screened short film, Bardo Light.

CNA winners Bhandar & Annand

Two other Writing students—Lukas Bhandar and Vanessa Annand—were both named winners of the 2013 Community Journalism Scholarships, courtesy of the Community Newspapers Association. Also among the winners at the recent BCYCNA Ma Murray Community Newspaper Awards were Writing alumni Nathalie North of the Saanich News (First Place, Arts & Culture Award) and Monday Magazine‘s Danielle Pope (First Place, Business Writing Award; Second Place, Environmental Writing Award).

Finally, current Writing student Vin Fielding has been awarded honourable mention in the short fiction category of The Fiddlehead‘s annual literary contest. His story, “All Bones Recovered,” appears in their current issue. It was originally workshopped in Writing instructor Matthew Hooton’s class, and Hooton describes it as “gorgeous writing, and one of the most arresting opening scenes I’ve encountered. I still think about it nine months after first reading it.”

Congratulations to all!

—With files from Kristy Farkas

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.

Annual BFA Visual Arts exhibit

Posted on April 16, 2013 by john threlfall

Ania Zientara’s “Every Action has a Reaction”

Hoping to catch a glimpse of tomorrow’s visual artists today? Look no further than the annual Bachelor of Fine Arts graduating exhibit in UVic’s Department of Visual Arts!

This year’s exhibit—aptly titled Work—will fill the Visual Arts building with work by more than 30 student artists.

Work features a wide variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, installation and extended media works.

Willie Seo with his paper man (photo: Adrian Lam, Times Colonist)

“It is a true celebration of this moment in contemporary art and shows great promise for the future of visual art,” says faculty curator Sandra Meigs.

There was a good deal of media interest in the show. The local Newsgroup papers sent a photographer up to capture the installation, and the Times Colonist ran a photo and story about graduating BFA artist Willie Seo and his life-size human sculpture made out of layers of newspaper.

“It was a really time-consuming project,” Seo told TC writer Katherine Dedyna, who noted that “the enormity of the undertaking stressed him [Seo] out.” (Interesting side-note: Seo’s sculpture has a new home in the office of the Dean of Fine Arts, where it now looms over Dean’s Assistant Ami Cheli.)

Emma Palm on Shaw TV

Shaw TV also came up to film a segment for their Go! Island South show. Shaw host Nikki Ewanishan spoke with graduating BFA student Emma Palm about her pieces in the show, which were inspired by her brother’s recent suicide. You can watch that segment here.

And finally, the Victoria News ran this online photo and brief blurb, highlighting BFA student Marty McRae in the process of hanging his sculpture, “Primary V.”

Annah van Eeghen’s “The Red String of Fate”

Seen here are just a few of the pieces you’ll see in this show. Be sure to check it out—it’s one of the most-anticipated campus art exhibits of the year!

Work opens at 7 pm Friday, April 19 in UVic’s Visual Arts building. Visitors are welcome noon to 8pm Monday to Friday, and 10am to 6pm Saturday, April 27. Please click here for parking information and campus maps.

Bronwyn McMillin’s “Go back, come back”

“Untitled”, by Mia Watkins

MFA Visual Arts show: 4 exhibits in 1

Posted on April 16, 2013 by john threlfall

The Department Of Visual Arts is pleased to present four solo exhibitions under the banner of 2013′s MFA Graduate Exhibition. This year’s exhibitions feature the works of four Masters of Fine Arts graduates: Hilary Knutson, Chris Lindsay, Yang Liu, and Paola Savasta.

Hilary Knutson’s current installation (photo: Adrian Lam, Times Colonist)

Hilary Knutson’s Au Secours is an installation work that uses elements of domesticity and its comforts as a foil to explore aspects of her own struggles with chronic pain. Often displaying a keen sense of humour, Knutson’s work invites us into her living room/ studio where artworks, set dressing and props conflate into an unsettling environment where the couch is central, offering the viewer a forced sense of comfort. As the artist herself states, “My world revolves around the couch; the couch at home, the couch in the studio, and various couches in various waiting rooms. One must be comfy when one is in pain.”

Knutson’s work also caught the eye of local Times Colonist writer Amy Smart, who featured her in the article “An Art Installation with the Comforts of Home.” “I think pain is incredibly hard to talk about,” Knutson told Smart in the May 3 article. “It’s something as a society that we tend to sweep under the rug.”

A former microbiologist, Chris Lindsay’s research has now turned to what he describes as exploring “the nature of experience and imagination. Through my work, fundamental questions become reified and I propose a challenge wherein the viewer may consider his or her own perception of what it is to be human.” Inside the Outside, is an iteration of Lindsay’s tireless sculptural experimentation in the studio. For Lindsay perception and imagination are two sides of the same proposition, stimulate one and you ignite the other. As Lindsay suggests, “What we know and understand of our physical world is gained through our senses; this is how we have come to define who and what we believe we are in the universe.”

The photo works in Yang Liu’s All the Things You Left Behind are based on his observations and experience as a recent immigrant to Canada from China. “My artworks explore the relationship of identity, memory, personality and a materialized social structure while representing loneliness, fear, and the inherent uncertainty of life.”

Lui’s work is often based on constructions designed by the artist which in turn are made of photographic images by the artist. Through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction Yang produces works that effectively conveys the psychological content of his experiences in a way that is accessible to audiences here.

Paola Savasta’s exhibition The Heir, is actually two shows in one. In two separate rooms Savasta presents two distinct bodies of work. The work in both rooms explore ideas of depiction and display through modes of painting, sculpture and installation. Illusionistic effects including patterning, camouflage, and false shadows confound our immediate perception of Savasta’s unique objects and their place in space. These effects activate the spectator’s experience, as the artist confounds our ability to decode the true shape and nature of the objects she has presented. As Savasta states, “I’m proposing a state of intermediacy, where the two-dimensional and three-dimensional borrow each other’s qualities.”

The University of Victoria Masters of Fine Arts Program is an intensive studio-based research degree, predicated on immersive experiential learning combined with critical discussions and one of Canada’s leading visiting artist programs.

The MFA Graduate Exhibit opens at 7pm Friday May 3 and runs to May 11. The exhibit is open 10am to 5pm weekedays, and 1-5pm weekends.

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.

Update on Visiting Artists

Posted on January 15, 2013 by john threlfall

A wee sampling of Collier’s current exhibit

If you missed Allan Collier‘s public talk last week—the first visitor of 2013 in the long-running Department of Visual Arts Visiting Artist series—don’t worry: you can still catch his great exhibit of post-WWII Canadian design in the Visual Arts building’s Audain Gallery through to January 25. Collier has curated several exhibitions on the topic in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Victoria, with the most recent local exhibit being the AGGV’s 2011 The Modern Eye: Craft and Design in Canada 1940-1960. Collier will also be spending some time each day sitting his exhibition, so be sure to drop by the Audain Gallery and say hello. Bet you see something that was in your house when you were growing up!

An installation by Ed Pien

This week’s Visiting Artist is Ed Pien. Born in Taiwan, the now Toronto-based artist Pien has been drawing for nearly 30 years, and has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has taught at ECAD, NSCAD and OCAD, and is currently teaching at the University of Toronto. Pien is in town as part of the AGGV’s January exhibit, Traces: Fantasy Worlds and Tales of Truth. Catch him at 8pm Wednesday, January 16, in room A162 of the Visual Arts building.

Hot on the heels of that session, Visual Arts will have their second Visiting Artist of the year when Blue Republic pops in. Blue Republic—also known as collaborative multidisciplinary artists Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski—will talk about their fascinating history working with other artists, groups, and international centres of independent artistic research. That’s at 8pm Wednesday, January 23, in room A162 of the Visual Arts building. They’re in town to open Crystal Palace, an exhibit at Deluge Contemporary, through to March 2.

Baden’s “Tender Trepanation”

While February’s Visiting Artist roster is still being established, we already know that sculptor Mowry Baden will be coming. One of Victoria’s most acclaimed—and often controversial—artists, the Governor General’s Award-winning Mowry Baden has influenced a generation of sculptors in Canada and the U.S. with his engaging, participatory installations. For over 40 years, he has challenged contemporary sculpture through a staggering number of projects and artworks that borrow from psychology, architecture and performance—and he also helped build UVic’s Visual Arts department into the well-respected school it is today, and he remains a Professor Emeritus to this day.

Baden has had solo and group exhibitions across North America, including Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montreal, Vancouver and New York (including MoMA), and his work is represented in collections in Canada and the U.S. He has been commissioned to create public art works in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Pittsburgh, Washington and Victoria, where he lives. Hear him speak at 8pm Wednesday, February 13
Room A162 of UVic’s Visual Arts building.

Robert Chaplin with an enlarged image of his nanobook

Also appearing in February is Visual Arts alumnus and Guiness Book of World Records record holder Robert Chaplin. The Vancouver-based Chaplin stepped into the media spotlight by creating the smallest reproduction of a printed book. As reported in the Vancouver Sun, Chaplin’s children’s book Teeny Ted from Turnip Town was “etched onto crystal-line silicon using a focused ion beam with the training and equipment of Simon Fraser University scientists in 2007.” But the 1990 Visual Arts graduate only found out this year that he had been honoured by Guinness.

You’d need very, very strong glasses to read this story to your kids

Chapin’s $20,000 one-of-a-kind “nanobook” measures 0.07 mm by 0.1 mm and is made of 30 linked micro-tablets—but no matter how good your vision is, you’ll need an electron microscope to read it. And in order to make a more generally accessible print version of Teeny Ted, Chaplin launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a “large print” version and successfully raised the $17,000 needed to produce it. Talk about thinking big with a small project!

Robert Chaplin will be on campus from 9:30am to noon on Saturday, February 9, in UVic’s David Lam Auditorium as part of the annual Alumni Week events.

Coming up in March: Dave Dyment (March 6) and Sarah Anne Johnson (March 13).

Get ready for January

Posted on December 19, 2012 by john threlfall

And, just like that, a new year is upon us once again. No time to languish in the glow of feasts gone by, however—we’re already right back at it in the Faculty of Fine Arts. Here’s a quick teaser of the public events Fine Arts will have on view in January 2013.

First up is an appearance by Visiting Artist and design historian Allan Collier, who will be speaking about his exhibition which opens this week in the Visual Arts building’s Audain Gallery. Collier specializes mainly in Canadian design from the post-WWII period and, over the years, has curated several exhibitions on the topic in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Victoria. (Most recently he curated the 2011 AGGV exhibit The Modern Eye: Craft and Design in Canada 1940-1960.) Hear him speak as the first Visiting Artist of 2013 in the long-running Department of Visual Arts series, 8pm Wednesday, January 9 in room A162 of the Visual Arts building.

The School of Music is presenting a Faculty Chamber Music Concert, 8pm Saturday, January 12, in the Phillip T. Young Recital Hall. This 50th Anniversary concert will feature nearly 20 School of Music faculty performing Music For and In The Moment—including works by Composition faculty members John Celona, Dániel Péter Biró, alumnus Rudolf Komorous and the world premier of Christopher Butterfield’s Omar Khayyam in Belfast: Six Postcards for Chamber Ensemble. “UVic has much to celebrate in its support and educational influence in the arts and music,” says performance faculty, Pamela Highbaugh Aloni. “For 50 years the School of Music has contributed significantly to music in Canada and beyond. This is one way to highlight this distinction and share it with our greater university community.” Tickets are $13.50 & $17.50 at the UVic Ticket Centre (250-721-8480) and at the door. There will also be a post-concert reception with the faculty performers and composers.

An installation by Ed Pien

Up next is a visit by Ed Pien. Born in Taiwan, the now Toronto-based artist Ed Pien has been drawing for nearly 30 years, and has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has taught at ECAD, NSCAD and OCAD, and is currently teaching at the University of Toronto. Pien is in town as part of the AGGV’s January exhibit, Traces: Fantasy Worlds and Tales of Truth. Catch him at 8pm Wednesday, January 16, in room A162 of the Visual Arts building.

Hot on the heels of that session, Visual Arts will have their second Visiting Artist of the year when Blue Republic drops in for a chat. Blue Republic—also known as collaborative multidisciplinary artists Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski—will talk about their fascinating history working with other artists, groups, and international centres of independent artistic research. That’s at 8pm Wednesday, January 23, in room A162 of the Visual Arts building.

Papers are now being accepted for Visual Impetus XVI, the annual History in Art graduate student symposium. This year’s theme is “Beyond Aesthetics: Contesting Convention Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration” and the symposium itself runs January 25 & 26 in the Fine Arts building. Click here for more details.

Robert Bateman’s piece (left) fits nicely with Mfanwy Pavelic’s portrait of Katherine Hepburn at the Legacy (photo: Colton Hash)

Renowned West Coast artist and environmental champion Robert Bateman will be speaking at the Legacy Art Gallery as part of the current exhibit, Honoris Causa: Artist Honorary Degree Recipients. The piece by Bateman in the exhibit was specifically selected by him to illustrate his passion and concern for the fragile environment. His free talk begins at 2pm Sunday, January 27, at Legacy Art Gallery, 630 Yates (at Broad).

Also on Sunday, January 27, is a concert of Light Tunes for a Heavy Instrument, featuring Eugene Dowling on tuba and Charlotte Hale on piano. This afternoon concert of light music will be performed by the Juno-nominated Dowling and will feature works by Astor Piazzolla, Fritz Kreisler, Vittorio Monti, Victoria’s own Stephen Brown and others. That’s at 2:30pm in the Phillip T. Young Recital Hall. Tickets are $13.50 & $17.50.

CBC’s Jo-Ann Roberts

Popular CBC Radio All Points West host Jo-Ann Roberts is the Department of Writing’s 2013 Harvey Southam Lecturer. She’ll be teaching a course starting in January, but she’ll also be giving a free public lecture on “Public Broadcasting and the Public Good.”

As Roberts told me recently, “Public broadcasting matters to every journalist in this country. We keep the bar high, and that means private broadcasters can’t go any lower—but the lower we get, the lower their bar goes. You don’t have to be working for a public broadcaster as a journalist to care about it.” Catch her in action at 7:30pm Wednesday, January 30, in room 240 of the HSD building.

Visual Arts grad earns honourable mention in RBC competition

Posted on December 3, 2012 by john threlfall

Department of Visual Arts MFA graduate Katie Lyle was named an honourable mention winner in the 14th Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition recently. As well as national exposure, Lyle picked up a cheque for $15,000 for her oil painting, “White Night,” which will be added to RBC’s 4,000-work corporate art collection.

Katie Lyle’s “White Night”

As reported in the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail, among other media outlets, 15 finalists were chosen in June this year, five each from of the three regions (western, central and eastern) into which the prize is split. The winners were announced in Toronto on November 29, with Toronto’s Vanessa Maltese named the overall winner; Montreal artist Betino Assa was also named honourable mention. Maltese earns $25,000 for winning the top spot.

“Through this competition, we have helped launch the careers of many of today’s successful visual artists and are excited to continue to discover and promote promising new talent from across the country,” RBC’s curator Robin Anthony said in a news release.

Lyle’s winning painting came from a series of intimate female portraits. “My recent paintings focus less on cultural archetypes and more on images I filter on a daily basis,” she said on the RBC’s website. “The gaze, the arch of an eyebrow, or the path of a nose can all be points or forms from which to generate an image.” Now based in Vancouver, Lyle has recently exhibited at Deluge Contemporary here in Victoria and Art Metropole in Toronto. She is the curatorial assistant at Western Front.

Chisholm’s RBC entry

But Lyle wasn’t the only artist with UVic connections in the running for the RBC prize this year—Visual Arts sessional instructor Thomas Chisholm was also a finalist, and painting professor Sandra Meigs was on the jury. This was the second RBC shortlist in a row on which Chisholm has appeared, this time with a piece titled Interference 1 (2012).

“I love painting, and of all the arts it’s the one I’m most drawn to,” Adam Gopnik, the keynote speaker at this year’s RBC Canadian Painting Competition ceremony, told the Globe. “I’m well aware there’s this sense that painting is a dying form and that the beatific vision is now available in a video installation in a darkened room with an enigmatic track playing alongside it and a long explanation of how the enigmatic track and the video together do something or other to this or that for the construction of reality. And I have no reason to think that’s not a completely authentic aesthetic experience; it’s just that I vibrate to painting.”

Gopnik, art critic for The New Yorker, was raised in Montreal and was a juror in the 2011 Sobey Art Award, and is quite familiar with Canadian art. “You can make the case that painting is actually the single most relevant thing we have right now. … We live in a civilization where the idea of craft, the idea of the artisanal, of the thing made with skill that the rest of us can’t do at all, is simultaneously deprecated—‘It’s not important’—and hugely valued individually. … We continue to be drawn to painting because we recognize it represents [like a chef cooking on a TV show] that enviable excellence of craft, the transmission of lived experience through the prism of a particular sensibility. … It’s one-on-one communication in a world of million-on-million communication.”

Artsy Type

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

Tag Archives: UVic Visual Arts