Visual Arts grad student Edith Skeard explores ocean sounds

by | Aug 4, 2026 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, Award, donor, Graduate, Visual Arts

While they may have just graduated in June 2026 with an MFA in Visual Arts, multi-media artist Edith Skeard isn’t quite done with UVic yet. This summer, they are the latest Fine Arts grad student named to the Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship program.

Skeard has been spending their summer creating sound works from ONC’s immense data collections. “I’ve been learning from their science team and engaging with the Oceans 3.0 portal,” they explain. “My primary focus has been on the relationship between seismic events and the flora and fauna of the ocean . . . . this is a really lovely opportunity to focus in on sound and the library of hydrophones ONC has.”

Given that biology underpins a lot of their practice, this ArtScience collaboration is well within Skeard’s purview. “It’s been really wonderful to learn about their work, engage with the sea and create new sound works which utilize their data,” they say. “This was a unique opportunity for deeper, focused research-making.”

Oceanic fascination

Skeard says their ONC application centred on tsunamis and earthquakes — which were present in their MFA work — and aligns perfectly with both the ecological and technological aspects of their artistic practice. Despite coming from Saskatchewan (or perhaps because of it), Skeard  has always been fascinated by the ocean.

At UVic’s ONC, Skeard has been able to coordinate and perform for one of the ONC community’s lunch-and-listen sessions (where they and two Prodigy program ArtScience fellows played new compositions), as well as meet with different scientists, attend tour their Marine Technology Centre and attend an Oceans Past Symposium. Still to come in August is a site visit to the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.

“My welcome has been warm and the science team has been generous with their time and knowledge sharing,” they say. “I’m learning a lot and feeling immersed in the different teams and activities. This year is quite special in that there are several sound and music researchers and fellows working at ONC this summer. It’s been really interesting to hear how other folks are interpreting the data in their works.”

New projects

At ONC’s Ocean-Climate Building headquarters (found at UVic’s Queenswood campus), Skeard has installed a sculptural “listening station” in the lobby, which they describe as more of “a personal sound experience” than a formal installation. “It plays a continuous loop composed from ONC data and changes every month . . . the sound is deeply environmental and pulls from ONC’s vast hydrophone data. So far, folks have been really interested in listening and I’ve received good feedback on it.”

Skeard will also be participating in Abyssal Soundings: A Concert Utilizing Ocean Networks Canada Data, running from 11am-1pm Sunday, August 16 in UVic’s Philip T Young Recital Hall. In addition to Skeard, the lineup will feature Distinguished Music Alumna Eve Egoyan plus Valeria Valle, Urano Trincado, Omar Shabbar, Kieran Maraj and Visual Arts professor Joel Ong, who is also a Canada Research Chair in Emergent Digital Art Practices — each of whom will present their own interpretations of ONC data gleaned during their tenure.

Register here for this free August 16 event! 

Skeard’s ONC listening station

On the rewards of donor awards

Since coming to UVic from Saskatchewan to complete their MFA in Visual Arts,  Skeard has seen their creative work blossom thanks to numerous donor awards. During their two-year period of study, Skeard has received the Audain Foundation Travel Award, the Laura Carberry Scholarship in Fine Arts, the Robert W. Ford Graduate Scholarship, Audrey St. Denys & M.E. Johnson Scholarship, Helen Pitt Fine Arts Scholarship, Jessie Allan Forsyth Scholarship, John and Myrtle Tilley Graduate Scholarship, the Jeffery Rubinoff Art as a Source of Knowledge Graduate Scholarship and, most recently, the Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship.

“I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish my studies without this generous funding, which was in large part the labour and coordination of the graduate advisors in Visual Arts,” says Skeard. “I’m very grateful to have been able to pursue my thesis with less friction and less reliance on external income. It is such a gift to be able to work freely towards research and making.”

Working mainly with sound, sculpture and drawing, Skeard uses granulation software to modify a mix of field recordings, woodwinds and voice to compose their sound. “I’m interested in the ways that the body and materials intersect, and am very open to experimenting with materials when working in the studio,” they say, explaining their work is often inspired by a fascination with labyrinths, translation, dreams, repetition and desired paths. “I often treat sound as tactile and materials as dense poetics — contemplating gestures of embodied time.”

 After earning both a BA (Philosophy, Honours) and BFA (Visual Art) at the University of Regina, Skeard began considering how graduate school could blend their passion for music with more visual work: having previously collaborated with School of Music Masters alumni — who all spoke highly of their experiences here — and realizing that a Visual Arts MFA offered studio space and the chance to work interdisciplinarily, Skeard decided UVic was the perfect place to continue their education. “It’s a rewarding process for those who want to be challenged and reflect on their work in a new context,” they say of their MFA work. “The community it fosters is really a large part of the experience.”
This past year, Skeard has been very busy mounting two solo exhibitions, participating in interdisciplinary showcases and activating their Audain Travel Award. In Belgium, they visited curators, galleries and the Orpheus Institute — a premier international center for advanced musical studies and artistic research — before connecting with the Bureau for Listening, a leading artistic research group in Copenhagen.

Watch for more news about their ONC installation coming up in September 2026.

—with files by Claudia Phillips and photos by Shay Ball

UVic Workstudy students Claudia Phillips (Writing) and Shay Ball (Visual Arts) are just two of nearly 75 Fine Arts students hired annually to learn professional skills outside of their classes. Their work will now appear in various Fine Arts publications, on this blog and on our social media feeds.

AGGV curator brings experience to the classroom

by | Jul 27, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Faculty, Research, Undergraduate, Visual Arts

Heng Wu teaching her AHVS class

Art History & Visual Studies students once again had the unique opportunity this year to learn from professional art curator and adjunct assistant professor Dr. Heng Wu.

Currently the Curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV), Wu oversees one of the premier Asian art collections in North America and the finest in Western Canada. Her teaching practice focuses on museum research, curation and Asian art. She places great importance on applying the experiences gained from museum work to her research and teaching, while simultaneously incorporating her research findings and thoughts back into her practical work.

 Wu’s course — AHVS 202: “Confronting the Object” — brings real-world curatorial insights and experience into the classroom, showing students the professional side of museum work. “The course title may be ‘Confronting the Object’ but ‘confronting’ doesn’t mean to argue,” she explains. “I just want students to understand that objects are not neutral at all.”

AHVS students go behind the scenes at the Royal BC Museum (above) & the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (below), contributing to a greater understanding of object handling, acquisitional practices & display techniques

Objects are the focus

Objects are central to this course since Wu believes that they are at the centre of museums and curatorial practice. “Behind any museum object is a series of decisions, and every decision is made with thoughtful, professional thinking,” she says. “This is why I put objects as the centre of this course . . . looking at objects, describing objects, cataloging objects, handling objects: everything in this course is about objects.”

Wu explains how she structured the course to reflect real curatorial work, since she thinks it’s the best way for students to learn. “I want them to at least have a better understanding of museum work,” she says. To accomplish this, Wu frequently brings actual museum pieces and objects from UVic’s own 18,000+ art collection into the classroom and gives students real cataloging sheets to fill out, replicating the process of a professional curator.

“Every time I bring real objects from museum collections to the classroom and let students work with them, I can see their excitement,” she says. “I think it’s great.”

 

Real-world learning

Engaging with museums itself is also key to this course. Wu took her students out of the classroom three times over the semester to visit local art galleries and museums — including the AGGV and the Royal BC Museum — letting them get firsthand experience in a these settings and ask questions of working professionals.

“It’s great experience for them. If you’re only studying by reading textbooks, you don’t really have a sense of the real world.”

 

Handling objects from UVic’s art collection

Throughout the semester, Wu found her two positions — curator and professor — to be the perfect mix. She explains how she’d bring current museum decisions from the AGGV into the classroom for discussion. “[They] let me know what they like or don’t like, or what changes they want to see. I learn a lot from students, so I think this is perfect. I like the combination.” This also gives students the chance to understand what challenges curators face and let them join the conversation.

“I feel really fortunate to have the chance to step into two fields,” Wu continues. “I have felt inspired by the students and their responses to the objects many times. I enjoy teaching a lot!”

—Claudia Phillips, with photos by Shay Ball

UVic Workstudy students Claudia Phillips (Writing) and Shay Ball (Visual Arts) are just two of nearly 75 Fine Arts students hired annually to learn professional skills outside of their classes. Their work will now appear in various Fine Arts publications, on this blog and on our social media feeds.

Aaron Richmond named new JRSP resident artist

by | Jun 15, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, donor, Research, Visual Arts

The Jefferey Rubinoff Foundation and the Faculty of Fine Arts are pleased to announce that Canadian artist, scholar and curator Aaron Richmond has been selected as the 2026 Recipient of the UVic/Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Artist-Scholar Residency.

Aaron’s practice situates in the intersection of visual art, architecture and performance studies. With a PhD in Art & Architectural History from McGill University, a Masters in Intellectual History from Cambridge University and a Masters in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art, Richmond holds an extensive record of awards and residencies. He is currently an affiliated assistant professor with Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts.

Aaron Richmond

During his July 5-26 residency at Hornby Island’s JRSP, Richmond will develop a body of work that moves, like a relay, from landscape-architectural drawings to the creation of lightweight temporary sculptures. With this work, Richmond hopes to engage the park’s sculptural environment as a living archive, while also treating it as a prompt for the continued exploration of material practices, ideas and gestures. He is interested in art’s continued relevance as a space for experimentation and its dynamic interplay between graphic, formal, textual and performative modes of attention, and about the kinds of fleeting scenography suited to this moment of social and environmental uncertainty.

While at the JRSP, Richmond will share his working process with visitors at the sculpture park and offer limited select guided attentional walks: an embodied on-site demonstration of the relays, prompts and curiosities that animate it. Then, from November 17-20, he will visit UVic’s campus, where he will offer guest lectures, artist talks, a workshop and studio visits for Fine Arts students, staff and faculty members. An exhibition of the works he  creates at the JRSP will also be on display and open to the public in November (venue TBA).

Following his JRSP residency, Richmond will be the 2026-2027 Leonard A. Lauder Fellow in Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he will be working on Cotyledons: A Catalogue of Exchanges between the graphic and performing arts. This project asks: when does the mapping of a situation — whether in the form of an architectural projection, a conceptual schema, or a choreographic score — become an experimental prompt for bodies in motion? And what kinds of artworks or artifacts give evidence of this dynamic interplay between graphic form and performative play?

We are very much looking forward to welcoming Aaron this July for his three-week residency at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island. Stay tuned to follow his body of work develop as he responds to the interplay between continued exploration and the Park’s sculptural environment.

Established in 2025, the annual UVic/JRSP Artist-Scholar Residency was created as a competitive inter-institutional partnership based around an unwavering belief in cultivating the arts. Find out more about this partnership.

This residency is for artists and scholars seeking space to focus on creating a work for exhibition or publication that is in some way informed by their investigation of Jeffrey Rubinoff’s work and their experience working at the sculpture park.

The successful applicant enjoys a 2-5 week  residency at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park with an additional week at UVic to engage with Fine Arts faculty and students.

Roy Henry Vickers awarded Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts

by | Jun 9, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, indigenous, Visual Arts

Roy Henry Vickers is a celebrated Indigenous artist, author, printmaker and storyteller of Tsimshian, Haida, Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv and English descent. He is a Member of the Order of Canada, the Order of BC and a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. In 2019, he was even nominated for a Grammy Award for his design work on a Grateful Dead CD box set.

Now, he is the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, presented as part of the Fine Arts convocation ceremony on June 10, Vickers studied at UVic before joining the Saanich Fire Department, he then left to study and graduate from the Gitanmaax School of Northwest Coast Indian Art. As noted in this Sooke News Mirror story, his former Oak Bay High teacher — and early UVic Theatre department designer — Bill West encouraged him to “paint what you see”. Vickers remembers the teacher saying, “Your colour blindness is an advantage because you simplify all the colours out there and paint what you see.”

Clearly, West was on to something, as Vickers’ internationally acclaimed artwork reflects the landscapes, wildlife and people of British Columbia. Characterized by clean lines and vivid colours, his distinctive artistic style blends his Indigenous heritage with a contemporary design, creating timeless and evocative pieces. Vickers’ influence is felt throughout the province — from founding his Eagle Aerie Gallery in Tofino to designing the Salmon Totem Pole for the 1994 Commonwealth Games. He also played a pivotal role in shaping the artistic direction of Vancouver International Airport’s new terminal, where his work remains prominently displayed.

With a career spanning more than 50 years, Vickers continues to leave a lasting legacy through his art and storytelling — sharing powerful messages of Indigenous self-determination, resilience and healing.

Three instructors earn teaching accolades

by | May 27, 2026 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Visual Arts

Congratulations go out to three Fine Arts instructors who earned accolades for their teaching this month: Ambreen Hussaini (left) won the Andy Farquharson Teaching Excellence Award at UVic’s REACH Awards, while Michael Reed received the Fine Arts Award for Teaching Excellence (Sessionals & Music Performance Instructors) and Laura Dutton earned the Fine Arts Award for Teaching Excellence & Educational Leadership.

Hussaini (AHVS) is recognized for advancing innovative, learner-centred teaching and mentorship. She fosters creativity, dialogue and critical thinking through reflective writing, visual analysis and community-engaged learning. Grounded in equity, curiosity and compassion, she brings decolonial frameworks and experiential practices — such as personalized territorial acknowledgments — into culturally responsive classrooms. By mentoring peers and TAs, facilitating workshops and developing curricula, Ambreen strengthens teaching practices across the university and inspires students to engage deeply with art, culture and one another.

Dutton (VISU) cultivates classroom environments in which students feel empowered, supported and recognized as individuals: her teaching approach fosters intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and professional confidence, supporting students as emerging artists with distinct voices and ambitions. Her dedication to teaching extends well beyond the classroom, serving as undergraduate curriculum representative, working closely with the program committee to develop curriculum and program navigation strategies. She is also one of the department’s strongest advocates for equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility.

Reed (AHVS/Medieval Studies) mobilizes his expert knowledge of medieval art, culture, and history with innovative teaching strategies that continually engage students, connecting the past to the present and showing the value of understanding history in the context of challenges facing us today. Grounded in the principles of EDI and intersectionality, his course design and dialogic pedagogy respond to the urgent call to replace colonial approaches to the European past; his desire to actively connect students to the past is enhanced by his embrace of technology, such as his use of an LTI grant to contribute to the Medievalism Mapping Project.

A previous REACH Award winner (2022) who has also received a teaching excellence award from Humanities (2021), to the best of our knowledge that makes Michael Reed the only UVic instructor to win three teaching awards in three different units on campus. A hearty congratulations on earning this remarkable milestone!

Research funding focuses on developing innovative Indigenous robotic technologies

by | May 13, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, climate, Faculty, indigenous, Visual Arts

Carey Newman working on his Totem 2.0 system developed with Camosun Innovates  (photo: Camosun College)

Department of Visual Arts and Art History & Visual Studies professor Carey Newman was announced on May 13 as the recipient of new funding from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to develop a new robotic carving system to better preserve traditional Indigenous carving techniques. By exploring the interconnection between Indigenous knowledge, technology and art, this innovative technology will ethically embed robotics into education and creative practice while offering new ways to access, interpret, preserve and teach traditional knowledge.

Newman, also UVic’s inaugural Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices, will be receiving $250,000 over two years from SSHRC’s New Frontiers in Research Fund and the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) for his project “Robotic Carving to Augment and Preserve Intergenerational Kwakwaka’wakw Knowledge Transfer.”

Carving is core to Pacific Northwest Indigenous Peoples’ social, legal, and cultural orders.  From the ornamental to the utilitarian, miniscule to monumental, carvings — be they drums, masks and rattles or canoes, poles and structural support for big houses — integrate into every aspect of life.

Now, this interdisciplinary project will see Newman join with UVic researchers from Mechanical Engineering & Computer Science (including professor Keivan Ahmadi) with off-campus partners including Camosun College’s Camosun Innovates and the Royal BC Museum to design and build an adaptive robotic system which will operate in collaboration with a master carver to augment and preserve the intergenerational knowledge transfer of carving practices in Northwest Coast Indigenous art.

“Traditionally, carving is passed down through close, hands-on mentorship, often within families or communities, but current efforts face increasing disruption due to climate change, cultural shifts, land/language loss, legacies of colonialism and urbanization,” says Newman. “This project offers new ways to enhance generational continuity and help young people engage and learn using novel digital collaboration technologies designed to protect and strengthen carving knowledge.”

The final version of the pole Carey Newman is carving above, now placed outside Pacific Opera Victoria’s Baumann Centre in Victoria  

Rather than automate artistic methods, Newman’s project will instead complement a carver’s tools by communicating culturally rooted practices over time. This work will provide a careful, respectful approach that upholds the integrity and sovereignty of Indigenous knowledge systems while utilizing advanced computational models and processes. Creating a robotic carving system will allow new technologies to promote, respect and strengthen cultural resilience, as well as explore the reciprocal benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in areas like robotic surgery and advanced manufacturing.

 “This award is especially meaningful for us to celebrate as it marks Fine Arts’ first successful NFRF and charts an exciting new path for collaboration and partnership across campus, and in our community,” says Kirk McNally, the Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research & Administration for Fine Arts.

The impact of this project is enhanced by alignment with Newman’s other federally funded cultural, environmental and political art project, The Seedling, which involves planting a Western Red Cedar then designing a digital 3D totem which will be carved in 600 years when the tree is mature. The Seedlingrethinks colonial concepts of economy, law and politics, while radically expanding planning and decision-making timescales.

Newman’s robotic system will be capable of real-time adaptation to carving variables like unpredictable cedar microstructures while combining experiential knowledge and technical innovation. Integrating deeply embodied, culturally grounded artistic knowledge with emerging robotic technologies involves high risks (both technical and conceptual) but offers high rewards (including generational knowledge transfer and commercial application and development).