Wayde Compton joins Writing

by | Aug 30, 2024 | Faculty, Writing

Photo: Roger Hur

The Department of Writing is proud to announce their latest hire: author and associate professor Wayde Compton.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Compton studied English at Simon Fraser University where he worked with the likes of authors George Bowering and Roy Miki. He was associated with the Tads group of writers and the Runcible Mountain College study group.

He  was also a co-founder of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, a grassroots organization that researched and advocated for the public recognition of Vancouver’s historical Black community. He later co-founded its successor group, the Hogan’s Alley Society. In 2006 Compton co-founded Commodore Books, Western Canada’s first Black Canadian literary press.

Compton has published six books and has edited two literary anthologies. His collection of short stories, The Outer Harbour, won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2015 and he won a National Magazine Award for Fiction in 2011. His work has been a finalist for three other City of Vancouver Book Awards as well as the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

He has also been writer-in-residence at Simon Fraser University, Green College at the University of British Columbia, and the Vancouver Public Library. He has taught either English Literature or Creative Writing at the following institutions: SFU, ECUAD, Capilano University, Kwantlen University, Douglas College, and Coquitlam College. From 2012-18, he administrated the Creative Writing Program in Continuing Studies at SFU, including the award-winning Writer’s Studio.

Compton has read and presented at institutions across Canada (McGill, the University of Toronto, UBC, SFU, York University, Dalhousie University), the United States (Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley), and overseas (the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Havana, National Taipei University).

Mique’l Dangeli joins AHVS

by | Aug 29, 2024 | Art History & Visual Studies, Faculty, indigenous

Born and raised in Metlakatla, Alaska / Annette Islands Indian Reserve, Sm Łoodm ‘Nüüsm — Dr. Mique’l Dangeli — is of the Ts’msyen Nation. She is a dancer, choreographer, Sm’algya̱x language learner/teacher, curator and is now an assistant professor of Indigenous Arts with our Department of Art History & Visual Studies.

Her work in Indigenous visual and performing arts focuses on protocol, sovereignty, resurgence, decolonization, Indigenous research methodologies, critical curatorial studies, repatriation, and language revitalization. She has previously taught at the

When not teaching, Mique’l leads the Git Hayetsk Dancers, an internationally renowned Northwest Coast First Nations dance group specializing in ancient and newly created songs and mask dances.

 

Externally funded research (select)

by | Aug 12, 2024 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

Heather Igloliorte (centre) speaking as part of the Distinguished Women Scholars event at Legacy Gallery’s 2024 exhibit, Latent (Beth Bingham photo)

Each year, Fine Arts faculty members receive external funding for their ongoing creative and scholarly projects. This is a current selection of grants awarded to faculty in 2023/24 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council and others.

 

  • Cedric Bomford (Visual Arts) received support from Canada Council’s Arts Abroad program.
  • Taylor Brook (Music/PEA) received funding from Harvard’s FROMM Foundation to support new work for piano and electronics. 
  • Ajtony Csaba (Music) received two Canada Council grants, a BC Arts Council grant (for the SALT New Music Festival) and funding from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. 
  • Sean Holman (Writing) received a SSHRC Connection grant for the fall 2024 Climate Disaster Project verbatim theatre project, Eyes of the Beast.
  • Heather Igloliorte (Visual Arts) received SSHRC support as the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonization & Transformational Artistic Practice.
  • Sasha Kovacs (Theatre) received a SSHRC Partnership Grant as co-director of Gatherings: Archival & Oral Histories of Performance, with Dean Allana Lindgren as co-investigator.
  • Mark Leiren-Young (Writing) received a BC Arts Council Creative Writing grant. 
  • Kathryn Mockler (Writing) received a BC Arts Council Creative Writing grant. 
  • Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta (Theatre) received a SSHRC Insight grant to support the five-year project Staging Our Voices: Strengthening Indigenous languages through theatre.
  • Suzanne Snizek (Music) received a SSHRC Partnership Grant for her work supporting Visual Storytelling & Graphic Art in Genocide & Human Rights Education.
  • Jennifer Stillwell (Visual Arts) received a UVic Research/Creative Project Grant and a SSHRC Explore Grant.
  • Anthony Tan (Music) received a UVic Research/Creative Project Grant and a SSHRC Explore Grant.
  • Paul Walde (Visual Arts) received support from the Canada Council’s Arts Abroad program. 

Snapshot of a year

by | Jul 19, 2024 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, climate, donor, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, News, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

We’re excited to share with you the latest edition of the Faculty of Fine Arts Annual Review. While it’s always difficult to encapsulate an entire year’s worth of activity into a single 36-page magazine, we do enjoy the creative challenge of sharing our top stories with you!

“This past year, colleagues continued to reconceptualize the contours of arts education, creative expression and scholarly knowledge,” writes Dr. Allana Lindgren in her introduction. “The arts continue to be essential for cultivating dexterity through creative thinking and fostering the empathy needed to navigate our increasingly complex world.”

Dean Lindgren also notes the ongoing inspiration Fine Arts students provide. “Their commitment to creativity continues to inspire me and gives me confidence that the next generation of arts leaders has the temerity to transform life’s challenges into opportunities for intellectual reflection and artistic innovation.”

Inside, you’ll find a variety of stories about the recent activity of our faculty, students, staff, donors and community partners.

Education equates with action here in Fine Arts: we are committed to helping our students cultivate the skills needed to become innovative artists and engaged leaders.

Our curriculum, artistic practices, research and creative activities are rooted in our belief in the power of creativity, experimentation and the efficacy of the arts to help us to understand and address today’s most urgent and vexing issues.

If you missed a previous Annual Review, issues dating back to 2017 are archived here.

Eva Baboula marks a decade as Associate Dean

by | Jul 11, 2024 | Art History & Visual Studies, Faculty

For the past 10 years, Art History & Visual Studies professor Eva Baboula has been a consistent and guiding force as our longest-serving Associate Dean — a position from which she steps down on June 30. During that time, she not only continued teaching with AHVS but also worked with three different Deans, was Acting Dean for six months and served a year as the Associate Executive Director with UVic’s Learning & Teaching Support & Innovation division.

“When I first came into the position, I was really interested in helping students in a wider way than just teaching — there was an opportunity to understand what they were going through, and what issues were affecting them beyond content and courses,” she reflects. “I was also very interested in supporting students with accessibility issues, which has become an increasing priority in the last few years.”

With Fine Arts being the only UVic faculty with a single Associate Dean, Baboula has seen her role grow well beyond student support. Her portfolio includes not only academic success and support, but also recruitment and retention, curriculum development, international and Indigenous partnerships, interdisciplinary programs, and working closely with the Faculty of Graduate Studies.  

“It’s a joy to lead these initiatives,” she says. “This has developed into a more holistic position over the years: how can we support the students from the beginning to the end? I also often took on the support of research and creative activity in Fine Arts and across UVic; I have truly loved coaching graduate students with their SSHRC applications. And helping the professors also supports the students — I have enjoyed mentoring sessional instructors and taking care of our growing interdisciplinary programs.”

Baboula is particularly proud of the relationships she has developed with the entire Fine Arts community over the years: students, staff and teaching faculty included. “The kind of mentoring we do and the relationships we all have are quite different from the rest of the university; maybe it’s because we’re a relatively small faculty, but I find we’re all very close in an organic, integrated way.”

She also feels her skills as a mother of two have helped her succeed as Associate Dean. “I think we’re very much like parents to our students . . . you need to have compassion and understanding but, at the same time, you have to have good judgment and clear boundaries. That’s very important for a position like this.”

For now, AHVS professor Catherine Harding will be Acting Associate Dean until December 31, 2024, with a new Associate Dean beginning in 2025.

Beth Stuart’s monumental Montreal art commission

by | Jul 2, 2024 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Visual Arts

When it comes to her creative output, award-winning Visual Arts professor Beth Stuart works in an expanding range of media including writing, painting, ceramics, performance, textiles and sculptural installations. Picking up on overlooked historical moments, as well as characters and material techniques, she creates alternative plot points in the narrative of modernist abstraction in order to examine the physical and metaphysical implications of dissolving the figure-ground relationship. 

Her newest public art sculpture is Les Tendresses, commissioned by La Banque Nationale du Canada and installed in the lobby of their Montreal headquarters at a cost of nearly $1 million. “Les Tendresses represent a playful offshoot of a longer artistic passage through the history of the relationships between architecture, garment construction, modernist abstraction, queer embodiment and feminist practice,” says Stuart. 

Les Tendresses offers three monumental sculptures that animate the architectural forms of three adjacent columns through a lively transformation of stone into the suggestion of clothed figures.  Each “posture” and “costume” is distinct from the others: one upright and elegant, one soft and flowing, one ornate and whimsical. The molded sculptures are made using a centuries-old architectural plaster technique called scagliola, which authentically imitates marble, creating a double trompe l’oeil: architecture come to life, and cloth turned to stone. 

Les Tendresses is inspired by the delight emerging from unexpected transformations of the inanimate into the animate; the hard into the seemingly soft; the inorganic into the organic. The sculptures introduce a playful distortion of regular geometries, contrasting the calm, sober look of the surrounding grey stone and concrete against bright, lively columns made of the same materials. This juxtaposition suggests a bridge between the architecture of the space and the humans who move through it — recognizing the role of individuals within the community and the capacity of the imagination to draw connections.