A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Kirk McNally’s new ADCARA role

by | Jan 16, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, News, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

While new hires are a regular part of faculty life, it’s rare that we see the creation of entirely new administrative roles. One of the Faculty highlights of 2025 was the inauguration of two brand-new Associate Dean positions: Associate Dean Indigenous, held by Writing professor Danielle Geller, and Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research and Administration (ADCARA), held by School of Music professor Kirk McNally.

A professional sound engineer, McNally is a familiar face at faculty meetings: he first joined our School of Music in 2006 along with the then-new Music & Computer Science program before being appointed a professor of music technology in 2016; his own research and creative work has been supported by the likes of SSHRC, the Canada Council, the Banff Centre and UVic’s Learning & Teaching Centre, among others. In 2025, McNally was awarded the UVic Provost’s Advocacy & Activism Award in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for his efforts to host a diverse range of musicians and fostering a vibrant learning environment for aspiring sound engineers and producers.

Now, as our inaugural ADCARA, McNally’s role focuses on a number of linked priorities, including,

  • external grants and awards support and advocacy, and strategic positioning of faculty
  • advocacy for Fine Arts via different UVic councils and committees
  • undertaking various strategic initiatives around collaboration, both on and off campus, and
  • graduate student curriculum support and development of new grad student initiatives and collaborations.

Boil it down, and McNally sees the ADCARA position as a means of promoting, supporting and benefiting Fine Arts as a whole.

“It’s about representation within different committees and at different levels, both across the university and at the community level,” he explains. “We’re clearly acknowledged as a Faculty within the university, but we don’t always have a voice to negotiate on specific topics.”

A bridge between worlds

While other faculties on campus have had similar roles for decades now, the ADCARA offers a new opportunity for Fine Arts.

“We haven’t had a role like this before, but I think it will allow people to have less work happening off the side of their desks — especially as the university becomes more of an interdisciplinary place where we work collaboratively across units,” McNally says.

“So, I do a lot around representation and acknowledgement of how research is viewed and defined on campus, including creative activity and creative works . . . . not everyone really understands what we do, how we do it and why it matters both on and off-campus.”

McNally in the CReaTe Lab

Describing the ADCARA role as being “exciting and very stimulating”, McNally feels it’s a logical step for him. “It fits well with my training as a recording engineer, who act as the intermediary between an artist and their audience, and help the audience receive the project in the way the artist intended — you’re like a bridge between two worlds, making connections for a specific outcome. Because of that, I really value opportunities to work across units on interdisciplinary projects . . . it just feels natural to collaborate with different talent while also getting the opportunity to learn about their activities.”

By way of example of how his position can function, McNally points to the November 2025 Science + Art = Actionevent featuring Swiss glaciologist Andreas Linsbauer of the University of Zurich.

“We had the Swiss Embassy approach [Crookes Professor] Sean Holman, who didn’t necessarily have the capacity to quickly organize anything mid-semester, so I was able to assist with making it happen.” As a result, Fine Arts joined with KULA and the Geography department to host an event bridging science, art, technology, education and climate change, attended by representatives from departments across campus. “It would have been very easy to say ‘we’re just too busy right now’, but then we wouldn’t have had this opportunity, and all those people wouldn’t have been in the room. Instead, we were able to showcase Fine Arts research and activity, and advocate for future collaboration.”

2025’s Science + Art = Action event

Giving back and catching up

While his ADCARA duties are in addition to his ongoing role with the School of Music, McNally sees them less as a burden and more as an opportunity.

“This institution has supported my growth and development for the past 20 years, so I see this as one way of giving back towards what’s been a very positive experience for me,” he says. “Before I was hired, for example, there was no CReaTe Lab in Music, but now there’s so much activity in there and that space will continue to grow in the years ahead.”

He also feels the ADCARA position will help better frame Fine Arts for the UVic of the future. “Since I was hired in 2006, we’ve certainly seen an increase in UVic’s profile as a research campus,” he says. “Not having had a role like this until now, we’re playing a lot of catch-up to convince people where we are in research and creative activity. But we’ve done amazing things lately.”

Over the past five years, some of those “amazing things” include the hiring in Visual Arts of Canada Research Chair Joel Ong, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices Heather Igloliorte and the elevation of Carey Newman from the limited term Audain Professor to UVic’s Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices. Meanwhile, the Black Scholar Fund  has enabled Fine Arts to bring in the likes of professors Lauren McCall in Music and Wayde Compton in Writing, while the Indigenous Recruitment Support Fund attracted professors Mique’l Dangeli (AHVS) and Marion Newman (Music). And, as recently as January 2026, we’ve seen Sarah Belle Reid join us as our newest Music technology professor.

But, as McNally points out, “when you’re coming in at those levels, there’s an expectation that there will also be capacity to facilitate activity and support people’s work, so that’s one of the ways this [ADCARA] role will help our faculty.”

Grad student support

Another bullet-point in the ADCARA brief is graduate student curriculum support, and development of new grad student initiatives and collaborations.

“This role will help to lighten the load of our Associate Dean Academic, so they’re not handling both undergrad and grad curriculum,” he says. “I also advocate for our graduate students with the Faculty of Graduate Studies to build greater opportunities and better support in forums where we traditionally had less presence.”

For examples, he points to the annual grad student Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship and our Pacific Opera Victoria partnership. “It’s about finding opportunities when there’s a desire from a specific department, working in concert with them to help get things off the ground.”

Visual Arts grad student Parvin Hasani (left) was the 2025 ONC ArtScience Fellow

Coming up next

Looking ahead to this semester, McNally is particularly excited by the extended visit by Orion Scholar Mike Ananny, a communications and journalism professor with USC.

“He’s a highly respected academic: a former Trudeau Scholar and advisor to the federal Minister of Heritage, he was on the advisory committee for the future of CBC and Radio Canada . . . he’ll be really interesting for people to engage with, especially in this time of cultural sovereignty.”

During his three months in Fine Arts, Ananny will be specifically focused on the use of creative AI and its impacts on the arts, artists and creatives.

“Anyone who’s working with or contemplating creative AI, how it works, how it’s being used, how it’s affecting the sense of artistic self and identity across the creative field,” says McNally. “He’ll be giving a public Orion lecture plus offering curated workshops with our grad students and faculty.”

Planning for the future

Ultimately, McNally feels the ADCARA position nicely aligns with his own research and creative activity.

“The way I helped develop the music and technology program is similar to how the sciences build a lab: using grants to help a group of students work around aligned research objectives. I’ve also engaged with external communities and worked to bring them to campus through events like the Society for Music Production Research conference and the Audio+ series, which allow students to see their futures in the industry. Creating a culture of research is one of the goals of this position, so it’s about both seeing what’s possible and what people can aspire to.”

The Theatre department’s focus on applied theater is a good example of that: an emerging field just 30 years ago, UVic is now seen as a world leader thanks to the work of past professors like Warwick Dobson and Julianna Saxton, and current professors Yasmine Kandil and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta.

A more recent example is Visual Arts professor Heather Igloliorte’s Taqsiqtuut Indigenous Research-Creation Lab. “Look at who she’s brought in during the first year of her CERC position — people are literally coming here from all over the world because they’ve got connections with her and now they know what we’re doing here. This kind of work is driven by relationships and building relationships is one of the things we’re really good at in Fine Arts.”

Opening day for Heather Igloliorte’s  Taqsiquut Research Creation Lab in 2025

Paul Walde exhibit focuses on weather & water

by | Jan 12, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, Faculty, Research, Visual Arts

Opening on January 15 at downtown’s Legacy Gallery is Paul Walde: Weather Conditions, a double exhibit of site-specific video installations by Visual Arts professor Paul Walde, curated by the Art History & Visual Studies department’s Williams Legacy Chair,  Carolyn Butler Palmer. Both these installations reflect art history in unique ways, highlighting remembrances of famed Canadian painter Tom Thomson and American artist Geoff Hendrix, notably of the Fluxus art movement. Walde rarely exhibits locally, so Weather Conditions offers the chance to see his work in a gallery setting — with two pieces that have never before been shown in Victoria.

“This is an opportunity to give the community a taste of the work I’ve been doing in relation to environment, landscape, performance and the human body,” says Walde. “I really wanted to share these works, particularly because they haven’t been seen a lot: they’re both made for audiences, they’re not meant to be scrolled away somewhere.”

On view will be the 55-minute Tom Thomson Centennial Swim (2017-2019) and the 30-minute Of Weather (for Geoff Hendricks) (2018-2024): two video installations which showcase one-time, site-specific performances and both featuring soundtracks for which Walde composed the music himself.

“A lot of my work takes a while to do,” he explains. “It takes a lot to initially stage the events and then to reimagine them into standalone artworks that can operate on their own. You can’t reproduce the live performances, but you can use that raw footage as material to make something new.”

Recent work on view

The Tom Thomson Centennial Swim (shown right) is a bold, real-time video installation of Walde’s 2017 site-specific swim across Canoe Lake in Ontario’s Algonquin Park, where Thomson died, accompanied by a team of synchronized swimmers and a canoe-based brass band, both of which are featured in the video alongside footage shot both from his perspective and from a distance.

Of Weather engages with issues of climate and ecology by featuring people struggling to carry large-scale photographs of clouds, bringing weather down to a very human level. Legacy will also offer two performances (Feb 28 & March 28) where people will handle the images while accompanied by Walde’s live score.

“I would say Tom Thomson is more like me confronting the myth around his death, literally putting my body in that space on the very anniversary of his drowning,” says Walde. By approaching it like a sporting event — with branding, a band and surrounding performances — he also acknowledges some of the competition and the hierarchies within art history itself.

Human impact on climate

Of Weather, however, speaks more directly to how humans are affecting weather. “Because of the warming oceans, the greenhouse effect is affecting the type of clouds that are being produced: we’re getting more high-level clouds that actually trap heat and less low-level clouds that reflect heat,” Walde explains.

That concept is shown in the exhibit via the size of the images his team are carrying. “We have the weight of responsibility to struggle with these things, and using art handlers to do that also shows some of the invisible workforce that goes on behind the scenes to make the art world mobile. Right now, we have mobile biennials and art fairs happening all over the world, and there’s an environmental impact to that.”

Be sure to save the date for a pair of live performances of “Weather Conditions” as well: 2pm Sat, Feb 28 and 2pm Sat, March 28, both at downtown’s Legacy Gallery.

“Of Weather Movements” will feature the pictures in the exhibition being activated by a team of art handlers in a live performance based on motion-picture camera movements and editing techniques, accompanied by a live performance of the Of Weather music score by a string quartet.

Coming up next

Currently, Walde is working on his latest video installation — a new opera, Forestorium, which he calls “the best thing I’ve ever done” — the filming for which undertaken in July 2025 when he took 100 people into the unpopulated traditional Ma’amtagila village site of Hiladi on the east coast of Vancouver Island (near Campbell River). which will hopefully be seen in 2027.

2025: Year in Review

by | Dec 29, 2025 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, Award, climate, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts, Writing

It’s hard to believe 2025 is already over: some years crawl like watching paint dry on a canvas, while others speed by at the rate of a can’t-put-it-down bestseller. Given that the 2000s will likely come to be known as the century when attention spans reduced faster than polar icecaps, we’re pleased to offer this quick recap of the year that just was.

New faculty

We’re always excited to welcome fresh talent to our faculty . . . especially in times of fiscal restraint. This year saw Lauren McCall join our School of Music as a professor in composition and music technology in January, while artist-researcher and Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Emergent Digital Art Practices Joel Ong joined our Visual Arts department in July. And just on the horizon but already announced is the news that Sarah Belle Reid will join Music as a professor in technology starting in January 2026.

While not new faculty, two professors taking on new roles this year were Writing’s Danielle Geller, who is our new Associate Dean Indigenous, and Music’s Kirk McNally, who steps up to the role of Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research and Administration.

Lauren McCall

Student activity

Whether it’s grad student activity like the annual Audain Foundation Travel Awards or the Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship, or undergrad achievements in the annual Community Impact Awards, we’re always proud of our student achievements.

Visual Arts MFA candidate Edith Skeard was named one of just five BC graduate students to receive a $7,500 Travel Award from the Audain Foundation in September, which she’ll use for a month-long Sound Lab residency in Struer / Copenhagen for an exploration of sound art within a sculptural context. Meanwhile, another Visual Arts MFA — Parvin Hasani — spent her summer as the ONC ArtScience Fellow researching the extreme ecosystems of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in order to create her own conceptual sculptural pieces, which she debuted in the September exhibit Tides of Memory.

Parvin engaging with visitor at her ONC exhibit

July saw UVic Chamber Singers director Adam Con and 21 singers  head to the acclaimed Sicily Music Festival & Competition, where School of Music professors Benjamin Butterfield and Anne Grimm were both part of the festival’s international teaching faculty; other Music students also attended as solo artists, offering good student representation.

Also in Music, this year’s Concerto Competition celebrated exceptional student musicians whose talents span genres, generations, and geographies. The competition finals were held in April 2025 and performances by winners Tamsyn Klazek-Schryer, Olivia Pryce-Digby and Ethan Page are rolling out during our 2025-26 concert season.

This year’s juried Community Impact Awards saw Music’s Sophie Hillstrom and Theatre’s Sage Easton-Levy each win $1,000 for their work with the Early Music Society of the Islands and Sooke Youth Theatre, respectively. Since 2021, we’ve awarded over $15,000 to 13 students from across Fine Arts for projects ranging from murals, theatre productions, music performances, art shows, curatorial projects and more, all within Greater Victoria’s regional boundaries.

November saw three Writing students — Raamin Hamid, Fernanda Solorza and Ashley Ciambrelli — run a series of climate survivor testimonials in the UK’s Guardian media outlet as part of a Climate Disaster Project partnership, hooked to the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil. That same month also saw 95 students collaborate on the presentation of 18 commissioned five-minute plays performed as part of the International Climate Change Theatre Action project.

And it was exciting to see AHVS PhD candidate Amy Anderson’s recent Rocky Horror Picture Show story on The Conversation Canada — one of the top-three most-read stories by UVic authors this fall!

New research lab

February saw the launch of the new Taqsiqtuut Research-Creation Lab in our Visual Arts department. Led by Visual Arts professor Heather Igloliorte — who is also UVic’s only Canada Excellence Research Chair — Taqsiqtuut has had a busy year of programming, bringing artists, researchers, curators and creators from around the international circumpolar region in to connect with faculty and students alike.

“I have a large network of colleagues and artists I’ve been working with for a long time, partners who are working and thinking across Indigenous cultures and learning from each other in order to move towards this place of transformation and decolonization,” says Igloliorte.

It was a full house at the Taqsiqtuut opening

New artistic residency

This year we welcomed Candian artist Siobhan Humston as the inaugural UVic Rubinoff artist-in-residence. Selected from a field of 50+ applicants, Humston spent six weeks developing new work at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island as part of this paid residency; she also mounted a public exhibition here at UVic in October.

“It’s always hard to imagine what may come from working in a new place,” says Humston, who has held a number of international residencies. “As an artist, the JRSP presents a surprise physicality to me — even though my resulting work may not be large, I feel like it has taken a lot of energy and space to produce, which reflects on the expansive nature of the park itself.”

Visitors at Siobhan Humston’s UVic opening

Visiting artists

There’s been no shortage of high-profile visits this year, ranging from Canada Council for the Arts CEO Michelle Chawla to visiting professors like Andreas Linsbauer, Philippe Pasquier and  representatives from the Chilean Embassy. “We’re not doing this alone: we’re part of a dynamic arts ecosystem . . . and universities are an important part of this world,” said Chawla. “We need to tell the story of what the arts bring to our communities and why that matters.”

Our long-running Orion series and Living Artists, Living Art visiting artist program welcomed the likes of artists Deanna Bowen, Don Kwan, Meryl McMaster, Lan “Florence” Yee, poet Karen Solie, author Saeed Teebi, conservator Helene Tulo, scholar Mary Storm, artist Jerry Ropson, our own Visual Arts professor Beth Stuart, artist Marlene Yuen, celebrated theatre alumni Sara Topham and Pablo Felices-Luna and many others. Meanwhile, d’bi.young anitafrika was the third presenter in our annual donor-funded Lehan Family Activism & the Arts Series in February, and veteran journalist Stephen Maher was our latest Harvey Southam lecturer in October. Click on the links above to watch their public talks.

Michelle Chawla (right) in conversation with Visual Arts chair Megan Dickie

We were also pleased to honour noted local artist, art historian, author and arts writer Robert Amos as the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts during our Fall Convocation ceremony. Amos has dedicated most of the past four decades to documenting — both journalistically and visually — Victoria’s visual arts scene. As Dr. Cedric Littlewood, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, noted in his introduction, “By bringing people, buildings and neighbourhoods to life, Robert’s contributions to BC’s art history is the very fabric of Victoria’s history.”

Faculty research & creative activity

Faculty research and creative practice is always in the spotlight, and this year was no exception. Music professor Steven Capaldo’s brand-new piece specially composed the closing ceremonies of the Invictus Games in February. Performed live by the Royal Canadian Navy’s Naden Band and broadcast to viewers around the world, his “Invictus Fanfare” had its world premiere as the accompaniment to the sight of over 550 wounded warriors walking and wheeling into Vancouver’s Rogers Arena.

Speaking of Vancouver, Theatre professor Carmen Alatorre picked up her latest Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Costume Design for her work on Two Gentleman of Verona for Bard on the Beach.

After months of planning, rehearsals and preparation, September saw the launch of the Indigenous theatre festival Staging Our Voices. Presented by Theatre professor Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta, the SSHRC-funded and artist-led festival supported the efforts of artists working to invigorate Indigenous languages through the medium of theatre. “We realized that a lot of Indigenous Artists feel isolated, specifically artists that are working with the language, and they would love to find ways to gather, to share food, to share stories and be in one space together,” says Sadeghi-Yekta.

Also in Theatre, professor Sasha Kovacs received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her Performance in the Pacific Northwest project, co-led by the University of Lethbridge’s Heather Davis-Fisch with contributions from project researchers Matthew Tomkinson, Laurel Green and Lee Cookson. This is in addition to her role as co-director of Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance, a seven-year, $2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant she was awarded last year.

Music professor Kirk McNally, Visual Arts professor Kelly Richardson and Writing professor David Leach were all recipients of UVic’s annual REACH Awards, recognizing outstanding achievement by UVic teachers and researchers who are leading the way in dynamic learning and making a vital impact on campus, in the classroom and beyond.

Sean Holman — the Wayne Crookes Professor in Environmental & Climate Journalism with the Department of Writing — was announced in July as the leader of a new six-year, $2.5-million SSHRC partnership grant. From Catastrophe to Community: A People’s History of Climate Changewill train 500 post-secondary students and professional journalists to document the experience of 1,000 survivors around the world and share their wisdom. Holman was also honoured not only with the 2025 Bill Good Award at the annual Webster Awards for BC journalism in November, but his 2024 Climate Disaster Project verbatim theatre production Eyes of the Beast also just earned a Silver Award in the “Sustainability, Environment & Climate” Special Projects Awareness category of the Anthem Awards (presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences) in November.

Alumni acclaim

UVic’s 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards were announced in March, and Fine Arts was thrilled to see four of our outstanding graduates being honoured across the categories: Presidents’ Alumni Award winners Cassandra Miller (School of Music) and Tania Willard (Visual Arts), Emerging Alumni Award winner Chari Arespacochaga (Theatre), and Indigenous Community Alumni Award winner Crystal Clark (Visual Arts).

It was a double-win for Tania Willard, however, when she was also announced as the recipient of the $100,000 Sobey Art Award in November. And our very recent Orion Lecturer — poet and UVic alumna Karen Solie — won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for her latest collection Wellwater just days after her visit to campus. Kudos also go out to just-graduated Writing MFA Adrienne Wong, who was shortlisted for the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize in theatre.

Tania Willard

Locally, two Writing MFA alumni were in the headlines this fall: Kyeren Regher was named the latest City of Victoria Poet Laureate — the third Writing alum to hold that position — and Melanie Siebert won the inaugural DC Reid Poetry Prize at the City of Victoria book awards.

Robert Amos receives Honorary DFA

by | Nov 17, 2025 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, News, Visual Arts, Writing

An artist, art historian, author and arts writer, Robert Amos has dedicated most of the past four decades to documenting — both journalistically and visually — Victoria’s visual arts scene, whether with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Times Colonist newspaper or in his own many books. But he has also spent over 15 years working with the Artist Archives in UVic’s Special Collections, making him an ideal choice to receive an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts during the Fall Convocation ceremony. As Dr. Cedric Littlewood, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, noted in his introduction, “By bringing people, buildings and neighbourhoods to life, Robert’s contributions to BC’s art history is the very fabric of Victoria’s history.”

“Art history isn’t all about the distant past: in fact, art history is all around us. If we reflect on and understand the times we live in, we may come to understand ourselves a bit better,” said  Amos during his 10-minute talk. “I’m passionate about sharing stories with students, art lovers and the general public and while the internet provides instantaneous global reach to any information we may want to look up, unless we who live and work here create and tell our own local stories, and find a way to preserve and safeguard those for the future, there won’t be anything there for anyone to look up and access.”

Amos noted how UVic students are surrounded by art, mentioning the Salish banners, sculptural panels, ceremonial furniture and pieces from the University Art Collection displayed across campus. “Art really is part of our life here on campus and it’s more than just decoration,” he said. “Art is a form of communication . . . and if you find a way to communicate the reality of your own time and place, history will be interested in what you have to say.”

Watch Robert’s convocation address here

Call for grad student proposals: 2026 ONC ArtScience Fellowship Program

by | Oct 31, 2025 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, climate, Graduate, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) are now calling for graduate student applications for the paid 2026 ONC ArtScience Fellowship program. The application period closes on December 23, 2025.

The ArtScience Fellowship strengthens connections between art and science that broaden and cross-fertilize perspectives and critical discourse on today’s major issues, such as environment, technology, oceans, cultural and biodiversity, and healthy communities.

This program is open to all current Fine Arts graduate students who have completed most of their course requirements with practice in any visual, written, musical or performance media, or art historical research. Co-led and sponsored by Fine Arts and ONC, the Artist-in-Residence program receives additional financial support from UVic’s Faculty of Science.

Our most recent ArtScience Fellow was Visual Arts graduate student Parvin Hasani. As the sixth Fine Arts graduate student to hold this position, she proposed exploring the extreme ecosystems of deep-sea hydrothermal vents via her sculptural practice. The result was the September 2025 exhibit and artist’s talk, Tides of Memory. 

 

“Scientific data gave me the language of [vent] formation and collapse, but art practice allowed me to interpret the knowledge,” she explains in this video about her fellowship activities.

Learn more about previous ONC artistic residents, Megan Harton (Music, 2024), Neil Griffin (Writing, 2023), Colin Malloy (School of Music, 2022), Dennis Gupa (Theatre, 2021) and Colton Hash (Visual Arts, 2019).

About the ArtScience Fellowship

The ArtScience Fellowship (previously known as the ONC Artist-in-Residence program) will ignite cross-disciplinary exchanges, interacting with Fine Arts faculty members and scientists & staff at ONC, as well as with other individuals using ONC’s world-leading ocean facilities. This program is inspired by the ArtScience Manifesto of 2011, and numerous references to this concept in the literature. The Fellow will learn from and engage with the current research, connecting it to their own practice, and to wider societal and cultural aspects, creating work for public presentation at the end of the residency. The Artist will also be invited to contribute as a lead or co-author in scientific conference proceedings and/or journal articles.

 
The selected Artist will actively engage with researchers on a variety of ocean science themes that may include:
  • Deep Sea Ecology
  • Seabed-Ocean Exchanges
  • Coastal Ocean Processes
  • Marine Natural Hazards
  • The Ocean Soundscape
  • Arctic Ocean Observing
  • Ocean Big Data.
 
The ONC Artist-in-Residence program is established to:
  • explore the potential of the arts or alternative cultural practices in the area of the visions, challenges, philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical aspects of the ocean and the impacts humans have on it;
  • add a complementary artistic and creative perspective to ocean science, the societal ramifications of its exploitation, and its cultural aspects;
  • create opportunities for potential new research questions, experimental approaches and knowledge synthesis resulting from interaction between the arts and science; and
  • help envision and communicate the potential long-term impact of ocean changes on humanity.

Proposal Submission

Interested applicants are to email ONC’s Dwight Owens at dwowens@oceannetworks.ca with the subject line “Ocean ArtScience Fellowship,” and attach:
  1. the artist’s CV
  2. a concise portfolio of previous relevant artistic work;
  3. a letter of motivation explaining your interest in the program and its alignment with your past experiences and future career goals; and
  4. a 500-word project proposal with a separate project-costs budget.
The application period closes on December 23, 2025. Applications will be reviewed by representatives of Fine Arts and Ocean Networks Canada. Artists may be contacted for an interview or to supply further information before a decision is made.

Public Event or Exhibit

At the conclusion of the fellowship, the Fellow will host a public event and/or exhibit within a specified budget agreed to during the fellowship and depending on the type of project. Assistance for marketing and/or ticketing could be made available from other UVic departments (Visual Arts, Theatre, etc.) 
Financial Provision for the Artist
The residency period will be May 1-August 31, 2026. A cost-of-living stipend of $3,500/month will be paid to the selected Fellow, with limited additional funds to support production or materials. At the conclusion of the residency, the Fellow will plan and deliver a public exhibit and/or event sharing the fruits of the fellowship. This event will be promoted by ONC and Fine Arts.

Parvin giving her ONC talk

 

About Ocean Networks Canada

Established in 2007 as a strategic initiative of the University of Victoria, ONC operates world-leading ocean observatories for the advancement of science and the benefit of Canada. The observatories collect data on physical, chemical, biological, and geological aspects of the ocean over long time periods, supporting research on complex Earth processes in ways not previously possible. The observatories provide unique scientific and technical capabilities that permit researchers to operate instruments remotely and receive data at their home laboratories anywhere on the globe, in real time. The facilities extend and complement other research platforms and programs, whether currently operating or planned for future deployment.
 
The ArtScience Fellowship was initiated by ONC’s late Chief Scientist Kim Juniper, whose leadership and transdisciplinary approaches continue to inspire many in the ArtScience space.
 

About the Faculty of Fine Arts

With experiential learning at its core, the Faculty of Fine Arts provides the finest training and learning environment for artists, professionals, and students. Through its departments of Art History and Visual Studies, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing and School of Music, the Faculty of Fine Arts aspires to lead in arts-based research and creative activity and education in local, national, and global contexts by integrating and advancing creation and scholarship in the arts in a dynamic learning environment. As British Columbia’s only Faculty exclusively dedicated to the arts, UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts is an extraordinary platform that supports new discoveries, interdisciplinary and diverse contributions to creativity, and the cultural experiences of the students and communities UVic serves.
With thanks also to the Faculty of Science for their support.

Inaugural JRSP residency showcases new sculptural work

by | Sep 24, 2025 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, donor, Visual Arts

A sculptural installation by Canadian artist Siobhan Humston will be on view exclusively at UVic from October 9-14, showcasing the results of a new artist-scholar residency created in association with the Jeffrey Rubinoff Foundation and UVic’s Faculty of Fine Arts. The inaugural recipient of this new creative collaboration, Humston is just completing her six-week residency at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island.

“It’s always hard to imagine what may come from working in a new place,” says Humston, who has held a number of international residencies. “As an artist, the JRSP presents a surprise physicality to me — even though my resulting work may not be large, I feel like it has taken a lot of energy and space to produce, which reflects on the expansive nature of the park itself.”

Selected in May 2025 from a field on nearly 60 international artists to be the first UVic/JRSP Artist-Scholar, Humston has spent her time at the sculpture park developing new work combining themes involving music, synesthesia and humanity’s entanglement with the natural world. The resulting exhibit will open with an artist talk starting at 4 p.m. Thursday, October 9, in room 103 of the Fine Arts Building, followed by a 5 p.m. exhibit opening in UVic’s A. Wilfrid Johns Gallery (MacLaurin Building A-wing). The exhibit will run daily through October 14, with Humston also engaging with Fine Arts classes.

Humston has been working with tangible aspects of Hornby Island’s natural environment as a sculptural medium, as well as more traditional tools like graphite and pigments, while also recording ambient sounds integrating Rubinoff’s monumental steel sculptures found across the [note size] site.

“Walking the fields and forested areas, drawing and photographing his sculptures, working in Jeffrey’s barn studio and reading his texts have all been deeply inspiring,” she says.

JRSP curator Karun Koernig notes that, “Humston’s work quietly co-mingles the natural and human worlds. Particularly compelling for us was her ambition to integrate a soundscape into her residency, resonating deeply with Rubinoff’s profound connection to music.”

Previous residency work by Siobhan Humston 

In addition to creating new work, Humston says highlights of her residency have included learning about Rubinoff’s creative life and spending an extended time at the park itself. “The combination of being on the land at this time of year, listening to the ravens conversing, seeing these massive, beautiful sculptures at different times of day in changing weather . . . it’s all been so exciting and nourishing.”

Humston’s art has been exhibited in over 70 solo and group exhibitions in commercial, artist-run and public galleries, and is held in private and corporate collections in England, Europe, Australia and North America. She has a studio on the shores of Lake Huron in Ontario.