Alumni

  • Small Walker Press launches publications exploring music, choreography

    Wednesday, May 05, 2021 | By

    Image caption: The Small Walker Press has announced two new spring publications: Arc, a choreographed poem and Improvising Places / Improvising Time.

    Originally published in The Brock News on TUESDAY, MAY 04, 2021 | by 

    The Small Walker Press (SWP) is announcing two new spring publications with an online book launch page.

    With in-person book launches still on hold due to public health restrictions, the innovative publishing house within Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) opted for a virtual celebration.

    The online launch page features two new books: Arc, a choreographed poem written by Paul Savoie with accompanying choreography by Mélanie Mesager, and Improvising Places / Improvising Time with music notation by Devon Fornelli, creative writing by Thomas Ayouti and essays by Derek Knight and Matthew Royal. Graphic design for both publications was done by Bernhard Cella.

    The concept for the books, “music and choreography,” was outlined by Small Walker Press editors Catherine Parayre, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, and Derek Knight, Associate Professor of Visual Arts. The creative texts were inspired by these themes, drawing on inspiration from participating artists incorporating dance, music and creative writing.

    The book launch page features excerpts from the publications as well as notes from both SWP editors.

    To learn more about The Small Walker Press, please visit the website.

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised

  • Art residency “A River Rises” now on view

    Friday, January 15, 2021 | By

    Brown Heritage Home

    Caption: Brown Homestead (Photo by Shawn Serfas)

    STAC’s Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture presents “A River Rises,” a collective investigation of a creative-writing piece, resulting in the creation of photography work, a recorded performance, an inverted sculpture, an experimental book, and more fiction writing. The project also documents the Brown Homestead, in close proximity of Short Hills Provincial Park and the oldest building in St. Catharines.

    View A River Rises here.

    To learn more about the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, please visit the STAC website.

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, News, Uncategorised

  • STAC’s journal ti< listed on Mir@bel

    Monday, December 21, 2020 | By

    STAC’s online, free-access journal ti< A JOURNAL OF TEXT-AND-IMAGE CRITICISM/CREATION – UN JOURNAL DE CRITIQUE/CREATION TEXTE-ET-IMAGE publishes creative work by students, their instructors, as well as by artists and writers whose work combines literature and the visual arts.

    All languages are welcome, including endangered languages. No translation is needed.

    ti< has recently been included in the Mir@bel database, an initiative by top higher-education institutions in France and Europe, such as Sciences Po and ENA.

    To submit work, please consult the website of the journal: https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/ti/index

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised

  • Interiors, a new online exhibit from the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, now on view virtually

    Monday, September 21, 2020 | By

    (Image: Trieste 2, Derek J.J. Knight.)

    As part of its 2020-2021 programming, the Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture opens a virtual space on the theme of interiors, interiority, and confinement, the role they play in collective life and/or how they may be contested. The exhibit seeks to explore the shifting boundaries of intimacy and domesticity in a dynamic virtual space, presenting multi-disciplinary content and critical engagement.

    Interiors features the work of various artists, authors and musicians, and invites viewers to participate in creative activities.

    Curatorial Team: Alexandra Fraser, Marcie Bronson, Derek Knight, Catherine Parayre, Nicholas Hauck

    https://exhibits.library.brocku.ca/s/interiors/page/welcome

    Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture / Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture

    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Events, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised

  • Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics exhibition catalogue published

    Thursday, May 17, 2018 | By

    CATHERINE PARAYRE, BROCK UNIVERSITY /
    REINHARD REITZENSTEIN, SUNY-BUFFALO, CURATORS

    The exhibition Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics took place in 2017 at Silo-City, Buffalo, NY as a joint project funded by the Agreement for Scholarly Exchange and Collaboration between the State University of New York at Buffalo and Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario.

    The exhibition catalogue is now available for download.

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    Categories: Alumni, Events, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

  • Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics

    Monday, April 03, 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, Events, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • DART, MUSI and MARS present in Toronto at PLS (Poculi Ludique Societas) Festival of Medieval Theatre

    Wednesday, June 10, 2015 | By

    vsCOLLEAGUES, STUDENTS, FRIENDS & FAMILY, If you were in Toronto in early June you were fortunate to see a performance of:

    Visitatio Sepulchri
    (the Visit to the Sepulchre)

    A 12th-CENTURY EASTER MUSIC DRAMA
    acting version transcribed and translated
    by W. L. Smoldon from the ‘Fleury Playbook’

    A collaboration between:
    Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
    Department of Dramatic Arts, Department of Music

    Part of the PLS (Poculi Ludique Societas) Festival of Medieval Theatre.

    When: Saturday, June 6, 7 p.m.
    Sunday, June 7, 2:30 p.m.
    Where: Trinity College Chapel University of Toronto,  6 Hoskin Avenue

    Music Director: Dr. Brian Power, Department of Music
    Stage Director: Professor Virginia Reh, Department of Dramatic Arts

    img_1284cr_400px

    The company of Visitatio Sepulchri in the Trinity College Chapel. Photograph by Mrs. Chin Tso.

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

  • Graduates of the Department of Dramatic Arts are on the boards again and this time they are playing IN THE SOIL.

    Tuesday, April 17, 2012 | By

    clockmaker-poster-three-220w

    The Clockmaker by Stephen Massicotte

    April 27 @ 8:00pm and April 28 @ 2:00pm
    Sullivan Mahoney  Courthouse Theatre 101 King Street,  St Catharines

    Tickets: $10 at the door
    Festival pass: $25 through inthesoil.on.ca

    Nathan Tanner MacDonald – Director
    Geoffrey Heaney – Performer
    Dylan Mawson – Performer
    Michael Pearson – Performer
    Caitlin Popek – Performer
    Kate Hardy – Stage Manager
    Finn Archinuk – Designer

    Nathan Tanner Mac Donald – a resident of the St Catharines and recent graduate of the Department of Dramatic Arts – has brought together a company of DART students to present The Clockmaker by Stephen Massicotte.  A metaphysical rollercoaster, The Clockmaker may seem like little more than a love story set inside a murder-mystery-to-be, but it just might end up exposing the very truth of existence itself. The show will be performed April 27 @ 8:00pm and April 28 @ 2:00pm at the Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre in downtown St Catharines.

    Nathan recently performed in the 2011 STRUTT wearable art show and this past summer he wrote and directed Circus, which played at Factory Theatre in the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival. Nathan’s company includes graduates and Geoffrey Heaney, Dylan Mawson, Michael Pearson, Caitlin Popek as Performers, current student Kate Hardy as Stage Manager and graduate Finn Archinuk as the Designer.

    In the Soil Arts Festival brings Niagara artists from a range of disciplines together to provide unique audience experiences. The festival nurtures the creation of new work, showcases talent, encourages innovation, offers learning opportunities for youth and provides intimate and uncommon platforms for audiences to experience work by contemporary performing and literary artists, musicians and media artists. In the Soil is Niagara’s homegrown arts festival and is working to make a Niagara that is self-determining and culturally distinct.

    for more information see the IN THE SOIL website.

    Break-a-leg, Nathan, Caitlin, Dylan, Finn, Geoffrey, Kate and Michael!

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  • Industrial Fabric2: Festival of the Arts

    Thursday, March 01, 2012 | By

    Brock University
    Media Release
    St. Catharines, ON
    March 1, 2012

    Industrial Fabric2: Festival of the Arts
    Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts
    March to April 2012

    The second Festival of the Arts showcasing the remarkable talents of students enrolled in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts will be held March to April 2012. Industrial Fabric2 signals that time of year when students who have been preparing individually and collectively will bring their in-class, independent or studio projects to fruition. In the spirit of openness and mutual generosity, we invite you to celebrate their achievements on stage, in studios and galleries, and at regional venues.

    As part of the culminating activities that signal the end of the academic year Industrial Fabric2 offers a dynamic range of creative events open to the University and community at large from theatre to musical performances to art exhibitions. Enjoy original student-written and performed plays produced as part of the Department of Dramatic Arts’ Gimme 3 or One Acts Festival, and a production written and produced by fourth-year students called Shadows of a Toymaker; a rich selection of concerts from the Department of Music including its Tuesday Music@Noon series, Student Recitals, the ENCORE! Professional Concert Series, the VIVA VOCE! Choral Series, and the University Wind Ensemble; exhibitions from the students of the Department of Visual Arts reflecting their achievements in photography, drawing, book making, and intermedia as well as the annual juried show, and a fourth-year honours exhibition hosted by Rodman Hall Art Centre. This year we are honoured by the participation of Donna Szoke, Visiting Artist, whose video installation and all watched over by machines of loving grace will be installed at CRAM Gallery.

    “Industrial Fabric2 represents the creative thread that binds students in common effort, to perfect and bring their creativity to audiences both large and small, on and off campus. It promises to deliver over the course of two months a rich plethora of collective and individual talent mentored under the guise of our tremendous faculty and staff. This continues to be a testimony to the strength of our academic programs – where else can one find such brilliant vitality and collaboration that manifests itself from year to year with such vision, energy and dedication?” states Derek Knight, Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    The Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, part of the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University, is comprised of the Departments of Dramatic Arts (DART), Music (MUSI), and Visual Arts (VISA), and the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (cSTAC).

    All are welcome.  Click here for a calendar of events.

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  • TAP Jamaica celebrates five successful years

    Wednesday, July 20, 2011 | By

    Turn Around Projects of the Arts – lead by graduates, students and colleagues of the Department of Dramatic Arts of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts – began its fifth year on July 7th, 2011 in Port Antonio, Jamaica.  TAP is a multi-national initiative using the arts and education to build sustainable communities.

    This year, four talented Brock students attended TAP Jamaica: Lescia Poppe, Jamez Townsend, Dorothy Kane and Meaghan Gowrie, as well as seven Brock graduates, Tiffany Stull, Rox Chwaluk, Mike Irwin, Whitney Lee, Alycia McQueen, Christine Cassar, and Matt McLeod. Along with 8 others, the Canadian/American team developed successful workshops in dance, visual arts, music, creative writing, dramatic arts, culinary arts, film, and photography. Many weeks since the conclusion of the program the spirit and principles of TAP persist in the hearts of the Canadian facilitators and the Jamaican youth who participated. The hard work, dedication and compassion that every single team member brought to the project has once again guaranteed its success.

    The TAP pilot project began in 2007 with a collaboration between the programming director of the project and former Drama in Education and Society program graduate, Tiffany Stull, her classmates, and their guest professor the renowned Canadian Dub Poet Michael St. George. Students of the third year dramatic arts course Alternative Forms of Theatre worked together to create a two-week long program of intensive educational workshops for the youth in an impoverished region of Jamaica.  With the leadership of former DART professor Jane Leavitt and Michael St. George a five year commitment to TAP Jamaica was established with the intention of initiating and maintaining integrated arts workshops every July.

    Participant and third-year DART student Meaghan Gowrie exclaimed, “From a personal standpoint, I can proudly say that when facilitating the music workshop, my success was in part rooted deeply in the skills, knowledge and values that I have been taught so far as a Drama in Education and Society student at Brock University.”

    Now that the five year commitment to TAP Jamaica has come to an end the Canadian team is prepared to move into Phase 2 of the program, training Jamaican youth to become facilitators of an autonomous and self-directed workshop program.  This summer the groundwork was laid for Phase 2 with the creation of the F.I.T. team (Facilitators in Training). This team included ten Jamaican youth who have successfully achieved the objectives of TAP through their actions and leadership skills in previous years.  Five of these participants graduated the F.I.T. program in 2011 and will facilitate workshops in July 2012.

    Gowrie added, “The experience that I had as a Canadian team member, educator and friend to the amazing 44 Jamaican youth that attended the program is completely impossible to describe in words or writing. It is my hope that anyone who comes in contact with the pictures, videos, and people of TAP will get a small taste of the impact that the first five years has made on everyone who has ever helped in the execution of, or attended the program. The optimism and positivity that is now ever-presently radiating in each of us will inspire the people of Brock University and eventually the world that the arts can change lives, that anything is possible and that step by step, we WILL make it to the top!”

    Further information about the 2011 program can be found at the project blog http://turnaroundproject.ca/blog/.  For information about TAP please contact info@turnaroundproject.ca.

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