Alumni 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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Artist Talk with Claire Greenshaw on March 27

Sarah Poko — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 17:16:37 +0000

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

2 p.m.

Bell Auditorium D-440

Host: Erica Mendritzki

About the artist:

Claire Greenshaw is a visual artist and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Visual Arts at York University, where her creative research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Her artwork focuses on drawing, the circulation of images and the experience of time under late capitalism and the Anthropocene. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax) and Master of Fine Arts from the Glasgow School of Art.

Select exhibitions include two seven two (Toronto), Minuseins (Vienna), Griffin Art Projects (Vancouver), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), The Power Plant (Toronto) and Royal Standard (Liverpool) amongst many other presentations across Canada, the USA, UK and Europe.

Website:

Instagram: ��

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��ܽ��Ƶ student screens their film at Rencontres Internationales Traverse in France

Sarah Poko — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 17:48:10 +0000

��ܽ��Ƶ film student Kate Solar’s travelogue footage is an ode to her time in Greece

Stills from Kate Solar’s short film, Somewhere Real. Solar uses footage from her time in Greece that is superimposed with poetic narration that moves across the screen. Courtesy: Kate Solar

Animated text, poetic narration, and manipulated footage of the Aegean Sea comprise Kate Solar’s , a five-minute short film that takes her to Toulouse, France, this week. The experimental travelogue is screening in the , which has been celebrating and showcasing experimental cinema and video art for more than two decades.

Solar, who graduates from ��ܽ��Ƶ’s Film program in May, spent three weeks last summer on the Isle of Hydra in Greece as part of a ��ܽ��Ƶ cohort at .

“It was an opportunity to make work in response to this place”,” says Solar, who brought along a mirrorless digital camera, to record her time there. “It was very difficult to find a way to document or reflect upon the experience. It’s so straightforwardly beautiful there — almost like a desktop wallpaper. It’s hard to be faced with so much pure beauty when you’re trying to make something from it.”

Somewhere Real does incorporate some of that footage — transferred to 16mm film with an Oxberry animation camera, which distorts the ocean handsomely — but in making the film, Solar found herself leaning on writing instead of visuals.

“I was consistently keeping a journal while I was there,” she says. “I was thinking about some of the images and experiences that stuck out to me and could not be captured by a camera — going to the beach and swimming in the ocean at night would be unfilmable.

“The kind of surrealness of travel in general and being somewhere for a brief period of time and trying to capture that feeling. I decided I wasn’t going to make something driven by footage. But I had this text,” she continues.

Solar’s poetic narration about an evening at the beach and the thoughts it sparked, drives the short as select pieces of Courier text fall in and out of view, moving across the frame in waves of disordered, flipped-around letters, animated with the Oxberry.

“My initial plan was to do direct animation, scratching/painting on the film strip, to accompany the whole text,” says Solar. “Sol Nagler, my faculty advisor, suggested I pay attention to the resonance of the text itself, and the interaction between text and landscape. I printed all my text onto transparency and did stop-motion with the letters and words.”��

Somewhere Real screens on March 14 at Traverse in a from Argentina, Italy, and Belgium. Though just five days long, it packs in installations, screenings, and performances from all over the world.

“I feel like I’ve not been so immersed in or seen as much experimental film as I will see there,” says Solar. “I’m excited.”

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NOW.HERE.THIS., the improvisational music film that remixes itself each time you stream it

Sarah Poko — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:27:33 +0000

Using randomized algorithms, this performance documentary by a ��ܽ��Ƶ instructor showcases compositions from six local composers

An ambitious new music documentary by Christopher Spencer-Lowe, a part-time instructor in ��ܽ��Ƶ University’s Film program, features six new compositions by Nova Scotian composers – but viewers can never watch the same film twice.

Using chance and randomizing algorithms to create a unique cinematic experience each time it streams, presents musical performance through an aleatoric (or semi-randomized) process ��ܽ��Ƶ. Spencer-Lowe says it is a celebration of improvisational form and its philosophy.��

“Cinema is literally built around the idea that you have an unchanging thing you can show at the end of all the work,” said Spencer-Lowe. “For NOW.HERE.THIS., I had to both imagine and plan for what image and sound could end up together, and yet surrender control over that to a greater degree than I was comfortable with. But that was the point of the whole idea: surrendering, listening, and approaching the work from an improvisational perspective.”

NOW.HERE.THIS.��premiered at Halifax’s in January 2024, and was developed and funded primarily through the . The project also got additional funding from Arts Nova Scotia and The Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage.

NOW.HERE.THIS was created in collaboration with , a Halifax-based organization that produces new concerts, workshops, and symposia with local and international performers and ensembles. It was Upstream’s artistic director, Lukas Pearse, who suggested the initial idea to Spencer-Lowe and worked as the project’s producer.

A year in the making,��NOW.HERE.THIS.��features contributions from a diverse selection of musicians. Including composer and Dalhousie University composition teacher Amy Brandon; award-winning cellist India Gailey (with New Hermitage); guitarist and educator Geordie Haley; musicologist and researcher Mohammed Sahraei; multi-media artist and storyteller Alan Syliboy (with the Thundermakers); and guitarist/improviser Samantha Wilson.

“I had been trying out randomizing techniques in my filmmaking process ��ܽ��Ƶ for quite a while,” said Spencer-Lowe, who is familiar with music’s long history of aleatoric practices and explored similar methods in his 2017 short film, Aleatoria.

John Cage, the American avant-garde composer, brought this process ��ܽ��Ƶ into the concert hall; while the English pop and ambient composer Brian Eno would literally draw from a deck of “Oblique Strategies” cards to determine the music’s direction. The short and often absurdist instructions, drawn at random, would force the creative process ��ܽ��Ƶ onto unexpected paths.

Spencer-Lowe wanted to bring these techniques into a cinematic context and created NOW.HERE.THIS., using multiple angles and cameras in varying states of movement or stasis. The recorded performance footage was further randomized through a streaming-based algorithm, with all of it combining to allow each new viewer to experience what appears to be a completely unique space. Haley’s Beams��was the second and most ambitious of the six performances: three moving cameras, two static cameras, and an array of on-camera lighting tubes were used to achieve its effects.

Though the film has been submitted to a distributor, Spencer-Lowe acknowledges that the online-only nature of the project is uncharted territory for him.

“Normally, when I make a film, I’m at a screening and I get to see how it goes over, I get to talk to people afterward,” he said. “I’m still thinking about how to best deal with something that people will experience mostly in their home. I think we need to find ways to reiterate it��—��maybe do live stuff. Installations would work really well, depending on the venue.”

Despite the ephemeral nature of a web-based experience, it’s this same ephemerality that gives the project a feeling of community, as though the filmmakers, performers, and audience are in conversation.

“The thing about making work and doing it in a way that’s very community-oriented, from its conception through to its application and all the way through to its delivery, vis-à-vis having it up there for free, is that not only can people see it any time they want, but they can also see it in multiple different ways — which is the strength of the magic of the piece,” said Spencer-Lowe.

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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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Nine artists with ��ܽ��Ƶ connections to present at Collect International Art Fair

Sarah Poko — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 19:14:15 +0000

London-based art fair showcases museum-quality, handcrafted artworks from the world’s top talent.

UPDATE March 13, 2024: The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, has agreed to acquire a piece by Professor Kye-Yeon Son entitled Innatus Forma 2022-1. The acquisition will be completed by May 2024.��

For the first time ever, a group of 18 Canadian craft artists will present their work at the Collect Art Fair in the U.K., as part of a curated exhibition by Craft Alliance Atlantic.

Organized by the U.K. Craft Council, the is one of the leading international fairs for contemporary craft and design. Running from Feb. 28 to March 3, more than 40 galleries will present artists at the fair, which attracts top curators, collectors and artisans from around the world. ��

Among the 18 independent artists selected by Craft Alliance Atlantic to present at the prestigious exhibition, nine of them have connections to ��ܽ��Ƶ: namely, Professor Kye-Yeon Son; Associate Professor Rebecca Hannon; Pam Ritchie, professor emeritus, BFA 1975, MFA 1982; Sorrel Van Allen, BFA 2020; and Mengnan Qu, BFA 2008; Nancy Oakley, 1998-1999; Heather Pitts, BFA and BA 1983; Brigitte Clavette, BFA 1980; and Rilla Marshall, BFA 2004.��

SHOWCASING ATLANTIC CANADIAN CRAFT

Bernard Burton, executive director of the Craft Alliance Atlantic, says that the mission to Collect Open is a huge opportunity to raise the profile of contemporary craft in Atlantic Canada to an international audience.

“Craftspeople can sell their work there, but there is an even bigger opportunity to meet with curators, and collectors, where they have a chance be represented by international galleries or have their work added to contemporary craft collection at museums in the U.K. and Europe,” he says.��

Craft Alliance Atlantic held its call for entry in Spring 2023, which received over 50 submissions. A curatorial committee from Atlantic Canada chose 23 contemporary makers to the Collect Art Fair jury, which was then narrowed to 18 selected artists.�� From those, 15 artists will travel to London for the event.

“The Craft Alliance Atlantic always tries to create opportunities for craft artists in Atlantic Canada to be presented and exposed to a wider audience,” says Kye-Yeon Son. “They always try to educate the world about craft artists and their works, and I am really grateful for that.”

Artwork by Darran Emeneau

Artwork by Jessie Fraser

Artwork by Gordon Sparks

Artwork by Anna Torma

Artwork by Sorrel Van Allen

Artwork by Shane Perley Dutcher

Artwork by Rebecca Hannon

Artwork by Nancy Oakley

Artwork by Brigitte Clavette

Artwork by Mengnan Qu

Artwork by Judy Blake

Artwork by Kye-Yeon Son

Some of the artworks on display at the 2024 Collect International Art Fair

PARTICIPATING AT THE COLLECT OPEN��

Out of the 18 artists selected, only one Nova Scotian artist will exhibit their work at the Collect Open, an exclusive curated exhibition within the Collect Art Fair. Son was selected by Collect for the Open.

“I am extremely privileged to have been selected,” Son says. “The Collect Open is an international affair, where important and famous artists come and display their works. I am very delighted.”��

Kye-Yeon Son attended the Collect Open 2000 art fair as part of a Craft Alliance educational mission, and remembers being blown away by the caliber of art displayed at the event.

“The scope of work exhibited there was a real eye-opener for me,” she says. “From then on, I really wanted to show my work there.”

For this year’s Collect Open, she had to create seven to eight pieces of metalwork to display at the show. Her combines the delicacy of nature and the beauty of resilience in harsh times.��

Son will exhibit a series of works, titled ‘’ inspired by the movement of tall grasses in the breeze.

“Manipulating the physical and visual characteristics of fine steel metal wire allows me to explore various delicate structures, interplaying between positive and negative spaces, while creating volume, textures, space, colour, light and shadow in this form,” she says. “Silver and gold plating were employed for colouring to express the beauty of nature. I hope this piece speaks to the beauty of endurance and harmonious survival in their environment.”

Each piece takes Son about three months to complete, depending on its size and complexity – all done while she teaches full-time at ��ܽ��Ƶ.

Her advice to students and other emerging artists is to stay true to their work and not be afraid to experiment.

“It is only through experimentation that you can develop your own voice as an artist,” says Son. ��

You can learn more about Professor Kye-Yon Son and the Jewellery Design and Metalsmithing program at ��ܽ��Ƶ here.

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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

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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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Alumni 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.