News

  • Donna Akrey – Also Also

    Curated by Marcie Bronson
    February 11 to April 30, 2017
    Opening Reception: Saturday, February 11, 3 pm
    HOT TALK: Thursday, March 2, 7 pm. Donna Akrey in conversation with Marcie Bronson
    Rodman Hall Art Centre, 106 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines
    Admission to the gallery is by donation ($5 suggested)
    Gallery Hours: Tues. – Fri. 10 am – 5 pm, Sat. – Sun. 12 pm – 5 pm

    Donna Akrey is interested in how habit shapes the way we experience and engage with the world around us. Rooted in her astute observation of patterns of communication and consumption, her work humorously intervenes to raise discussion about social and environmental issues, often responding directly to a particular site or community. Using common, surplus, and discarded materials to construct sculptures and installations that she describes as “ruminations on the spectacle of the unspectacular”, Akrey draws attention to the futility of the notion of “the ultimate” and the richness in the space between intention and result. Akrey explains: “I imagine the absurd as real, because sometimes the real is so absurd.” Alongside selected works from the last 15 years of her practice, this exhibition presents a site-specific outdoor installation created in collaboration with neighbourhood residents.

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    Categories: Events

  • A Sublime Vernacular – The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug

    Curated by Nancy Tousley and Peter White
    Organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Grande Prairie, Alberta

    January 28 to March 12, 2017

    Opening Reception: Saturday, February 11, 3 pm

    Rodman Hall Art Centre, 106 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines
    Admission to the gallery is by donation ($5 suggested)
    Gallery Hours: Tues. – Fri. 10 am – 5 pm, Sat. – Sun. 12 pm – 5 pm

    HOT TALK: Saturday, February 11, 2 pm
    Wayne Morgan and Sharilyn J. Ingram, “Making Art for the Market: Flexhaug in Context”

    A Sublime Vernacular offers the first overview of the extraordinary career of Levine Flexhaug (1918-1974), an itinerant painter who sold thousands of variations of essentially the same landscape painting in national parks, resorts, department stores and bars across western Canada from the late 1930s through the early 1960s. Whatever its variation, a Flexhaug image represents a Western icon, a silent unspoiled Eden that encapsulates the conventions of sublime landscape painting in a kind of painter’s shorthand, and offers a point of entry for consideration of significant critical questions ranging from issues of taste, originality versus repetition in art, the appeal of landscape and its iconography.

    Image: Levine Flexhaug, Untitled (Mountain lake with deer) (detail), nd. Collection of Wayne Morgan and Sharilyn J. Ingram, Grimsby, Ontario.

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    Categories: Events

  • Arts, Archives & Affinities III

    Join us on Friday, January 27 for an evening of film, photography, drama, dance, and discussion at the Social Justice Research Institute’s third annual Arts, Archives and Affinities event, held at the Marilyn I. Walker School of fine and Performing Arts. Dr. David Fancy of the Department of Dramatic Arts will be speaking about “Growing Together,” his collaborative theatre production with migrant labourers.

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Wellness Wednesdays at MIWSFPA!

    The Marilyn I. Walker School will be participating in the university’s wellness initiatives of offering massage therapy and therapy dogs to our students. We will be hosting a series of “Wellness Wednesdays” for our students and have booked space for this initiative on the following dates at the Marilyn I. Walker School:

    • Wednesday, February 8, 2017, 12:30 – 3 pm: PUPPY ROOM in MW151
    • Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 1 – 3 pm: FREE MASSAGES in MW151 or Lobby
    • Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 12:30 – 3 pm: PUPPY ROOM in MW151

     

    We hope our students will take advantage of this free offering!! Be well!

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • VISA instructor Amy Friend featured on MoMA Instagram

    VISA instructor Amy Friend’s piece, “Hands on Water”, is featured today on the Instagram page of the Museum of Modern Art as part of their MoMA R&D Salon 19: Modern Death. Have a look! Congratulations, Amy!

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Federal board now led by Brock faculty member

    (Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, January 11, 2017. Photo: Sharilyn J. Ingram, Assistant Professor in the Brock University’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture and former director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, was recently appointed Chair of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board.)

    The Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board is now being led by a Brock University faculty member.

    Sharilyn J. Ingram, Assistant Professor in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture and former director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, was recently appointed Chair of the federal board for a three-year term.

    The independent administrative tribunal, which reports to Parliament through the Minister of Canadian Heritage, determines whether cultural property is of outstanding significance and national importance.

    The board aims to protect and preserve significant examples of Canada’s artistic, historic and scientific heritage.

    Ingram’s appointment was announced Jan. 7 by Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly.

    Congratulations, Sharilyn!

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    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

  • Student Funding Opportunity: The Geritol Follies Bursary Fund

    hamiltoncommunityfoundationFuture students: Looking for scholarships and funding opportunities? The Geritol Follies Bursary Fund provides an opportunity for students of voice, drama, dance or a musical instrument to apply for a performing arts bursary to develop their talent and pursue their career goals.

    Who can apply?

    If you have graduated from a publicly-funded high school in Hamilton or Burlington, Ontario and have been accepted or are already enrolled in a performing arts program in a college, university, or institute in Canada or the United States, you can apply. You will need to show why you need financial assistance.

    How can the bursary help?

    The bursary can be used to assist with tuition and related expenses, and you can apply to the Geritol Follies Bursary Fund to support your studies at a college, university or institute. Talented and promising students with demonstrated financial need have been awarded annual amounts averaging $1,000 – $2,000 per academic year.

    How to apply:

    You can download the application form from the website of the Hamilton Community Foundation, where you can learn more about this bursary fund.

    Deadline for applications:

    February 15, 2017

    For more information contact:

    Hamilton Community Foundation,
    120 King St. W. Suite 700,
    Hamilton ON L8P 4V2

    Phone: 905-523-5600 / Email: information@hamiltoncommunityfoundation.ca

    And for more information on student awards, scholarships, bursaries and other funding and financial aid options available to future students at Brock, visit brocku.ca/safa.

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    Categories: Future Students, News

  • Acclaim keeps coming for design of Marilyn I. Walker School

    (Source: The Brock NewsWednesday, November 30, 2016 | by )

    An American design journal is the latest admirer to bestow an architecture award on Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts in downtown St. Catharines.

    Designed by world-renowned Diamond Schmitt Architects, the Walker School’s striking blend of new construction and restored 19th-century industrial buildings has been turning heads and spurring acclaim — from juries and from area residents — since the $45-million complex opened just over a year ago.

    Last month the Walker School project won a national Cornerstone Award from the National Trust for Canada, which recognizes extraordinary restoration projects.  Earlier in the year it received the Niagara Community Design Award in the adaptive re-use category.

    Now the Walker School has received a silver medal in the 2016 Reconstruction Awards from Building Design and Construction Magazine. For more than three decades, the Chicago-based magazine has given annual awards to honour leading North American projects in terms of renovation, adaptive re-use and preservation work.

    The challenging Walker School project included the restoration of an old textile mill into a beautifully repurposed complex of teaching and learning spaces for disciplines from fine art to photography, music and dramatic arts.

    “The five-story brick-and-beam structure is an adaptive reuse of the Canada Hair Cloth Building, where coat linings and parachute silks were once made,” states the magazine’s announcement. “Diamond Schmitt Architects led the repurposing of the original 1888 structure and the design of a 35,000-sf addition that supports a new 280-seat studio theatre.

    “The project consolidates the university’s fine and performing arts facilities in a single downtown location for 500 students. All work had to meet the university’s strict Facility Accessibility Design Standards. A former raceway water channel for the looms was preserved as a pedestrian path. The contractor (the aptly named Bird Construction) even made sure not to disturb the chimney swifts that were nesting in the old factory.”

    The Walker School shares the silver designation with other marquee projects including Lovejoy Wharf in Boston, the Bay Area Metro Center in San Francisco and the structural refitting of New York’s famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

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    Categories: In the Media, News

  • Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts wins National Trust Award

    The Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts was honoured with one of five National Trust for Canada national Cornerstone Awards for building restoration! Read more about it at Niagara This Week.

    Excerpt:

    The National Trust noted the Marilyn I. Walker centre’s transformation of the old hair cloth factory dating back to 1888 — along with a 35,000 square-foot addition — is a “key element” of the broader downtown revitalization plan and was done while retaining many elements of the historic building’s interior such as wooden floor beams, metal columns and stone and masonry walls.

    Scott Roper, project manager for Brock, said in the university’s Brock Press publication that Brock had “utter success” in creating a stand-out academic entity while being a trigger for the social, economic and urban revitalization of downtown St. Catharines.

    “While Brock has constructed several substantial buildings over the past two decades, the creation of the Marilyn Walker School represented a bold step into the downtown, integration with the surrounding community, and into the unfamiliar area of adaptive re-use,” Roper said.

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    Categories: In the Media

  • MIWSFPA in “Heart of the City” at the St. Catharines Standard

    The Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts was mentioned today in the St. Catharines Standard as part of a five-part series entitled “Heart of the City”. Click here to read the article. (Photo credit: St. Catharines Standard.)

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    Categories: In the Media, News