What was one lesson you learned at ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ?

Paper doesn¡¯t carry well in the wind¡­

In all seriousness, it is hard to pinpoint a specific lesson when the most important things I learned were rather gradual. I can say that the degree is not the most important thing I am walking away from ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ with.

Do you have any advice for current students?

Don¡¯t take for granted the many like-minded, talented people that are around you at ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ. It is easy to keep your nose to the grindstone, but it is more likely that you will find the time to make work again in your life than it is to be surrounded by these many artists and fellow over-thinkers ever again. Ask questions. Initiate conversations. I have gotten some of the best advice in regards to art as well as life from my peers and mentors at ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

Could you speak to your approach to making art that is accessible and relatable through topic and materials and why that is so essential to your practice?

The post Meet our 2024 Valedictorian, Page Cowell appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

We are pleased to announce the appointment of? Professor? Jacqueline?Warwick as ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ University¡¯s new Dean, Academic. This is a full-time appointment for a 5-year term effective May 1, 2024.??

Dr. Warwick has been in the position of Interim Dean, Academic since August 2023. She is a Canadian musicologist (PhD UCLA, 2002) who came to Halifax for a position at Dalhousie in 2003. She served in leadership roles for more than half of her years at Dal, in the interdisciplinary Gender & Women¡¯s Studies program, the MA program in Musicology, and as the inaugural Director of the Fountain School of Performing Arts. In this last position, she oversaw the merging of Dal¡¯s departments of Music and Theatre, the development of new curriculum, and fundraising for the Strug Concert Hall and Costume Studies suite in the recently opened Arts Centre expansion. She continues to be an active researcher and writer and is currently working on a book about child prodigies in music for Oxford University Press.?

¡°My year as ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ¡¯s interim dean has been highly rewarding, and I feel positive about the challenges and opportunities ahead,¡± says Warwick. ¡°ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ has been a beacon in art education through my whole life, and it¡¯s exciting to join this vibrant, creative, and brilliant community.¡±?

¡°Jacqueline has been invaluable in her role as interim dean over the last year and I am so pleased that she will be joining us in this permanent role. She will be an essential member of our senior leadership team. It is a time of much anticipated institutional growth as we move toward a consolidated campus at the Halifax Seaport over the next 6 years,¡± says Dr. Peggy Shannon.?

The post Professor?Jacqueline?Warwick appointed new Dean, Academic appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ University will give groundbreaking artist Laurie Anderson an honorary degree at its May 14 convocation ceremony.?

During her visit to ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ, Anderson has a busy schedule. On May 13, she will give an artist talk to the ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ community, meet with ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ Student Art Award Finalists, and attend the Graduate Exhibition closing reception at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. On May 14, Anderson will deliver a convocation address to graduating students on the day.?

¡°We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Laurie Anderson to ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ University. The last time she spoke here was in 1977. We are grateful to have this opportunity to formally recognize the incredible achievements of her ground-breaking career. Our students will benefit from her insights and advice,¡± says President Peggy Shannon.??

Anderson is a writer, director, composer, visual?artist,?musician and vocalist whose works span the worlds of art, theater, experimental music, and technology. Her recording career was launched by O Superman in 1981.??

Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to expansive multimedia stage performances such as?the eight-hour United States (1982), Empty Places (1990), Songs and Stories from Moby Dick?(1999), and Delusion (2010). In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance?The End of the Moon.??

Anderson had created numerous audio-visual installations as well as films- the feature film?Home of the Brave?(1986), Carmen (1992), and Hidden Inside Mountains (2005).?? Her film? Heart of a Dog?(2015) was chosen as an official selection of the 2015 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.?

?In the same year, her exhibition?Habeas Corpus?opened at the Park Avenue Armory to wide critical acclaim and in 2016 she was the recipient of Yoko Ono¡¯s Courage Award for the Arts for that project.??

As a performer and musician, she has collaborated with many people including Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, William S. Burroughs, Peter Gabriel, Robert Wilson, Christian McBride and Philip Glass.?

Her works for quartets and orchestras, Songs for Amelia (2001), has been played in festivals and concert halls around the world and she has invented a series of instruments and electronic sculptures.?

Anderson has published ten books and been nominated for five Grammys throughout her recording career with Warner Records and Nonesuch. She released Landfall, a collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, which received a Grammy award in 2018.?

As a composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme, dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, and scores for theater productions including plays by Robert LePage. She has created pieces for National Public Radio, France Culture and the BBC. She has curated several large festivals including the Vivid Festival in Sydney (2010) and the Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London (1997).?

Her visual work has been featured in many galleries and museums including in 2003, the Mus¨¦e d’art contemporain de Lyon in France produced a touring retrospective of her work entitled The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson.? In 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in S?o Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janeiro.?Anderson¡¯s largest solo exhibition at The Smithsonian’s?Hirshhorn?Museum in Washington D.C., titled?The Weather?(2021-2022), showcased the artist¡¯s storytelling process ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ through her work in video, performance, installation, painting, and other media.?

Her visual work is on long term display at MASS MoCA and her three virtual reality works, Chalkroom, Aloft, and To The Moon, collaborations with the artist Hsin-Chien Huang, won several awards including Best VR Experience at the 74th Venice International Film Festival in 2017 and were featured in the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.?

A retrospective of her work opened in 2023 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.?

She has received numerous honorary doctorates, prizes and awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship, Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the Wolf Prize. In 2024 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy.?

In 2021 she served as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University and delivered the Norton lectures as video, now available online. She has worked on numerous projects in AI with the Machine Learning Institute in Adelaide, Australia where she was artist in residence in 2020. Anderson continues to tour her evolving performance?The Art of Falling and is working on an opera, ARK, commissioned by the Manchester International Festival, premiering in 2024.??

Her life partner as well as her collaborator was Lou Reed from 1992 onward. They married in 2008 and worked on numerous projects together until his death in 2013. Anderson lives in New York City.??

The post Laurie Anderson?to receive an honorary degree from ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

Right photo: ‘Lily’ is a bronze sculpture mounted onto an antique table. It depicts the flowers, leaves, stems, bulbs and roots of the plant.
Credit: Sarah Maloney.

Can you tell us more about the art works in your Pleasure Ground exhibition?

The artworks were created over the course of 30 years; the first piece was made in 1993 when I was in grad school, and the last ones were made in 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Initially, my research was about the body and how the body has been represented historically. So, you’ll see knitted bones, knitted brains, beaded skins, and embroidered bodies in this exhibition. But then there was a transitional period, when I was an artist in residence at the Memory Disability Clinic at the Camp Hill Veterans Memorial Hospital. During that year, I looked through historical medical illustrations and found drawings of body parts, and how they’d been rendered looked much like botanical forms.

So, I started to play with that dichotomy of forms repeating in nature: how cells grow, how bodies are built, and how plants are built. From there, I took a leap to work with only flowers and used floral forms to stand in for the body. At first, I didn¡¯t trust it because drawing flowers were always considered feminine; even the plants themselves had feminine Greek or Latin names. However, it gave me the inspiration to make ¡®Collapse,¡¯ which talks about many things including, notions of women¡¯s hysteria.

What is the feminism aspect of your work?

A lot of my work has important historical references and look into issues of the domestic space. What I¡¯ve seen over the years from my time as a teacher is we tend to have a majority of female or female-presenting students in art schools. But then you look at the art world and the market where the expensive stuff is in terms of collections, galleries, auctions, and dealers, and all of that is still male-dominated.

There’s this sense that the kind of work-life balance that most women achieve as artists, takes them out of that kind of high-end competition. But then we need to ask ourselves, who’s controlling the money and who’s buying those things. For me, the feminism of all of this is trying to understand the role women have had, continue to have, and may have in the future when it comes to art.

Do you have any words of advice to young and emerging female artists out there?

Make what you believe in. Keep working and be committed to your work. You can¡¯t try to second-guess what the market is looking for or what curators want, you just have to believe in your vision and work at it. Be rigorous, get feedback, talk to people and apply for everything, but you really just have to put in the work.

—

Sarah Maloney¡¯s Pleasure Ground: A Feminist Take on the Natural World is currently exhibited at the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, until June 1, 2024. To see more of her work, .

The post Nature and feminism come together in Sarah Maloney¡¯s botanical artworks appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ University has received its largest gift from a donor outside Atlantic Canada: $936,050 from Toronto¡¯s Dalglish Family Foundation, which will provide materials for student projects, enhance visiting artist programming, and purchase new photography equipment.

This is a first-time gift to ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ from the Dalglish Family Foundation. The Foundation’s directors recognized ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ as an ideal recipient due to the family’s longstanding commitment to the arts as both practitioners and patrons.

¡°The Dalglish family is delighted to support ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ University and their work fostering creative thinking and education in Atlantic Canada. Our family has long believed in art as a driver for joy and expression in the Canadian psyche and the students graduating here will have beneficial impacts on our entire country.¡±

The gift supports three programs and initiatives that will greatly enhance the student experience at ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ. The Dalglish Family Foundation has funded the Photography Equipment Fund ($361,050), the Thesis Project Fund ($250,000), and the Visiting Artist Fund ($325,000).

Erinn Langille, the director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery, says this donation will open doors to a robust catalogue of visiting artists and speakers to the university.

¡°These individuals supply fresh ideas, perspectives, and techniques to students, the wider ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ community, and the region at large,¡± she says. ¡°The generous donation by the Dalglish Family Foundation will have a massive impact on our ability to bring in the brightest and best minds, working at the top of their fields. With this gift, we can strengthen our connection to the wider world of contemporary ideas, solidifying ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ as a fountain of art and culture.¡±

The Thesis Project Materials Fund will be available to undergraduate students with financial need to purchase materials and supplies to complete their final projects. The Fund will support approximately 50 students with an average grant of $1,000 per year. Over the course of five years, up to 250 graduating students will benefit from the Fund.

¡°This generous donation marks a new chapter in nurturing young talent and the advancement of creative work in the ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ art community,¡± says Jana Macalik, ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ¡¯s provost and interim vice-president for academics and research. ¡°It not only demonstrates the Foundation’s commitment to developing the future generation of artists, but it also considerably improves our potential to recruit exceptional students who want to push the boundaries of art practice.

¡°The Dalglish Family Foundation is investing in the future of art by allowing our students to explore, create, and contribute to the art world without financial restraints,¡± she continues. ¡°We look forward to sharing student success stories with the Dalglish Family Foundation for years to come.¡±

Noelle Peach, director of teaching and learning, says the Photography Equipment Fund will go a long way to ensure students have access to high-quality equipment and maintaining photography facilities at the university.

“We are very excited and grateful for the opportunities this equipment fund will afford in both augmenting classroom curriculum and individual photo practice,¡± she says. ¡°Photography requires both old and new technologies to realize conceptual work, and the Dalglish Family Foundation gift will provide an extraordinary opportunity for nearly any concept to be realized by our students. The Photography program serves not only students within the program, but also a wide cross-section of students exploring multi-disciplinary practices, and students needing to document and archive work completed in other disciplines. The impact of this gift will be felt across the university.¡±

With this generous donation, young and emerging artists from ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ will not only receive a financial boost but also invaluable support to help them lay a solid foundation for their artistic careers, says ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ President, Peggy Shannon. This will empower them to explore their creative potential and contribute meaningfully to our artistic landscape.

¡°I want to extend my sincere gratitude to the Dalglish Family Foundation for this support,¡± Shannon continues. ¡°I am thrilled that this investment will have such an immediate and significant impact on our students, faculty, and staff.¡±

The post $936,050 donation from the Dalglish Family Foundation will have an immediate, transformational impact at ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

JJ Lee was born and raised in Halifax, N.S., to parents who immigrated from China and Hong Kong.?Through mixed-media paintings and drawing installations, Lee explores the hyphen between identities and representations that result from colonization and immigration. For over 30 years, she has exhibited in public institutions and artist-run centers across the country, winning multiple grants and awards, both for her individual work and The Drawing Board collective. Lee won the top award for the Print Category from the Canadian Ethnic Media association for her work featured in Canada¡¯s History Magazine in 2023.

JJ Lee is an Associate Professor, Contemporary Issues of Representation at OCAD University in Toronto. In 2022, she received OCAD University¡¯s Price Teaching Excellence Award. She is currently Acting Chair, Contemporary Drawing and Painting program. Lee is represented by Prow Gallery in Halifax, N.S., and Gallery on Queen in Fredericton, N.B.

Website: /

Instagram: ?

OCADU profile:

The post JJ Lee to deliver guest lecture on March 6 appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

Cheryl L¡¯Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and singer/songwriter whose family roots are from Treaty Six: Papaschase First Nation / amiskwaciy w¨¡skahikan (aka the city of Edmonton) and Kikino Metis Settlement, AB.

Her work investigates and articulates a dynamism of n¨¥hiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place incorporating Indigenous language(s), music, audio, video, VR, sewn objects, the olfactory, audience/user participation and community engagement to create immersive environments towards ¡®radical inclusion¡¯ and decolonisation. As a singer-songwriter, she focuses on Indigenous language sound shapes and contemporary song-forms as methodologies toward survivance.

Cheryl was awarded two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards (2005 & 2006) and two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (2006 & 2007 as part of M¡¯Girl) and is a recipient of the 2021 Governor General¡¯s Award in Visual and Media Art. She also exhibits, performs and presents nationally and internationally, and is currently a PhD candidate with SMARTlab at University College Dublin.

The post Artist Cheryl L¡¯Hirondelle’s public lecture and studio visits appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

The post ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ announces the Price Awards for Excellence in Teaching appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

For over 40 years, James MacSwain has been a touchstone in the local filmmaking community through the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, the Centre for Art Tapes, and as an animation instructor at ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ. His body of work is comprised of short experimental animation, often narrated (and sung) by the filmmaker, exploring tenets of life as a gay man (though an iconic Halifax resident, he was born in Amherst) with irreverent humour, surprising poignancy, and a delicious edge.

Since 2014, artist (and ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ instructor) Eryn Foster and filmmaker Sue Johnson have been filming MacSwain at home, on his annual visit to the Bay of Fundy, making art, and in his life. The result is Celestial Queer, making its world premiere at the on September 18. ¡°He¡¯s such an iconic person. His work is so unique,¡± says Foster from her home in Dartmouth. ¡°I was asking everyone I knew who was a filmmaker: ¡®You should make a documentary about Jim!¡¯. And a lot of people wanted to but had too many things on the go, you know how it is. Then I thought, maybe I¡¯ll do it, even though I had no experience in film.¡±

A biopic that shows James MacSwain's many lives: creative, activist, social, and domestic

Foster connected with Johnson, another Halifax arts worker¡ªthey¡¯d worked with MacSwain at Centre For Art Tapes while Foster ran Eyelevel Gallery¡ªand they began what would become a decade-long process ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ of shooting, cobbling together grants for production and post, and tweaking the edit. (Their subject was game: ¡°Once your ego¡¯s involved,¡± says MacSwain, ¡°you have to do it.¡±)

¡°Essentially it¡¯s a biopic,¡± says Johnson from Toronto, where they teach in the Cinema and Media Arts program at York University. ¡°But that immediately makes people think of the History Channel¡ªin terms of how memoir or bio is usually structured, often there¡¯s this start of ¡®he was born in this year¡¯ and we don¡¯t really do that at all. We always envisioned it as a verit¨¦ space. There are certainly details about Jim¡¯s life in there that you learn but it¡¯s how that life has shaped perspective and artistic sensibility that we¡¯re interested in.¡±

MacSwain stopped making films a few years back in favour of visual art; the documentary also offered a chance to track that arc. ¡°I wanted to translate my retirement into something softer,¡± he says from his Dartmouth home. ¡°A softer vision of whatever I wanted to do creatively.¡±

¡°Both Sue and I felt from the very beginning a great sense of responsibility to present the life of Jim in a way that would not only speak to who he is as a person, which is obviously a very dynamic human being who has lots of parts to himself,¡± says Foster. ¡°But his creative life also has all these different parts and pieces, and his activist life, and his social life, and his domestic life¡ªthere are so many things that make up this person in front of us on the screen.¡±

¡°I also felt like because of our [pre-existing] relationship, throughout the filming process ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ we were always, in a way, on the same page,¡± adds Johnson. ¡°It can always happen but I wasn¡¯t as worried about it. I feel like because of the footage we were getting back, and it felt like how Jim is, I wasn¡¯t worried.¡±

'Jim [is] a model for all the possibilities, all of the things that ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ attempts to and wants to represent as an institution.'

The post Celestial Queer, a film about ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ instructor James MacSwain, debuts at AIFF appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

Building on a pilot study completed last year, this enables Green to spend the next two years travelling the province in a converted cargo van to demonstrate flax growing from seeding to process ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵing with farmers and craftspeople.??

Green¡¯s primary aim for the Flaxmobile project is to create sustainable economies of scale to support a local supply of wool and linen in the province. By entwining growers and makers, she hopes to create solutions that can be carried out in harmony with the land and in collaboration with local communities.?

Her research team, along with farmers and local fibre process ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵor , will explore how this plant source for linen could support jobs, create new markets, and improve resilience in regional resource-based industries.?

“This research project supports the economic potential of rural Nova Scotia,¡± says Stefan Leslie, CEO of Research Nova Scotia. ¡°The Flaxmobile project combines traditional craft practices and agricultural research developments to explore new opportunities for our province¡¯s sustainable bioeconomy.¡±

Citizen Scientists gathering data on flax growing across Mi¡¯kma¡¯ki

Green and her research team will work with 15 farmers and craftspeople around Nova Scotia from Caledonia on the south shore to the Margaree Valley of Cape Breton. She believes that closer relationships between farmers and craftspeople will become a source of valuable skill and knowledge for collective survival and sustainable futures.?

¡°For most of the farmers, this is their first time learning how to grow fibre flax. We’re working together every step of the way, from planting through to weeding, harvesting, retting, rippling, breaking, scutching and hackling. The farmers will have an experience of growing flax and collaborating directly with a textile maker, so that they’re able to scale-up production and have a market for their fibres in years to come,¡± says Green.??

Working with a diverse group of farmers from around the province also enables Green to gather data on soil types, textures, humidity, rainfall, and temperature at each of these locations.??

¡°It allows me to work alongside farmers as citizen scientists to gather data and re-establish knowledge of flax growing locally, which over the past two generations has been lost.¡±?

Collaborating with Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design to lead systems change

In parallel with her fieldwork, Green will partner with researchers Rhonda Ferguson and Bailee Higgins (BFA 2022) at the (CBCCD) to explore how place-based methodologies might address issues of decolonization, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our communities and through our cultural outputs.??

¡°This grant represents the first collaboration of its kind between ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ and the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design, and I am thrilled to be working with them,¡± says Green.??

Working with the CBCCD team, she will hire student assistants, graphic designers, photographers, and digital illustrators, to apply systems and transition design thinking to develop the craft sector as they explore the capacity for increased raw fibre production.??

¡°Partnerships of this kind build bridges around the province and are essential if we want to address larger systems change,¡± she says.???

Building a critical mass of farmers to create a consistent supply of high-quality materials

One of the issues that craftspeople face is the difficulty in sourcing quality textile materials locally. This makes it challenging to be both economically viable and sustainable as a craftsperson, Green explains.?

As a professor, Green sees many students who want to transition to more sustainable textile and fashion practices, but at present, there is no established network for them to access local wool, linen, hemp, or natural dyes.??

¡°Hopefully, in 10 years, a weaver would not need to concern themselves with this problem. We would have networks and an industry in place to access local materials,¡± Green says.???

¡°The work we are engaged in now, with other key partners in the province such as TapRoot Farms, is to build a critical mass of growers to create a consistent supply of high-quality materials.¡±??

Long-term plan to grow this sector in a holistic and sustainable way

The project has many deliverables, which Green believes are essential to growing the sector in a holistic and sustainable way.???

They will publish a grower¡¯s guide for fibre flax to enable flax cultivation at the community level; create new materials, products, and markets by engaging craftspeople in the transformation of flax into linen textiles and garments; explore flax by-products in natural home building materials; and they will carry out supply chain mapping to visualize the textile ecologies that currently exist across the region.??

¡°Looking to the future, I see this as a long-term project that I plan to stay a part of until there is enough momentum, and it becomes self-sustaining. After that, it can take off without extra help,¡± says Green.??

Follow Associate Professor Jennifer Green¡¯s project on Instagram or on ?

Learn more about ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ¡¯s BFA in Textiles/Fashion.???

The post ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ Professor Jennifer Green¡¯s Flaxmobile project receives support from Research Nova Scotia appeared first on ÅÝܽ¶ÌÊÓƵ.