Alumni Profiles Archives - ��ܽ��Ƶ

From clay to television: ��ܽ��Ƶ alumni Brendan Tang shares his journey in ceramics

Sarah Poko — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 18:30:31 +0000

The Vancouver-based artist and ceramist is a celebrity judge on ��’s The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown.

Vancouver-born ��ܽ��Ƶ alumni, (he/they), enjoys working in their home city, but his studies took him to different landscapes like Edwardsville for his MFA at Southern Illinois University, and to ��ܽ��Ƶ University for his BFA.

“What drew me to the East Coast was the great studio-based, practice-based program at ��ܽ��Ƶ,” they say.

Now an instructor at Emily Carr University, Tang works with multiple mediums—including a life-size Ford F150 truck constructed out of watercolour paper—but is best known for his sculptural ceramics. This is part of the reason he ended up as a judge on the inaugural season of executive produced by recreational potter and actor Seth Rogen.

How did you end up in Halifax from all the way across the country?

Most of my education has been looking for a studio-based program. Academia means a lot of reading and philosophy, but I was looking for a program that would meet my technical making needs. When I went to ��ܽ��Ƶ to visit, I met Walter Ostrom and immediately, that East Coast welcome was there— he’s such an open, generous man.

I ran into him at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and he said, “Come down to Ceramics [at ��ܽ��Ƶ] and I’ll get someone to show you around.” That open-door vibe that is so great about the East Coast.

You talk about belonging to “the remix generation,” what does that mean to you and how does it apply to your work?

A lot of my training comes out of that late-90s post-modernism vibe, a deconstruction/reconstruction kind of aesthetic; that really informed my practice. As a young person I was emulating a lot of pop culture—it’s almost like I understood it through a lens of popular culture, hip hop, EDM. I feel in a lot of ways, my work approaches it that way. Reprocess ��ܽ��Ƶes it and remixes it.

I feel like back in my day, finding trends was a way of defining yourself and finding the communities you wanted to be a part of. When I came out to ��ܽ��Ƶ in the late 90s, rave culture was really big and that was such a wonderful experience as part of my education. It was a way of finding your people.

You work with lots of materials but what is it about ceramics that you connect to?

��Working with my hands is a draw. I like the order of a process ��ܽ��Ƶ—I find something delightfully predictable about knowing what you have to do next. It’s a little more sophisticated than a Sudoku puzzle, but there’s joy in completing it.

There’s a flow state about these things that’s satisfying on a mental level, getting into that zone. The process ��ܽ��Ƶ gives you a structure, the space created with the process ��ܽ��Ƶ helps me figure out the world. I’m always in awe of painters—there’s a process ��ܽ��Ƶ but it’s also so amorphous. Ceramics has a timeline.

A lot of ceramicists dive into the alchemy, but I’m so controlling of the process ��ܽ��Ƶ of how I’m carving things and painting things. Where there’s more improvisation is how I do my compositions or modelling things, there’s space to do the free-form jazz sort of thing. So, it’s less ‘gifts from the kiln’ and more ‘that’s exactly what I wanted.’

Competition shows usually have a template—there’s the nice judge, the mean one, the wild card. How did you fit in at The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown?

��I could just be myself, which is a big ceramic nerd!

We all know these competition shows and the kinds of characters that are part of them. During COVID, The Great Canadian Baking Show was my comfort show, and I knew it wasn’t the backstabbing, teaching through cruelty and shame that a lot of competition shows tend to be.

Essentially the goal was to have the people compete with themselves and be the best they could be. Basically, the rising tide lifts all boats approach. I teach from a place of care and I’m genuinely interested in what these people are doing. They were into that vibe.

Are you getting recognized?

��I haven’t been recognized yet, but I did cut my mullet off so maybe I’m incognito. I miss that beautiful mane.

followers are definitely going up though, which is a hoot, but I don’t know what to do about this. Art school in the 90s did not prepare me for social media management.

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��ܽ��Ƶ University mourns the loss of Richard Serra, 1938-2024

Andy Murdoch — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 15:12:50 +0000

��ܽ��Ƶ University mourns the loss of artistic giant Richard Serra. Serra died at his home in Long Island on Tuesday, March 26. He was 85 years old. You can read obituaries of Richard Serra in the , in and in newspapers around the world.

Serra had several connections with ��ܽ��Ƶ over the years. He attended the now infamous “Halifax Conference” in 1970 but didn’t participate in the conference when he found out that the artists would be in one room and the students in another. Since 1970, Serra, and his wife, Clara Weyergraf-Serra, split their time between New York City and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. His time in Cape Breton was not for ‘vacation’ but a place for intellectual, creative and physical production.��

Most notably, Richard Serra received an honorary doctorate degree from ��ܽ��Ƶ in 2004, and he addressed the Graduating Class during convocation.��At the same time, the late Professor Gerald Ferguson had arranged with Serra to display five works in the 1995 suite entitled WM Prints at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. To the delight of everyone, Serra then donated the works to the University’s Permanent Collection.

Eric Fischl (DFA 2002), who taught at ��ܽ��Ƶ from 1974-1978 and knew Serra, says he was ‘truly one of the greats’.

“I knew him to say hello and we were always cordial. He surprised me when he saw a show of my sculpture and made a point of telling me that he liked it. I was expecting a straight-out dismissal of my figurative works from the giant of reductive abstraction but he was generous in his compliment and said he could see that they were authentic.”��

“Nobody knew scale like he did. Not size but actual scale. The way the body related to each work so specifically. How it enlarged or shrunk you as you moved through it, all the while maintaining your sense of awe and wonder. End of an era.��Thank god I was around when he was still on this earth.”

The following text is taken from Canadian Cultural Property Review Board and gives some sense of the significance of his gift to ��ܽ��Ƶ and of the artist’s deep relationship to Nova Scotia.

“WM��Prints consists of five etchings created in I995 with reference to the sculpture Weight and Measure installed in London’s Tate Gallery in I992.�� In these etchings,��Mr. Serra placed the emphasis on the distinguishing relationship of two graphic elements.�� By using a square, etched copper plate, 8I by 8I cm in size,��Mr. Serra strategically placed inked plates on two abutted sheets of paper that vary in relationship to each other.�� In each etching, a perceptible force-field develops between the two elements, a reciprocal relationship of attraction and repulsion.�� Although each of the black elements is printed with the same plate, using slightly different sized sheets of paper, the fields seem different in each print and, above all, different in weight.”

Given the long connection between Serra and ��ܽ��Ƶ, it was most fitting that this important selection of Serra’s work was left in public trust to the people of Canada and the province Nova Scotia through the auspices of ��ܽ��Ƶ in its loan-agreement with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

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From sneakers to clippers: a ��ܽ��Ƶ alumni’s resilience in the pursuit of art

Sarah Poko — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 08:00:49 +0000

��ܽ��Ƶ alumni, Kemmy Smith, shares his career shift from sneaker art to barbering, and the realities of trying to make it as an artist.

Kemmy Smith’s sneaker art is as bright as his infectious energy.

The ��ܽ��Ƶ graduate (BFA 2018) pours his heart and soul into his work, customizing colourful sneaker art for clients across the country and around the world. However, his artistic journey was never linear.

“I was originally going to Dalhousie University, but then I lost my scholarship, and it was too expensive. So, I had to figure out the next steps,” he said. “My mom was an artist, and my grandmother was an artist; so, I decided to pursue my art and see where it takes me.”

Smith’s interest in art started when he was a young boy. And he thought he was pretty good at it –��until he got to high school.

“Everyone said I sucked, and one time my teacher asked me if I was blind,” he recalls, laughing. “But I knew I could draw, and I wanted to prove everybody wrong.”

And he did. Smith won the Art Award at his high school graduation ceremony, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Arts from ��ܽ��Ƶ.

STEPPING INTO SNEAKER ART

After graduation, Smith became a sneaker artist. He loved the look and feel of sneakers growing up but couldn’t afford the ones he wanted.

“I got tired of Nike making the same shoes over and over. So, I decided to paint my own shoes to get the designs I wanted,” he said. “I figured I could make some money off it and sell the designs.”

And sell, he did. In the last six years, Smith has sold over . His custom sneaker art ranges from paintings of flowers, portraits, textures like denim, to donuts with sprinkles — his most popular design.

“I remember I made almost $20,000 one summer,” he said. “I was able to save up and buy a house that same year.”

Smith’s sneaker art has been worn by Olympic athletes, NBA players, and has even been featured in the Atlantic International Film Fest (AIFF). But like any other artist, he had to stumble a few times before mastering his craft.

“Nowadays, you can just hop on a YouTube video and learn how to make things work,” he said. “But I didn’t have a blueprint for that back then. I kept messing up shoes, I kept buying shoes, and I didn’t have money to invest in the right stuff to make the paint last. I was using a lot of random products before I got the right products. I was trying to make the product work before I could make it into a product I could sell.”

One of his biggest hurdles was finding funding to continue making his art; but with the lack of Black representation on grant committees, that was far and few between.

“I tried to get a bunch of loans and grants, but no one gave me the time of day until I had celebrities wearing my stuff,” he said. “It’s especially hard as a Black artist because we have the talent, we just need the opportunity. But you can’t really get opportunity because there’s not many people of colour in power that can give Black artists that chance.”

‘I WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING’

While Smith was working on his goal to become a successful sneaker artist, he had another skill that had helped him many times before — barbering.��

“My uncle was a barber, so I was able to learn that skill and use it to make money while I was in school,” he said. “I was making about $25 an hour as a student. So, if the art thing didn’t work out, I can always cut hair and I’ll be alright.”

When his first child was born, financial stability became Smith’s priority, and he needed a stable wage to provide for his family. Though he was grateful for his success as a sneaker artist, he had to pivot and become a full-time barber. He still makes custom sneaker art, but he has also grown a huge clientele as a barber –��and he works evenings as a tattoo artist.

“I thought I was going to graduate, and someone would give me a good 60k job,” he says with a laugh. “But when you’re young, you don’t really realize how it works in the world.”

His advice to young, emerging artists is to branch out into different career paths.

“You got to figure out a difference between your job and your work,” he said. “I’m a barber by day and an artist by night, so I have money coming in constantly. You need to figure out a median; there will always be a time where you’re doing more artwork, and there will be a time where you have to focus more on your job.”

Though the journey has not been easy for Smith, he says he would do the same thing all over again if he had to start over.

“I might take a few jewelry design classes to add to my portfolio,” he joked. “But ultimately, I wouldn’t change a thing. Everything happens for a reason, and I think I’ve chosen the right path for me.”

Smith plans to return to sneaker art full-time in the future.

To see more of Kemmy Smith’s work, visit his .

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Championing Visual Art and Black Culture in Nova Scotia

Sarah Poko — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 16:48:56 +0000

Renowned artist and ��ܽ��Ƶ alumni, Dr. Henry Bishop, recounts his journey as an African Nova Scotian visual artist from the 1970s to present.

Dr. Henry Vernon Bishop is a source of inspiration within the Nova Scotian arts community.

Renowned for his unwavering dedication to promoting the rich heritage and artistic endeavors of African and Black Canadians, Dr. Bishop strives to help young emerging creatives discover their artistic genius and find their footing in the arts sector.

“I’ve had the amazing opportunity to meet many great people in my life and they told me, it’s not about you, it’s about others who are influenced by you,” he says. “So, I tend to use that as my motto.”

Graduating from ��ܽ��Ƶ University in 1975, Dr. Bishop has achieved several accomplishments in his career as a visual artist. His art works have been featured in museums, publications, and various galleries across North America. He served as creative director and curator of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia for 30 years, and was the first African Nova Scotian to be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from ��ܽ��Ƶ in 2000.

ART AS WELLNESS THERAPY

Born and raised in the historic Black community of Weymouth Falls in Digby County, Dr. Bishop’s family roots in Nova Scotia stretch back over 300 years, empowering him with a deep sense of his ancestral legacy.

Before embarking on his journey to ��ܽ��Ƶ, Dr. Bishop’s inkling towards art started when he was a youngster growing up on his family farm.

“I was always doodling or doing something with a piece of pencil or crayon,” he says. “And as I got older, I took solace in drawing and got encouragement from my mom to take it seriously.”

“I was always doodling or doing something with a piece of pencil or crayon."

Dr. Henry Bishop

As the young Dr. Bishop honed his artistic skills, he had to cope with low self-esteem, shyness, and stuttering issues throughout school, as he struggled with poverty, self-identity, anxiety, and systemic discrimination. Nature, drumming, and drawing became his outlet and refuge from the societal pressures he faced at that time in his life.

“Exploring nature became my joy and freedom from all the negativity that was happening,” he explains. “Kids can be very cruel around that age, so drawing was one of the ways I used to cope and start that healing.”

Despite these challenges, Dr. Bishop gained recognition for his artistic ability. His teachers would usually ask him to draw art for a school play, concert, holiday celebrations or other events happening at the school.

“They would ask me to draw a Halloween pumpkin, or Santa Claus or Easter Bunny; they were using me like crazy for free,” he says, laughing. “But they never really gave me credit or the encouragement to go to professional art school.”

THE JOURNEY TO ��ܽ��Ƶ

A pivotal point in Bishop’s artistic journey was when he was in Grade 10. He remembers two ��ܽ��Ƶ representatives coming to his Weymouth High School and giving a presentation on the various programs and courses at the college.

“They said, ‘Anybody here who’s an artist, raise your hand,’ and I did,” Dr. Bishop explains. “They told me, ‘You’re a born artist, you should come check us out,’ and I was very excited because I didn’t think you could go to school to study art. That is what sparked the flame in me; I ran home that day and said, ‘Mom, I want to go to art school,’ and she gave me permission.”

Dr. Bishop applied to ��ܽ��Ƶ after his high school graduation in 1971 and was accepted. He went on to become the first African Nova Scotian man to graduate with an Associate Degree in Graphic Design at the university.

“Sometimes my fellow students would try to intimidate me.
They felt like I shouldn’t be there, and I don’t belong there."

Dr. Henry Bishop

In addition to being the only Black student in his class, Dr. Bishop had to navigate life as a Black artist in an era where civil rights and racial discrimination were at the forefront of the political landscape in Canada.

“Sometimes my fellow students would try to intimidate me,” he says. “They felt like I shouldn’t be there, and I don’t belong there. The same thing happened when I tried to get jobs after graduating; as soon as I show up and they saw I was a Black person, suddenly the job opening was gone. However, if my White colleague came after to apply with the same credentials as me, the company would give him an interview!”

Dr. Bishop didn’t allow this to deter him and continued to apply for jobs normally reserved for non-Black individuals. Eventually, he landed jobs as a graphic designer in various companies and Black organizations, creating logos, posters, publications, and other graphic images.

“I became determined and resilient,” he says. “I told myself, these people don’t define me, I define me. This is what changed my whole perspective in life.”

Since then, Dr. Bishop has been dedicated to amplifying the contributions of Black artists, past and present. During his tenure as curator of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, he recognized the importance of representation and diversity within the art field.

“A lot of the art I see from African Canadian artists has been flying below the radar and that has to change,” he says. “We have so many great African Nova Scotian artists here, but a lot of it has been overshadowed by other industries. When people think of Black artists, they think of Drake or The Weekend; they don’t think about visual art displayed in galleries or museums. We need to find better ways to promote Black excellence in all forms of art!”

NUTURING AFRICENTRIC ART

Dr. Bishop also emphasizes the need for systemic change and institutional support for Black artists; this includes scholarships to art schools, partnering with communities to create Africentric art exhibitions, and colleges like ��ܽ��Ƶ offering art presentations, like the one he attended in high school.��

“Go into the Black community,” he says. “Go into the Black churches, go into the schools, go into areas with large Black populations to market the potential of art. Talk to diverse students about art school and the kind of jobs they can get with their artistic talent. Art is everywhere, but you have to educate folks and expose them to it to begin with.”

His advice to emerging Black artists is to surround themselves with positive people that have the same values and goals as they do.

“It’s not the crowd that makes you who you are; it’s those that hold you up to higher standards,” he says. “There will be people that do not want you to succeed, but don’t lose focus of what you want to be. Remember, you are not an exception — you are exceptional!”

Learn more about how to organize a ��ܽ��Ƶ presentation at your school.

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Sweet stuff: ��ܽ��Ƶ alumna shares her decadent journey to chocolate-making

Sarah Poko — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 19:56:04 +0000

Lynne Rennie completed her Bachelor of Communication in Design at ��ܽ��Ƶ and is the design director for Calgary-based chocolate company, Cocoa Community Confection Inc., also known as .

Lynne Rennie’s sweet tooth is as fervent as her business acumen. As design director of the Calgary-based chocolate company, , Rennie gets to merge her skills and love for chocolate into one sweet package.

“I’m actually eating chocolate right now,” she says as she slips out of a meeting.

With the theme — “together in cocoa, together in community, together in confections” — at heart, Rennie creates branding, packaging, displays, content, and other sundry design delights for Cococo’s products sold in-store and online.

Rennie completed her Bachelor of Communication in Design at ��ܽ��Ƶ in 1994 and after time in Vancouver, London, and New York, she continued her career in Calgary where she also teaches at the Alberta University of the Arts.

“I haven’t been back to Halifax in a long time, but I dream about it—those little stairways leading from the painting studio to the streets,” she says. “It’s just wonderfully symbolic of the creative process ��ܽ��Ƶ.”

Cococo currently has five store locations in Alberta and one in British Columbia. Rennie took the time out of her busy schedule to discuss her journey from graduation to ganache.

How did you end up at ��ܽ��Ƶ University?��

At the University of Calgary, I did a minor in screen-printing and a major in English lit. I loved screen-printing because every time you went into a studio you could come out with a finished piece rather quickly. You could make a number of these things and sell them or hang them up.

The combination of those two insertion points—the finished product of the thing that could be multiplied and manufactured, combined with how people interact with that thing. Those two points led me quickly into design.

Design is trying to communicate ideas, to make an inanimate object emotionally appealing to a human being. We communicate and develop a brand, brand voice, and a mode of understanding. Then we have design thinking and the design process ��ܽ��Ƶ—research, ideation, iteration and then development of a final concept. And then testing that thing in the marketplace and asking—is it working, where do we tweak, where do we tighten up?

It’s circular in that regard: design is never finished. I didn’t understand that until I came to ��ܽ��Ƶ.

How was your time here?��

My instructors were German and British, and the influence they gave me—which we know now is male, white, European, and colonial. Back then, the famed “Swiss designers” were guys, there were no women.

Our storytelling machine, the art history machine, didn’t share those stories. But Frank Fox and Hanno Ehses, the group of men who taught at the time, were excellent instructors in terms of the craft. Hanno taught about semiotics, the theory of meaning —why does the shape of a tree mean “tree?” How do we as humans understand what is being shown to us, and mindfully choose images, fonts, colours and layouts to communicate to a particular group of people?

They opened my eyes to that; how to design as a communicator and creator with an audience and message in mind.

We always felt it was an important and valuable profession; a profession that smart people did. A vaunted, excellent, and appropriate career for any of us, because you were making things that affect people. Now I’m in my 50s and I’m as passionate about that as ever.

How did you end up in chocolate?

My husband had an opportunity to be involved in a company that was in bankruptcy; he had a background in operations and law from Dalhousie, and I had a background in design. I worked for free because I wanted the flexibility to parent our three small children at the time, and I helped with development of packaging, chocolate collections, professional photography of the work, press releases. Anything I could help with I did.

I got trained on the factory floor by the team I work with now. I took courses myself in chocolate-making, cannabis pairing, chocolate-tasting, and I’m WSET (Wine Spirt and Education Trust) certified. I was just very interested in the product and the experience; its manufacturing, its story, its beautiful appearance, encased in packaging. It comes right back to my undergrad— connecting the end-product with communication about the product.

I get to work with chocolate — it’s just the best and it’s so much fun. If I didn’t have this design education I wouldn’t be as good at my role. Design education is transformative. I use design thinking every day, and I have ��ܽ��Ƶ to thank for that.

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Governor General Literary Award-winner Jack Wong talks about his path from engineer to artist

Andy Murdoch — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 15:16:39 +0000

There are two stories Jack Wong tells to explain his journey from engineer to children’s author: One rises out of the types of projects he worked on in his hometown of Vancouver leading up to the Olympics circa 2008. “A lot of those projects were controversial—relocating vulnerable populations, widening all the highways to increase vehicle capacity, perhaps at the expense of public transit,” he says. “Outside of my job, when conversations came up about what I did, I found myself avoiding questions about it. It was troubling that I was lying about my work, not because I knew what I was doing was negative, but because I didn’t have the critical capacity to actually form an opinion. When I started having those feelings, I knew I was in trouble.” The other is how when he was a kid, he excelled at both drawing and math, leading grown-ups around him to urge him towards an architecture career. When he graduated engineering school, he visited Europe with the intent to draw iconic structures en plein air to create an architecture portfolio, “then had the realization… I didn’t actually like buildings! For so long I’d gone on other people’s assessment of me based on aptitude alone.” he says. “I went to Europe telling everyone I was preparing to apply to architecture school, and I came back wanting to go to art school.”

He moved to Halifax in 2010 to pursue his BFA at ��ܽ��Ƶ. His debut children’s book, When You Can Swim, received both the and the . His third book, All That Grows, is out in March and can be pre-ordered now wherever you buy books (Wong likes in Halifax).

What made you choose ��ܽ��Ƶ from the other side of the country?

I wanted to shake things up—I’d lived in Vancouver most of my life. In February of 2010 I went to Portfoilo Day at ��ܽ��Ƶ and visited the other campuses in major cities. Halifax was the most different I could get while still being in Canada. I loved it as soon as I got here. After the visit, Bryan Maycock sent me a hand-calligraphed postcard telling me to apply to ��ܽ��Ƶ. I ultimately took Foundation Drawing with him, and had the pleasure of working with him for several years at the ��ܽ��Ƶ Drawing Lab.

I can’t even imagine the differences between engineering and art school.

It’s so night and day in every aspect. I went from a lecture hall with 100 students and never finding anything in common with the person in front of the class, to having instructors that encouraged one-on-one interactions. If I had any questions, I had someone to talk to. Having professors to go to not only for the content that’s being conveyed in the class, but everything outside of it—from career-planning to getting settled in Halifax.

And what were your career goals?

I came into ��ܽ��Ƶ with a fairly conventional view of being someone who made painting or drawings for galleries. By third year, a lot of those ideas were challenged and I also found it a lot of fun to work in installations and performance art. So at the end of ��ܽ��Ƶ I was thinking about everything from making imagery to being a curator and finding my place in the artist-run centre ecosystem.

Do you have kids?

No.

So how did you end up a children’s book author and illustrator?

As you get older you have more kids in your life, so I was reading to my nieces or friends’ kids. And several chance encounters I had with kids’ books were some of the most impactful aesthetic experiences I’d had in a long time—just by opening a kids’ book I had a private gallery in my hands.

Do you physically draw the illustrations or is it a digital process ��ܽ��Ƶ?

I am physically drawing for a lot of it. Making art at an institution like ��ܽ��Ƶ is so cerebral, and yet it’s still just about getting materials to cooperate at the end of the day. How the physical world isn’t behaving in ways you want it to—paint isn’t drying the right way—always served as some sort of indirect but profound parallel for the problems we face as a whole: a housing crisis, for example, needs to be solved politically and intellectually but we can’t forget that it’s fundamentally physical when someone doesn’t have a place to lie their head. I’m not saying digital takes away the real-world connection, but I’m always reluctant to put away the physical aspect because of the way it speaks to something larger. If I didn’t have that in my practice—if I wasn’t just constantly frustrated at a layer of paint not being opaque enough or something—I don’t know what else I would have!

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Steven Holmes on Sol LeWitt and ��ܽ��Ƶ

Andy Murdoch — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 19:54:47 +0000

#iamnscad is a series of alumni stories where graduates tell, in their own words, how ��ܽ��Ƶ has influenced and shaped their creative practices.

I arrived in Halifax to begin the MFA program at ��ܽ��Ƶ from, of all places, divinity school. I had done some art history in a previous graduate degree and had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with the two years of the program.�� My plans were very specific and narrowly focused on photography and theory. These goals�� – very specific goals – were never really achieved.

Instead, I was introduced to an entire universe I never knew existed.�� In the bowels of the sculpture department (then situated in the basement of 5163 Duke St), and at cafeteria tables over egg salad sandwiches, I listened to faculty and other students talk about Agnes Martin, Jeff Wall, Martha Rosler, On Kawara, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Ann Hamilton, John Baldessari (of course) and the many others that were closely associated with conceptualism and minimalism. As my failures as a photographer mounted, I began to understand myself in a much broader context than the confines of disciplines. Art is expansive and cares little about modes of production.

I left Halifax in 1997 and moved to the US where I now live. Eventually settling in Connecticut, I was working as a curator at an alternative space in Hartford when I was introduced to Sol LeWitt who lived a short drive away in Chester. I would eventually become friendly with Sol, doing a couple of projects with him and working with his personal collection – rich with work by many of the artists I had learned about in the cafeteria at ��ܽ��Ƶ listening to Gerry Ferguson, Garry Neil Kennedy, Kelly Mark, Stephen Horne, Thierry Delva and others.

In conversations, Sol eventually learned I had been at ��ܽ��Ƶ. And he lit up. He talked about how important ��ܽ��Ƶ was for him and others at a critical moment in their careers (and art history). ��ܽ��Ƶ “took us seriously at that time” I remember him saying. I listened to him talk about how he and others were just beginning to describe what they were trying to do, a description reflected in 1968 with LeWitt’s own�� Sentences on Conceptual Art.�� Garry Neill Kennedy had only just arrived in Halifax the year before. The rest, as they say, is history.��

And then one day in late winter I was having lunch with him in Chester when he asked about my own art practice.�� I described for him my experience at ��ܽ��Ƶ, and, slightly embarrassed, talked about my having stopped making art. I described my work as a curator having taken over, and how I struggled to restart art making after a long period of dormancy.

I remember him asking across the table what the problem was. I described my frustration at trying to return to artmaking only to repeatedly find myself returning right back to the ideas and themes that I had been occupied with ten years earlier. I described feeling like I should do something new, something different, that I should move beyond what had felt like a failure. Puzzled, he said “I don’t get it. You are returning to where you left off for a reason. You are returning to what is yours. It’s what you do.�� Just do it and don’t worry.”

It was a major moment in my life. Though it would take me ten more years to return to making the work I had abandoned in 1997, the insight was powerful for another reason altogether. It changed the way I think as a curator. Morandi, Opałka, Kawara and others all made a new kind of sense. My time at ��ܽ��Ƶ and my conversations with Sol began to converge.

As a curator, I am now a part of the international conversations ��ܽ��Ƶ had introduced me to, conversations Sol had been part of and found support in, conversations Sol insisted I return to and participate in. I have worked with work by LeWitt himself,�� as well as Hanne Darboven, Tracey Emin, Marina Abramović, Cornelia Parker, Agnes Martin, On Kawara, Roman Opałka, Joseph Albers, Giorgio Morandi, Fred Sandback and the many others ��ܽ��Ƶ introduced me to – curating exhibitions from the collection I now manage as well as with work from other private collections and museums. ��ܽ��Ƶ had taken Sol and others seriously when it wasn’t completely clear what they were really doing. ��ܽ��Ƶ had introduced me to these artists and ideas. And Sol had helped me find my way back into the global conversations those artists had started.�� ܽ��Ƶ took Sol seriously. Sol was taking me seriously.

While at ��ܽ��Ƶ, though, there were those that critiqued the celebration of ��ܽ��Ƶ’s history as an international hub of global conversations in art and ideas.�� In the late 80s and early 90s, there was a strong element at ��ܽ��Ƶ that saw those global conversations as exclusionary, hegemonic narratives we would now call colonialist.

Artists and the art school should be much more concerned with the local, the specific, the individual went the critique. The idea of grand narratives was ridiculed. We were in a postmodern era where the focus ought to be on localized questions and concerns, questions of identity and specificity – not the ideas and concerns of artists in New York, Paris, London, Berlin or Los Angeles.�� There was – and is – validity to that critique.

Over the past twenty or more years, though, I have met many artists, art historians, critics and curators who – upon learning I went to ��ܽ��Ƶ –�� talk excitedly about how influential the school had been. Isaac Julien, Norman Bryson, Laurent Grasso and others have spoken to me about ��ܽ��Ƶ’s historical importance.

��ܽ��Ƶ’s presence continues to be felt well beyond Halifax. In that, the postmodernist critique missed something. While hegemonic narratives might have been problematic in overwhelming local histories and identities, it is not like Halifax didn’t influence those it was in dialogue with. Conversation goes two ways. Today, ��ܽ��Ƶ’s DNA�� is everywhere.

Steven Holmes MFA 1994

_______________

Steven Holmes has been the curator of The Cartin Collection in New York and Hartford since 2005, and was curator of the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach from 2008 to 2013. He lives in Collinsville, Connecticut.��

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Alumna Emily Falencki talks about fostering community at the Blue Building

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 18:02:50 +0000

sits back from the street in full view of a construction site and in the shadow of another, an arts centre painted the colour of the sky on a late autumn afternoon. Its owner, Emily Falencki, is a New Yorker who came to Halifax “for love and ��ܽ��Ƶ—that’s what makes people move, isn’t it?” she says. Half of the 10,000-square-foot space’s bottom floor is Falencki’s commercial gallery, —fresh off a group show featuring ��ܽ��Ƶ Alumi, ��ܽ��Ƶ staff and long-time ��ܽ��Ƶ faculty members: Ursula Johnson, Melanie Colosimo, Sarah Maloney, Tim Brennan, Sheilah ReStack, Ryan Josey, Jenny Yujia Shi, William Robinson, Kayza DeGraff-Ford and many more. The other half houses the , which runs arts programs and outreach. Upstairs are artist studios (there’s a long waiting list of prospective tenants), a dark room, meeting spaces, and a communal kitchen. 2482 Maynard opened in October of 2020.

What made you want to create a space like this?

The whole idea came from living in the city for many years, being in the arts community, and seeing the need. One of the main needs was studio space—there is very little. A city of this size, a city bigger, a city smaller—they all support the arts and dedicate those kinds of spaces for making. And this city (surprising to no one who has lived here for a long time) does not.

The other thing was falling in love with—through my children and the work that they do—Wonder’neath. Wonder’neath had very precarious, not accessible housing for many years. I really didn’t want them to have to leave the neighbourhood, and they were facing that. The other thing I wanted to do for a very long time was open a commercial art gallery. This building allowed us to do it all.

Is there an existing space somewhere else that you modelled this on?

No, there are spaces—I’ve heard of them in other cities—but I think it’s quite different in terms of collaboration between private business and a non-profit. And in terms of the way we all operate separately, and do our own thing and our own programming.�� But we are all committed to using the entire building to support the arts and Artists.

We could fill it five times over. It has proven how much the city does need space for Artists, and how much it brings to a neighbourhood, and how successful it can be.��

When you become involved in the business of art, does it take away from the practice of art?

That’s a very good question. The way that I present this commercial space and what I do here is very much artist-led. That’s my expertise, and that’s where I come at this from—even though I’m using a commercial model and what I’m trying to do is hustle and make money for artists. Does it take away the time? Always.

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Alumna’s film Analogue Revolution opens at AIFF –��but her activism started at ��ܽ��Ƶ

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:54:12 +0000

“Halifax introduced me to lesbian feminism, to lesbian activism, the peace movement,” says (BFA ‘81). “There was a lot going on—the 80s were a high point of activism in Canada, across many movements, and a lot of it hasn’t been documented in a way that’s accessible for younger generations.”

Bociurkiw has changed that with Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World, making its at the Atlantic International Film Festival on Friday, September 15. Part of Bociurkiw’s three-year investigation “The Personal is Digital: Remediating and Digitizing Canada’s Intergenerational Feminist & Queer Media Heritage”—a project funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada—Analogue traces the deep history of feminist newspapers, radio shows, film collectives, and movements.

The filmmaker’s own history begins in 1979 via her BFA at ��ܽ��Ƶ, “thanks to H.W. Janson, the author of The History of Art, the 800-page tome we had to purchase for art history,” she says. “At the time, there was not a single woman in the entire 800 pages. So I decided to start a woman’s file. I knew nothing of archiving—I think it was just a collection of clippings about women artists. Then I became part of the Women’s Committee at ��ܽ��Ƶ; I’d never seen women like that before, they were fearless. It was a very impressive group.”

The committee pushed for the creation and staffing of a course about feminist art, and started Lifesize, a women’s film screening series, among many other activities. “It was a really interesting example of student activism, which is often the genesis of larger movements,” says Bociurkiw. “It all started at ��ܽ��Ƶ.”

Bociurkiw teaches Media Theory at Toronto Metropolitan University and has seen many students interact with feminism for the first time, often with trepidation. “As a professor I’m very motivated by my students who have not had sufficient exposure to feminist theory and art. I got that at ��ܽ��Ƶ, but that was a peak time of feminism,” she says. “I’m introducing students to what feminism actually is. They may have received a neoliberal framing of feminism, a la Barbie, et cetera. They also have these misconceptions that second-wave feminism was a white supremacist movement—there’s a grain of truth to that but they’re missing the women of colour who were leading the movement. It’s really important to correct the record. It’s an anguished form of sexism, the ways the younger generations have been taught to revile feminism.”

The film—which Bociurkiw says is not a historical document but “in dialogue with historical moments and different activists”—charts the likes of Studio D, the National Film Board’s women’s studio that produced dozens of documentaries between 1974 and 1996; the Halifax feminist newspaper Pandora’s fight against the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission; Our Lives, the first Black women’s newspaper in Canada (there are a lot of firsts in Analogue Revolution); and the venerable radio show Dykes on Mykes.

“A theme of the film is collectivity,” says Bociurkiw. “Sylvia Hamilton talks about how collectively�� decided to make their first film about Black women. There was collectivity, but there was also intersectionality, it wasn’t invented in the 21st century. It was part of the practice.”

The AIFF screening of will be followed by a Q&A with Bociurkiw, producer Éponine Young, and doc participants Jayne Wark, Sharon Fraser, and Sylvia D. Hamilton.

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Alumna Rhonda Rubinstein talks about a career in magazines, her new book, and environmental design

Andy Murdoch — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 22:46:00 +0000

Rhonda Rubinstein (BDes ‘83) spent the 1980s and 90s working as a designer and art director at the likes of Esquire, New York Magazine, and Mother Jones—a time when magazines were cultural signifiers, conversation starters, and a stable career choice. It was also a time when the hiring process ��ܽ��Ƶ began by dropping off a physical portfolio at the publication office of your choice on its designated day and picking it up the next—which is how one week before she was set to leave the city, when her ��ܽ��Ƶ exchange ended, Rubinstein wound up in the production department at New York. With the exception of a year working in Europe, she stayed in NYC for a dozen years before moving cross-country to work with the team behind Wired; now she is the Creative Director of the California Academy of Sciences, a science museum in San Francisco. Her new book Seeing It All: Women Photographers Expose Our Planet, “provides provocative perspectives on our relationship with the planet,” she says, “demonstrating what it will take to change our outlook and how photography can make a difference. Each of the 11 portfolios start with a statement that invites a different way of seeing the world.” It’s out September 1 and is available for pre-order.��

How did you end up at ��ܽ��Ƶ?��

I saw the power of design in high school in Montreal. I found a class called Mass Media, possibly inspired by Marshall McLuhan—it was film, animation, advertising, design, journalism. It just fascinated me: the possibility of combining imagery, writing, design, typography.��

My father took a job as head of the Biochemistry Department at Dalhousie as I was finishing Grade 11 and graduating high school. In Nova Scotia high school goes to Grade 12. I didn’t want to do another year of high school, but was too young to get into university, so I applied to ��ܽ��Ƶ.�� ܽ��Ƶ was more open-minded in terms of age requirements and, despite my minimal portfolio I was accepted. I was younger than most students, not even of drinking age. I still remember how tricky it was to get into Peddler’s Pub in those early years.��

I started at ��ܽ��Ƶ in 1979. The intro foundation class had thirty-some students and was taught by Tony Mann, an amazing teacher, who said ‘There are 30 of you in here and probably only 5 of you will graduate.’ It wasn’t a threat, it was just…this will be of interest for some, the rest of you will find different paths. And he was right, only a handful of us did graduate in Communication Design.��

What was it like working in New York during the golden age of magazines?��

It was exciting to be in the world’s media capital working on cultural stories that we thought were important. But I remember talking to someone at an industry event and saying that I had worked at Esquire during the golden age of magazines—they said ‘Oh with George Lois in the 60s?’ [laughs] I was somewhat offended that they thought I was that old. But the golden age is always 20 years behind you.

In George Lois’ time the art director had full reign over photo stories and conceptual covers, he convinced Andy Warhol to be seen drowning in a Campbell’s soup can. In the 90s when I was at Esquire, we used celebrities on covers to sell cultural ideas, but even then, the publicists oversaw the photo shoots and approved the cover selection. Still, there was some connection to the celebrity: ‘Robert Redford’s coming to the office to approve his cover!’�� And it was still part of the cultural conversation where larger news and cultural issues were of concern to more people. Everything is much more fragmented now and targeted specifically to you. That context was so much fun to design in, where you felt like you were part of the larger conversation.��

How did your environmental work start?��

When David Peters and I started design, one of our first clients was The Ocean Conservancy; we developed a new magazine for them, called Blue Planet. We had a mix of publishing and business clients. Then we were hired to be creative directors for World Environment Day held in San Francisco in 2005—the first (and last) time it was held in the US!�� The theme was Green Cities, as that year the population had shifted, and more people were now living in cities. There were hundreds of events happening that week—we had to produce a website, a printed event program, highway billboards, street banners, newspaper ads, and badges and official credentials for the visiting dignitaries— it was a huge, huge project. Al Gore was one of the speakers, still developing his slideshow of��An Inconvenient Truth. The transformation of the city and envisioning of what could be possible was the catalyst for me to want to work in that space.��

You’re unfortunately always going to have work in that sector. Where do you see the impact design can have on environmental issues?����

It’s tough. Right now, the problem is so interconnected and multifaceted and requires change at every level: government and industry and grassroots movements, in addition to what any individual can do. We are seeing the adverse effects of climate change every day (in the news). But I think about the impact design historically had on consumer culture— making products and ideas desirable to larger audiences. In the last half of last century, designers were proud of how they helped change perception (for businesses). Now I wonder whether design can make an alternative way of life and thinking just as desirable?��

Let’s talk about your writing and curatorial work. Have you always had an interest in photography, and does it usually intersect with your environmental interests?����

Yes, I have always had an interest in photography! When I was 12, I had a darkroom and wanted to become a photographer. And a significant part of my portfolio submission to ��ܽ��Ƶ was photography. But when I started there, I appreciated how design combined the powers of photography and writing and pursued those studies. Fast-forward: At the , I co-founded the — which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year! The idea is that photography is a unique medium for connecting people with the natural world. The intriguing photographs of wildlife and nature—and the conservation stories—really allow people to see what’s going on in the wilder world and get interested in animals and places they might not normally. More recently I collaborated with the Biosphere In Montreal— a museum of the environment— to produce a yearlong outdoor photographic exhibit on the theme of flow. showcases two great spectacles of nature playing out across the skies: icebergs in the Antarctic solstice and starling migrations in the English countryside.��

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Alumni Profiles Archives - ��ܽ����Ƶ

From clay to television: ��ܽ����Ƶ alumni Brendan Tang shares his journey in ceramics

The Vancouver-based artist and ceramist is a celebrity judge on �����’s The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown.

��ܽ����Ƶ University mourns the loss of Richard Serra, 1938-2024

From sneakers to clippers: a ��ܽ����Ƶ alumni’s resilience in the pursuit of art

��ܽ����Ƶ alumni, Kemmy Smith, shares his career shift from sneaker art to barbering, and the realities of trying to make it as an artist.