News

  • DART & VISA alumni host session at the SHIFT Professional Development Conference

    Tuesday, April 18, 2017 | By

    SHIFT Professional Development Conference graphic

    ARTS AND CULTURE: CAREER CONVERSATIONS

    Date/Time: April 28, 2017, 3 pm – 4:15 pm
    Location: Plaza Rm. 410, Brock University

    DART alumna Victoria Mountain and VISA alumna Shauna Daley will feature at the SHIFT Professional Development Conference for graduate students with their session, “ARTS AND CULTURE: CAREER CONVERSATIONS”. From the conference website: “A modern cultural worker can thrive in variety of careers in education, media and the arts. The reach and satisfaction of creative practice can be the cusp of personal freedom and a condition for seeking satisfying work.  How do we negotiate and harness creative energies within professions that embrace those creative forces? Join our conversation!”

     

    Victoria Mountain is a writer, performer, researcher and cultural manager residing in Toronto, Ontario. In addition to her Honours Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from Brock University, she also holds a Master of Arts in Drama from the University of Toronto, and an Erasmus Mundus Master of International Performance Research from the Universities of Warwick, United Kingdom and Helsinki, Finland. Victoria currently works for the City of Brampton as the Manager of Culture with the Economic Development and Culture Division, leading the City through its first cultural master planning process.

     

     

    Shauna Daley is an artist, teacher and business woman.  She graduated with an Honours degree in Visual Arts, a B.Ed and a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Brock University, and is also Upper Elementary Montessori certified. Shauna owns and operates her own art studio in Grimsby Ontario, as well as a worldly gift shop that supports local and international artists and their work. She exhibits her artwork throughout the region, and her art studio sees approximately three hundred students from the Niagara community cycling through her visual art programs yearly.

     

     

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, News

  • City reveals nominees for St. Catharines Arts Awards

    Tuesday, April 18, 2017 | By

    (Source: Brock University Humanities, via Facebook)

    The list of St. Catharines Arts Awards nominees was released Monday and our faculty is very well represented! Congratulations to our staff, faculty, and alumni who have been nominated for an award!

    Rodman Hall Art Centre has been nominated for the Arts in Education award and is described as a “leading centre for visual arts education and creative expression in St. Catharines, with talented staff who connect the community with contemporary art through exhibits, special events and classes.”

    Nominees for the Emerging Artist award include a number of graduates and faculty from Brock’s visual arts, dramatic arts and music programs:

    • Jo Pacinda, Brock University Dramatic Arts graduate, works as a costume designer with local theatre companies.
    • Lauren Regier, a visual arts graduate, explores the relationships between plants and machines through her photography. (Brock University Humanities featured her on their blog and in Brock News earlier this year.)
    • Twitches & Itches Theatre features a number of Brock dramatic arts graduates and is a “multi-disciplinary artist ensemble devoted to creating new theatre works through a collaborative process.” (Their production of The Bacchae with director Colin B. Anthes was featured in Brock News.)
    • Gordon Cleland teaches cello with Brock University Music, plays principle cello with the Niagara Symphony, and works with the Niagara Youth Orchestra.
    • Danielle Wilson, a professor with Brock University Dramatic Arts, is co-founder and co-artistic director of Stolen Theatre Collective.
    • Gregory Betts, a professor with the Department of English Language and Literature and The Centre for Canadian Studies, has been nominated for the “Making a Difference” award. Betts is a poet and advocate for literature. He is the artistic director and founder of St. Catharine’s Festival of Readers.
    • Marcie Bronson, acting director and curator of Rodman Hall Art Centre, has also been nominated for the “Making a Difference” award for “playing a central role in the transformation of Rodman Hall into a nationally recognized institution of excellence that promotes local artists.”

    Read more about the nominees and the St. Catharines Arts Awards at stcatharines.ca

    Congratulations and good luck to all!

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Department/Centre News, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

  • Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics

    Tuesday, April 04, 2017 | By

    Photo credit: Derek Knight

    Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics
    Silo-City welcomes you to an exhibition featuring artists on both sides of the Niagara River

    April 22 – 29, 2017
    105 Silo-City Row, Buffalo, NY 14203, U.S.
    Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22 from 2 – 5 pm
    http://www.silo.city
    Click here for directions
    Free community event

     

    Buffalo, New York and St. Catharines, Ontario are neighboring cities separated by a river and a border, but they also nurture a strong sense of regional togetherness and cultural kinship. Colleagues in Sculpture, Arts, Comparative Literature, English Studies, Visual Arts, Studies in Arts and Culture, and French Studies at SUNY on the U.S. side and Brock University on the Canadian side will share a common space at Silo-City, Buffalo between April 22 – 29. Coming from different places and practices, we wish to foster interdisciplinarity.

    Together, we want to reflect on the notion of dispersal. A concrete monument, an overwhelming structure, Silo-City is also a crucible of ephemeralities – sounds dissipating as they echo up the walls, the wind blowing through hollow buildings, the decay of objects deposited in the empty halls, the temporary presence of others, productive resonances of creative experiences. Is Silo-City a memorial? Silos are built to maintain large networks of commodity exchange for human and animal sustenance. Here, however, the workers are gone; the buildings are exposed to inclement weather; the projects we bring with us will disappear, be dispersed or displaced. Silo-City, despite its imposing constructions, invites visitors to become more perceptive to the transience of human endeavours.

    We will plant colourful seedpods, install a neon sign in tribute to the Buffalo river that flows by Silo-City, crush words out of their discourse, scatter mourning songs for long gone lives, bring images, noise and stories from other places. We will capture the brilliance of a moment.

    A follow-up one-day symposium at Rodman Hall Art Centre, St. Catharines will document and revive the exhibition on September 16, 2017.

    The opening will include performances by Harmonia Chamber Singers, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Lauren Regier, Continuous Monument, Catherine Parayre and Jim Watkins 

    Curators: Catherine Parayre, Reinhard Reitzenstein

    Click here to download the performance program.

    For more images and information, please visit the exhibition website.

     

    Participating artists: 

    ArtIndustria+
    Untitled (neon sign)

    ArtIndustria+ was formed in 1995 by Derek Knight and Franc Petric, two Canadian artists who reside in the Niagara region. Motivated by the desire to work collaboratively, they have developed projects over the years with a focus on art, research and technology. Underlining their concerns with the dialectical relationship between ecology and industry, their conceptual models combine installation techniques and situational aesthetics to further examine the artist’s role in post-industrial society.

    Continuous Monument
    Silo Sessions at the American (noise/drone performance)

    Continuous Monument is an affiliation of interdisciplinary culture-makers working among design, text, architecture and sound fields. Born from the ashes of a contaminated political landscape, Continuous Monument gathers to spatialize sound and signal in temporary, site specific soundscape improvisations. Monument will perform at The American in Silo City as an acoustic inhabitation; live ghosts active in remnant industrial anatomy.

    Akasya Crosier
    Likeness (typeface study)

    Akasya Crosier is a multifaceted artist based in Western New York. She is currently a senior at UB studying Studio Art and Communication. In her artwork, she focuses on effective communication skills, idealized spaces, and bright imagery.

    Catherine Parayre (assisted by Josh Dawson, SUNY and Paul Savoie, Brock U)
    Ingrained Words (14 posters: assembled fragments from texts by 33 writers)

    Catherine works in Arts and Culture, and in Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Brock University. She is particularly interested in contemporary Occitan literature, as well as the co-presence of literatures and visual arts. She includes her four languages in her creative work.

    Catherine Parayre and Jim Watkins
    The Silo-Minder (recording, reading)

    Jim Watkins lives in Silo-City and is our silo-minder/keeper. His passion for the arts and for Silo-City is central to our cross-border project.

    Lauren Regier
    Where I stand is fair and square (performance/grass seed & dirt)

    Lauren Regier is Honours graduate from Brock University’s Visual Arts program, and is an emerging artist based in the Niagara Region. Much of her work is inspired by the notion of functionality and relationships between the industrial world and the natural realm. Interested in the experiential nature of contemporary art, her practice includes photography, installation, performance, drawing and video.

    Reinhard Reitzenstein
    ArbreTreeBaum (vocal piece in 5 languages)

    Reitzenstein has held over 100 solo exhibitions and over 300 group exhibitions globally, and has completed over 25 public and private art commissions. His work is represented in more than 50 public and corporate collections internationally. Reitzenstein has been Director of the Sculpture Program at, SUNY, Buffalo since 2000. He is represented by the Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto.

    Casey Ridings
    Untitled Emotion (acrylic paint)

    Casey Ridings is currently a Graphic Design student at the University at Buffalo. She is intrigued by the geometric nature of organic patterns; through a spontaneous and intuitive process she creates intricate paintings and drawings inspired by the exploration of her experiences and emotions.

    Cody Schriever
    Vanity Case / Skeletons of Perception (painting/sculpture)

    Cody Schriever is a student in the University at Buffalo art department. His paintings and sculptures deal with human nature, and the structures of its self-perception. By combining various styles of painting and modes of expression he creates a complex narrative of the global condition.

    Shawn Serfas
    Alloyed (acrylic)

    Shawn is an Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Department, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. His research interests include contemporary painting, drawing and printmaking practices concerning relational abstraction, environmental aesthetics, religion, the landscape as well as issues bordering abstraction and representation.

    Lucas Veraldi
    2mp (inkjet prints)

    Lucas is an artist currently residing in Buffalo, NY. His practice examines the different methods of representation that exist within the realm of photography and explores the truth value that a photograph holds as a piece data that showcases life.

    Sophia Yung
    Voyage Voyage 

    Sophia Yung is a Chinese American graphic designer and artist from Brooklyn, NY. Her most recent work involves the analysis of Asian American culture shock, language barriers, mixed martial arts and the role of financial capital in the precarious 21st century.

    Jean Zhu
    bacteria (video)

    Jean Zhu is currently a Media Study student at the University at Buffalo. She is both a photographer and a filmmaker. Her experimental films and straightforward photographs of everyday objects and scenes are noted for their color combination, explicit composition and rich content.

     

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Brock Professor Collaborates with Dramatic Arts Graduates on New Circus Theatre Show in Niagara Falls

    Monday, March 06, 2017 | By

    Cirque du Soleil performer in a giant hoop

    MEDIA RELEASE
    David Fancy, a faculty member of the Department of Dramatic Arts at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, is no stranger to new ventures.

    A veteran creator of new theatre productions that explore current events and engage the Niagara Region, he joined forces with former Cirque du Soleil performers Kosta Zakharenko and Christine Cadeau in 2010 to form Zacada Entertainment.

    “We wanted to combine theatre and circus in new ways,” says Fancy, who’s equally comfortable in the classroom as in the rehearsal studio. “The fusion of genres really permits some unique opportunities for dynamic forms of contemporary expression,” he notes.

    This year, the Zacada Entertainment crew will present a new Cirque Cabaret show, entitled Shotgun Wedding, at Niagara Falls’ 650-seat Greg Frewin Theatre.

    Shotgun Wedding features the story of two star-crossed lovers forced to get married by their deeply religious parents. On their way to Niagara Falls for the ceremony they each secretly decide to have one last fling with the person of their dreams.

    “The production deals with perennial concerns of love and relationships,” says Fancy, “but also shines a humorous and probing light on issues pertaining to Niagara, including migrant labour, tourism, and gambling.”

    Zacada is particularly happy to be working with three recent graduates of Brock University’s Department of Dramatic Arts (DART) who will be taking up the acting and singing roles in Shotgun Wedding.

    Mitchell Allanson, Marley Kajan, and Sean Rintoul have all finished their Honours Dramatic Arts degrees over the past three years, and have gone on to further training and professional creative opportunities around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).

    Kajan, a native of Welland, is pleased to be joining the company. “All three of us DART grads are super-happy to have been brought aboard to help bring this show to life,” she says.

    “These kinds of opportunities for intensive professionalization are gold,” says Rintoul, a 2- year veteran of other Zacada productions.

    Marly Kajan, DART Graduate

    Recent Zacada show Fancy has written and directed that have toured Ontario include Circus Revolution, a story about Marxist clowns who escape a gulag by means of their circus prowess, and Circus Labyrinth, a piece that explores creative responses to contemporary forms of social control.

    For its part, Shotgun Wedding features original Niagara-themed musical theatre numbers with support from a seven-piece band, as well as high-octane performances from over 10 cirque artists from Zacada Entertainment’s extensive pool of talent.Silks artists, contortionists, acrobats, and a host of other highly skilled cirque performances each grace the stage for every performance of Shotgun Wedding.

    The production team for Shotgun Wedding is currently in high gear with rehearsals and development for the June 9th opening. The show will be performed sixty times over the course of the summer.

    “We’re deeply excited about this new show,” says Vittoria Wikston, General Manager of the Greg Frewin Theatre, “Especially with how it offers national level talent and serves as a unique reflection of the many strengths and talents of our region.”

    “We couldn’t be happier about having this exciting new addition to our roster of shows,” says master magician and theatre owner, Greg Frewin.

    He adds, “It’s going to be an awesome summer.”

    Website: shotgunwedding.ca
    Brock Promotional code for 20% discount is ShotgunBrock

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Department/Centre News, Media Releases, News

  • 2016-17 at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts –A year in review

    Wednesday, February 22, 2017 | By

    Artists' Commons street sign outside the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts

    In its second year at the new downtown address, Brock University and the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) continue to win international acclaim and awards for the facility. The 2016-17 academic year saw the unveiling of the Rotary Club Reflecting Pool. We hosted visiting conferences and special events such as the Merleau-Ponty Circle Philosophy Conference in September, top Canadian authors gathered for the Two Days of Canada Conference in October, and in January we hosted the Social Justice Research Institute’s third annual Arts, Archives and Affinities event: “Growing Together.” For the first time in Brock’s history we participated in the September/October national Culture Days weekend celebration. The School continues to produce a stimulating program for the university and regional communities under the banner of “Breaking the Surface”.

     

    Highlights by Department:

    Visual Arts:

    Studies in Arts and Culture:

    Dramatic Arts:

    Music:

    In addition to the exhibition and presentation events, the Marilyn I. Walker School welcomes visitors for tours of the facility. Since the start of the academic year and by mid-February of 2017, Recruitment Officer for the MIWSFPA Madison Roca and her team of Brock Ambassadors, along with faculty and staff of the school, have hosted tours, workshops, and presentations for over 550 students, teachers, councillors, consultants, and members of the community.

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    Categories: Department/Centre News, News

  • RBC Foundation Music@Noon – March 7

    Friday, February 10, 2017 | By

    Brock String Quartet outside building

    RBC Foundation Music@Noon
    Our Tuesday Music@Noon series is generously sponsored by the RBC Foundation. This free concert series takes places most Tuesdays at noon throughout the academic year. Held in the acoustically excellent Cairns Recital Hall, FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, our Music@Noon series provides ample opportunities for artists to display their creativity.

    Performing: Walker String Quartet: Vera Alekseeva and Anna Hughes, violins, Andrée Simard, viola, & Gordon Cleland, cello

    The Walker String Quartet (WSQ) is the Department of Music’s quartet in residence. The group gives prominence to the department through public performance and working with students in high school string programs to share in the joy of music and promote Brock’s music program.

    Quartet members include Music instructors Vera Alekseeva (first violin), Andrée Simard (viola), and Gordon Cleland (cello), along with second violinist Anna Hughes who hails from Guelph. All members of the WSQ are also regular players in the Niagara Symphony Orchestra.

    WSQ workshops with secondary school students over a number of weeks, developing closer ties between the schools and Brock while working together towards a public performance.

    “With this high-level ensemble we are able to bring a new energy to our performing presence in the region, on top of the vital work they are able to do in high schools with students, giving them a sampling of what Brock has to offer,” explains department chair Professor Karin Di Bella.

    “Prospective students will have the experience of having worked with their future teachers, and once they are at Brock they know they will receive the very best instruction possible.”

    In 2016 members of the quartet worked with music students from Laura Secord and Sir Winston Churchill Secondary Schools. At both schools the quartet performed a short program of standard repertoire, talked about Brock and its music programs, and distributed music parts to the students to work on in their classes. A number of weeks later, the quartet returned to the schools and held sectional workshops with the students to work on their parts.

    Finally on November 25, 2016, the high school students came downtown for a day of workshops and tours at the Marilyn I. Walker School of the Fine and Performing Arts, followed by a combined rehearsal and short public performance in Cairns Recital Hall. The gathered audience was appreciative, and the initiative forged closer ties between the two schools and the Department.

    The WSQ also held a similar event with Ridley College students, with a performance by the quartet, combined rehearsals, and a public performance.

    Concert performances are another important aspect of the quartet’s activities. In November, paired with strategic timing of the invitational workshop, the WSQ performed as part of the Department of Music’s Encore! Professional Concert Series in Partridge Hall at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.

    The WSQ was formed in 2016 through funds from the Walker Cultural Leaders Series endowment. The series brings leading performers, artists, practitioners and academics to the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    Discussions are underway to build on this success for the 2017-18 season, when the quartet will expand their activities further afield into the Hamilton/Burlington region.

    The Walker String Quartet’s performance takes place on Tuesday, March 7th from 12 noon to 12:50 pm in Cairns Recital Hall, FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. This is a free community event!

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  • Donna Akrey – Also Also

    Tuesday, February 07, 2017 | By

    Donna Akrey partial face viewed from shiny metal in snow

    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

    Tuesday, February 07, 2017 | By

    painting of a dear looking at a lake with mountains in background

    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

    Friday, January 27, 2017 | By

    Art, Archives and affinities III poster

    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!

    Wednesday, January 25, 2017 | By

    Sleeping puppy in arms of a woman in a purple knit sweater

    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

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