The Small Walker Press addresses the research and creative interests of faculty members at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University, and engages with authors, artists and academics alike to produce small, innovative publications.

Arc, a choreographed poem.

Paul Savoie (text) and Mélanie Mesager (choreography)

Paul Savoie (text) and Mélanie Mesager (choreography).
Arc, a choreographed poem.
St. Catharines, ON / Vienna, Austria: Small Walker Press / Salon für Kunstbuch, 2021. Graphic design by Bernhard Cella. ISBN 978-1-7771450-5-7

“Arc” by award-winning author Paul Savoie is a poem which captures the pensive impressions of a moment and is suffused with a quiet musicality. Savoie’s passion for and practice of music inform this long melancholy song. Mélanie Mesager, a French dancer and scholar in contemporary dance, selected a few passages (in bold in Savoie’s text) and, for these, invented a choreography to accompany the poem. Mesager’s choreographic marks do not belong to existing systems of choreographic notation; they are a distinct creation that preserves her personal reaction to an intimate text. Her notes, translated by Nicholas Hauck, provide insight into her approach. A dancer responds to a poem, translates it into embodied movement, in a language as secret as the poet’s.

Improvising Places / Improvising Time

Devon Fornelli (music notation) and Thomas Ayouti (creative writing),with essays by Derek Knight and Matthew Royal

Devon Fornelli (music notation) and Thomas Ayouti (creative writing).
Improvising Places / Improvising Time, with essays by Derek Knight and Matthew Royal. St. Catharines, ON / Vienna, Austria: Small Walker Press / Salon für Kunstbuch, 2021. Graphic design by Bernhard Cella. ISBN 978-1-7771450-6-4

Dance and musical improvisation are ephemeral expressions urging us to embrace the moment in thoughtful joy. Devon Fornelli’s improvisations documented here are two performances: his CitySounds, created on 18 September 2015 for the opening of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario; and his Garden Performance, five years later, on 9 May 2020, offered as a reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary lockdown of the MIWSFPA. This documentation includes music notations, three short essays and the only remaining photograph of Fornelli’s improv’ in September 2015. Thomas Ayouti’s short story ‘Aux corps cassés’ – roughly translated, ‘broken bodies’ – offers a counterpoint to Fornelli’s practice. Thematizing the creation of a dance performance, the narrative grows, gains speed, intertwines the dancers’ movements and the narrator’s loving characterization of his friend. Whereas Fornelli’s improvisations express the persisting flow of our environment, Ayouti’s piece follows the fervid crescendo of emotions.

Industrial Niagara

Artists: ARTIndustria, Candace Couse, Catherine Parayre, Shawn Serfas, Donna Szőke

Derek Knight, Curator. Industrial Niagara.
St. Catharines, ON: Small Walker Press, 2021.
Graphic design by Bernhard Cella
66 pages, 24 illustrations, 3 essays
ISBN 978-1-990208-02-7
CAN $10 + tax

In March 2020, the Rodman Hall Art Centre showed Industrial Niagara, an exhibition curated by Derek Knight, that brought together key works by members of the Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, Brock University. The catalogue documents the artists’ responses to the natural environs and the features that distinguish the presence, loss, or history of industry in Niagara’s landscape. Reflecting on the meaning of locale, these artists observe and interpret the region’s combination of hinterland, cataract and escarpment, waterways and canals, hydro-electric generators and high-tension wires, manufacturing facilities, factories, subdivisions, and farmland.

Engaging with Digital Texts/Images in Literatures and the Arts

Carmela Colella, Tamara El-Hoss, and Catherine Parayre, ed.

Carmela Colella, Tamara El-Hoss, and Catherine Parayre, ed. / dir.
L’impact du numérique : textes/images en littérature et dans les arts – Engaging with Digital Texts/Images in Literatures and the Arts.
St. Catharines, ON / Vienna, Austria: Small Walker Press / Salon für Kunstbuch, 2021.
Graphic design by Bernhard Cella
158 pages, 29 illustrations
ISBN 978-1-990208-06-5
Online, free access by clicking here.

Les nouveaux outils numériques continuent de transformer la pensée des artistes et auteur.es, ainsi que leur façon de s’engager dans la création. Au cours des dernières décennies, les avancées technologiques ont permis de concevoir et de développer de nouvelles pratiques en littérature et dans les arts, avec pour résultat d’innombrables créations innovantes. Les outils numériques rendent possible un meilleur accès aux textes littéraires et facilitent des interactions complexes entre la littérature et les autres arts. De même, les arts visuels et autres ont conçu de nouvelles intégrations du texte dans leurs réalisations. Ces nouvelles pratiques ont changé notre discours visuel et textuel.

New digital tools continue to transform the way artists and writers think about, engage with, and create works. In the last decades, advances in technology have facilitated the design and writing process, allowing the creation of countless virtual renditions of concepts or works. Digital tools have impacted the traditional literary world, opening access to a variety of digitized texts and enabling increased interactions with other art forms. In turn, visual and other creative arts have conceived new integrations of text within their medium, all of which has impacted and changed our visual and written discourse.

Small Walker Press publications can be purchased at the following locations:

Campus Store (available only on occasion and as a course text for registered students)
Brock University, St. Catharines

Someday Books
St. Catharines, Ontario

The Salon für Kunstbuch
Vienna, Austria

Bruno
Venice, Italy

The Small Walker Press is homed in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts and receives the support of the Walker Cultural Leader series.

It publishes collaborative work that brings together authors and artists from the Niagara Region, as well as the Canadian or international contexts, covering all disciplines and creative practices taught and researched at the MIWSFPA