Emily Car University is proud to announce that Nadia Myre has been named to the Sobey Shortlist. A multi-disciplinary artist of Algonquin heritage, Nadia graduated from the University in 1997; she received her  MFA from Concordia in 2002.

For over a decade, Myre's practice has been inspired by participant involvement as well as recurring themes of identity, language, longing and loss. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, notably Pratt & Whitney Canada’s ‘Les Elles de l’art’ for the Conseil des arts de Montréal (2011), Quebec Arts Council’s Prix à la création artistique pour la region des Laurentides (2009), and a prestigious Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum (2003).

Created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, the Sobey Art Award is Canada's preeminent award for contemporary Canadian art. The annual $50,000 prize is given to an artist under 40 who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. 

An exhibition of work by shortlisted artists will be exhibited at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, opening November 1. The winner will be announced at a gala event, November 19, 2014.

Congratulations!

Shaira (SD) Holman ('92) is the recipient of a 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for her work as Co-founder/Artistic Director of Vancouver's Queer Arts Festival. 

The festival, now one of the fastest growing cultural festivals in Canada, was started by Holman seven years ago. She initally started Pride in Art (the name of the initial exhibition) because she felt there was nowhere else at the time for her to pursue art on identity.

The YWCA Women of Distinction Awards honours individuals and organizations whose outstanding activities and achievements contribute to the well-being and future of our community.

Holman plans to take a sabbatical year to focus on other projects.

We congratulate her on this wonderful achievement!

Alum Tiziana La Melia ('08), Gavin Lynch ('09), and Laura Piasta ('06)  have been selected as finalists for the prestigious RBC Canadian Painting Competition.

Established in 1999, the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, with the support of the Canadian Art Foundation, is a unique initiative to help nurture and support promising new artists in the early stages of their careers; a time when they need both recognition and financial support.

The competition will award a total of $55,000 in prize money with the winner receiving $25,000, and the two honourable mentions receiving $15,000 each. Works by both the winners and runners-up will be added to RBC’s permanent collection.

Emily Carr has a long history of successful recipients that include: 2013 Colleen Heslin ('03), 2011 Rebecca Brewer ('07); 2009 Brenda Draney ('09); 2008 Jeremy Hof ('08); 2007 Arabella Campbell ('02) and 2005 Etienne Zack ('00).

The winner and honourable mentions will be announced at a gala at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, October 1, 2014. An exhibition of the finalists’ paintings will also be displayed at the gallery between September 9 - October 8. And will then be on display at Art Toronto, October 23-27.

View the RBC Media Release. View the Canadian Art article.

Alumna Maia Rowan's ('13) KIDS + FOOD is a children's meal planning tray that encourages healthy eating and nutrition. And it's just been named a Student Notable by the Core 77 Design Awards!

Recognizing excellence in all areas of design enterprise, the Core 77 Design Awards celebrates the richness of the design profession and the brilliance of its practitioners.Both the Professional and Student Winners of each category will receive the C77DA trophy, and all Honorees will be published in the Awards Gallery and on Core77, making this the most inclusive and celebratory design awards platform of the digital age.

The tray contains five compartments, to encourage children to eat a variety of foods, in a variety of quantities and combinations that will help them discover how food affects their body. There are no specific signifiers of what types of food should go where, this is for the children to experiment with and decide for themselves. Using a combination of natural and synthetic materials the tray acts as both a functional object, and a learning platform.

Says Rowan, "In response to our growing disconnect with food and nutrition in North America, I developed my grad project to address the issue by engaging kids with food at an early age.

You can see more of Maia's work here. Congratulations Maia!

Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything is the first major museum exhibition of the artist’s work and will be presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 31 – September 1, 2014. Deftly capturing the spirit of the age—or, as the artist refers to it, “the 21^st century condition”—Douglas Coupland’s ideas are often encountered on the written page. But the themes he explores in his writing have appeared in his artwork as early as the 1980s when he was a student at the Emily Carr College of Art & Design, (Class of '84). In this survey of Coupland’s work, we encounter his incisive social analysis in a variety of forms including installation, painting, photography, prints, sculpture, quilts and wallpaper. His synthesis of contemporary events, popular culture, new technologies and art historical references―that range from the paintings of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven to the Pop sensibility of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein―resists an identifiable style. By incorporating everyday materials and objects and referencing images that have become culturally iconic, he probes the way that things, images and processes of contemporary life affect our understanding of the world around us.

The 2014 Biennale de Montréal will feature 50 artists and collectives from 22 countries including alumni Raymond Boisjoly ('06), Babak Golkar ('03), and Kevin Schmidt ('97).

The Biennale de Montréal is an international event focusing on the visual and media arts.This year, the Biennale formally joins forces with the  Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, forming a unique partnerships between the institutions. This first co-production will be part of the museum’s 50th anniversary celebrations and will take place October 22, 2014 - January 4, 2015 at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

Jason DaSilva's bio-pic, When I Walk,  makes its PBS premiere tonight, June 23!

After the broadcast, visit the When I Walk companion site to watch an extended interview with Jason, see what’s happened since the cameras stopped rolling, download a discussion guide and other viewing resources, find out how you can “make the world a more accessible place” with AXS Map, and ask the filmmakers about the film on Twitter on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (the day after broadcast) from 7 PM to 9 PM ET (4-6 PM PT).

Please check you local television station and cable company for the PBS station, channel and the exact time of screening.

Challenging traditional conventions in painting has established Colleen Heslin as an emerging leader in contemporary Canadian art. Known for her innovative textile-based methods, Heslin develops textures with ink and dye on second-hand fabrics, which upon inspection reveal themselves as collage-based, process-formed trompe l’oeil.

A 2003 graduate of Emily Carr, Heslin won the 2013 RBC Canadian Painting Competition.

Colleen Heslin: Outcasts and Shady Trees
At Monte Clark Gallery through July 5

View Robin Laurence's review in The Georgia Straight.

As part of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Geoffrey Farmer ('92) will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), July 5 - September 7, 2014.

"At some point in the middle of June, the working models and plaster originals that populate the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre will be lifted back into their original 1974 configuration. Unlike their bronze counterparts, these works are fragile and need the protection of a climate-controlled environment. When moved, they are at risk of forming fissures and cracks. They appear to me like figures resting in an infirmary, somewhat reminiscent of the skylit boneyard Moore created in his studio, which was the resting place for the shells, rocks and bones he collected.

Whatever you think about Moore's works, the works in this room feel different. Here they are not monumental: they are alien creatures huddled together, existing in a kabuki space."

–Geoffrey Farmer

For his project at the AGO, Farmer chose to work in the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, which houses the working models and plaster originals that Moore created by hand. These objects are remnants of Moore’s working process and were either scaled up or cast directly to create the monumental bronze works for which he is now most recognized. Moore had originally wanted London’s Tate Gallery to dedicate a new wing to this work, but when some of his former assistants – who had become sculptors in their own right – staged a letter-writing campaign against the project, Moore chose the AGO as the permanent site to house more than 900 of his works.

Patricia Huijnen (MAA '12) and Andres Wanner (MAA '13) present at the xCoAx conference on Computation Communication Aesthetics and X in Porto, Portugal.

Andres Wanner is presenting his works The Mixer, The Opener, and The Ventilator from the Machinic Trajectories series and a paper, Mechanical Drawing Machines and the Glitch — Visualizing Technology Through Its Failures.

Patricia Huijnen is presenting peristaltic tubes, a work that builds on her graduate work at Emily Carr,  and a paper in collaboration with Andres Wanner, Simulation of Patterns on Circular Knitted Tubes.

Follow Andres on Twitter for updates.

cloTHING(s) as conversation is an interdisciplinary research initiative founded by Associate Professor Hélène Day Fraser (MAA '08) and co-investigator Keith Doyle, Adjunct Research Associate.

The pair have been successful in securing a three-year Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to pursue this project which seeks to broaden contemporaryperspectives of the clothing we wear. Rather than limiting garments to creating statements, linked to who we wish to be, what we do, who we are, and where we feel we belong, they intend to explore the possibilities of clothing as conversation. 

Hélène and Keith’s intent is to disrupt a broad range of current assumptions connected to the garments we wear. Seeking to create empowering new platforms for interaction and organization pertaining to sustainability in the garment trade, social innovation and wearable technology, their research will explore alternate means of:

• thinking about the role of clothing (from statement to conversation);
• communication;  
• means of production and use.

To date the cloTHING(s) as conversationteam at Emily Carr University, made up of students, designers, artists, and engineers, has conducted a range of material and form studies, through weaving, unconventional clothing construction, 3D printing, and wearable circuits. In situ explorations of worn artifacts and vestiture in social spaces are key to this work.

Using conversation as a focal point provides a unique approach to design research that is relevant to sustainability in the garment trade, social innovation and developments in wearable technology. 

View cloTHING(s) Team Bios.

'13 alumna Sam Knopp is the Medalta Artist in Residence for Summer 2014.

Sam's graduation project, Celadon Stack, received both the Circle Craft Graduation Award for Ceramics, and the BMO 1st Art! Invitational Student Competition British Columbia Regional award. The latter included a cash prize and inclusion in the BMO 1st Art! 2013 Exhibition, held at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art from October 2 to 27, 2013, in Toronto.

Congratulations Sam!

Los Angeles-based artist and Emily Carr alumnus Etienne Zack ('00), recipient of the 2014 Emily Award for Outstanding Alumni, will speak about a new series of work as part of the second annual Flats Summer Block Party.

Equinox Gallery
Saturday, July 12, 2014, 12pm

Heather Mitchell ('13) will be installing her grad project so they called it, Rain Bench into the City of Vancouver’s Trillium North Park.

The Rain Bench has been a platform to experience Vancouver's Rain culture on spiritual, recreational and cultural levels. The Rain Bench is a participatory design project born out of public engagement sessions, Meetups, video interviews, natural capital research and urban wetland benefit assessments. The Rain Bench pushes the limits of Industrial Design to explore all aspects including form, emotion, social context and sustainability.

The Rain Bench was a community inspired project, in partnership with Emily Carr University, The David Suzuki Foundation and the Vancouver City Parks Board.

Dead­head is a large-scale sculp­tural instal­la­tion mounted to a barge and towed by tug to dif­fer­ent loca­tions along Vancouver’s water­ways. Cre­ated by alumnus Cedric Bom­ford ('03), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with his father Jim Bom­ford (retired engi­neer), and brother Nathan Bom­ford (artist/builder), the sculp­ture is con­structed pri­mar­ily from sal­vaged mate­ri­als, with some sec­tions wrapped in pho­to­graphic murals.

A curi­ous marine out­post, Deadhead’s enig­matic spaces are designed for pub­lic access. This float­ing art­work begins its life on the water with sum­mer moor­age in Her­itage Har­bour at the Van­cou­ver Mar­itime Museum from June 14 to Sep­tem­ber 2, 2014. For sched­uled pub­lic events, vis­i­tors will be fer­ried from the Museum dock to the barge so they can expe­ri­ence and explore the structure.

Deadhead’s life on the water is the cul­mi­na­tion of a num­ber of phases of devel­op­ment that unfolded over a three-year period. The art­work began in 2011 with research trips up the east coast of Van­cou­ver Island, Mal­colm Island and Alert Bay. The Bom­ford team’s sculp­tural vocab­u­lary was informed by the ver­nac­u­lar and pro­vi­sional archi­tec­tural expres­sions found in the resource camps and the sit­u­a­tions of the rural com­mu­ni­ties they vis­ited. Many of these local cul­tures evolved around fron­tier val­ues of indi­vid­u­al­ism and inno­va­tion inspir­ing myths and leg­ends about dreams being real­ized and selves rein­vented. For the Bom­fords there were impor­tant links to be made between utopian social exper­i­ments and the envi­ron­men­tal par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the west coast rain forest.

Dead­head is curated by Bar­bara Cole and is the cul­mi­nat­ing project of When the Hosts Come Home, a 3-part series fea­tur­ing artist teams that use recy­cled and repur­posed mate­ri­als to inves­ti­gate issues of sus­tain­abil­ity in rela­tion to Vancouver’s evolv­ing urbanity.

Wayward Arts is a home for the creative. A unique magazine, each issue is produced by a different leading-edge Canadian design studio. And, with the exception of the theme, there are no boundaries -- each studio is given full creative control.

Alumnus John Belisle ('94), Creative Director for Signals Design Group is at the helm of the latest issue. John and the creative team at Signals were invited to participate in the project when paper sponsor, Unisource Papers, suggested they'd be an ideal fit.

For the second season of Wayward Arts, each of the issues share the common theme of “obsession.”  Determined to tackle the obsessions theme in a creative way, John started by searching for examples of obsessions on the internet and quickly found that online obsession forums provide for some fascinating material. Right away, John realized that the content for the issue was already written – people confess their obsessions online about everything under the sun. The darker the subject, the more people want to confess. From there, it was a small leap to view today’s chat rooms as a 21st century version of the circus freak show. Initially, there were more than 30 confessions on a variety of subjects. Some of them, for example, the bearded lady, were very human stories of people reaching out to others. All confessions were anonymous, but subtle edits were made to protect the privacy of the online obsessors. John made the final selection based on the uniqueness and the length of each story.

As all the confessions were written, the decision was made to illustrate or photograph the confessions. Early on the creative team at Signals made the decision to work on some of the stories themselves but to also take the opportunity to work with illustrators and photographers they’ve always admired. This included working with other Emily Carr alumni Calef Brown and Ryan Heshka, (who are also currently teaching at the University). Signals decided to use a circus theme, a simple color palette and consistent type layout to bring the issue together. Another unique element of the magazine is that each issue features two special printing effects. One, a super gloss spot UV, was used to enhance some of the illustrations to give them a unique look and feel. The second, a Scratch and Sniff paper, which Signals used to full advantage -- the cover of this issue is popcorn-scented to bring home the circus theme!

At the end of the year, each season’s magazine will also be collected and bound, so be sure to check back with Wayward Arts for one of the most truly unique books on earth.

Holger Kalberg’s ('01) latest exhibition, THE FAMILY, explores the legacy of high Modernism and its related utopian models of thinking, presenting new paintings and sculptures that examine and critique modes of Modernist vocabulary.
 
Kalberg describes his own relationship with Modernism as “conflicted appreciation,” often engaging with the aesthetics of the mode while at the same time critiquing the model. The works presented in this exhibition follow Kalberg’s desire for a renewed reflection of Modernist formalism through an investigation into the artist's own studio practice, motivation, and early influences, especially Joseph Beuys and his socialist/utopian agenda.
 
Both the painting and sculptural works in the exhibition possess a handmade quality, contrary to regular aesthetics of Modernist formalism. The work demonstrates a self-referential language through the use of fragmentation and collage, appropriating a Modernist vocabulary and mixing it with elements of craft and hobby aesthetics (which reflect Kalberg’s own process-oriented research and practice.) In Kalberg’s paintings (pseudo-portraits each depicting one individual that the artist calls “composite or alter-ego portraits”), he utilizes craft and low-grade materials which reference Modernist utopian ideologies in the ‘60s and ‘70s that promoted societal change through individual action.
 
The sculptural objects included in the exhibition operate as models or props for a Modernist formalism that has been disconnected from its ideological ideals and has turned into a clichéd stylistic expression. The artist says,  
“The various pieces in the exhibition are assembled around a modular retail structure, which is motivated by Modernist design. The display structure acts as a platform or stage for the artworks to perform. The theatricality and starkness of the display sets up a dichotomy with the deliberately inexpensive materials used in the sculptural objects and paintings. All materials are readily available craft materials standing in for ‘proper sculptural’ materials. By creating a hybrid language of craft/design and commodity retail display, I set up a situation where the commodity art object that functions as the supplier for the audience’s desire for meaning, is at the same time resisting this very request. The objects on display are exposing a sense of ineffectiveness in their role as idolized art objects, due to the cheapness of materials and hand made characteristics of the sculptures and paintings. I am interested in creating works that could be described as being decorated with meaning by using easy-to-manipulate materials that seem to stand in for something other than what they are.”

Monte Clark Gallery
August 16 - September 13, 2014
Opening Reception | Saturday, August 16, 2-4pm

BMO Financial Group's 1st Art! Invitational Student Art Competition celebrates the creativity of art students from post-secondary institutions across Canada. Deans and instructors of undergraduate certificate, diploma, and degree programs in visual art are invited to select from their graduating classes three students, whose ability and imagination place them 1st among their peers. A distinguished selection committee chooses a national winner and one winner from each eligible province and territory.

Emily Carr is pleased to announce that 4th year student Isaac Thomas has been named the Regional Winner for British Columbia, for his photographic works, Alleyway Landscapes. Isaac takes home a $5,000 prize and will have his work featured in the 1st Art! 2014 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in October 2014.

Congratulations!

Alumna Maia Rowan's ('13) KIDS + FOOD is a children's meal planning tray that encourages healthy eating and nutrition. And it's just been named a Student Notable by the Core 77 Design Awards!

Recognizing excellence in all areas of design enterprise, the Core 77 Design Awards celebrates the richness of the design profession and the brilliance of its practitioners. Both the Professional and Student Winners of each category will receive the C77DA trophy, and all Honorees will be published in the Awards Gallery and on Core77, making this the most inclusive and celebratory design awards platform of the digital age.

The tray contains five compartments, to encourage children to eat a variety of foods, in a variety of quantities and combinations that will help them discover how food affects their body. There are no specific signifiers of what types of food should go where, this is for the children to experiment with and decide for themselves. Using a combination of natural and synthetic materials the tray acts as both a functional object, and a learning platform.

Says Rowan, "In response to our growing disconnect with food and nutrition in North America, I developed my grad project to address the issue by engaging kids with food at an early age.

You can see more of Maia's work here. Congratulations Maia!

In an ever growing landscape of pop-ups and shops, A Pop Up Affair was formed as a collective to try and shift the way new designers could collaborate and expose their work in Vancouver. A Pop-Up Affair is a collective of a designers and makers, whose nine founding members are all recent graduates from Emily Carr University.

They saw an opportunity in the design community to create engaging spaces that promote the work of young designers in Vancouver. Together they build spaces that promote and expose new design and creative conversations.

Currently the Vancouver Pop-up Affair collective are preparing for their inaugural event, Peep Show, which will be taking place from September 19 to 28, 2014, at MakerLabs.

Peep Show is an experience-based pop-up that brings education, design rationale and the creative process to the surface as a way to question contemporary modes of production and consumption.

The collective is currently looking for funding and support to help expand their project beyond the Peep Show. With hard work, and a help from the community, the collective will be able to put on speaker series, workshops, and other design/art pop-ups that allow new designers and makers to test out their ideas in a low risk environment.