Media Releases

  • 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

  • The Centre for Studies in Arts & Culture launches ‘ti <‘ for 2020

    Wednesday, April 01, 2020 | By

    The Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) is proud to announce this year’s issue of ti<.
    Showcasing the creative works of 60 students of Brock University, it includes, among other things, two exhibitions catalogues (Imagined Urban Gardens at Rodman Hall and Crisscross in the Art Gallery of the MIWSFPA), as well as creative writing by students in STAC 1F93 (Writing for the Arts).

    TI< IS AVAILABLE ONLINE THROUGH BROCK UNIVERSITY.

     

    Focus and Scope

    ti< publishes creative work combining text and image.

    ti< is primarily interested in 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.

    Peer Review Process

    Thematic group projects are encouraged. The organizer/instructor of the project works with the group and edits the selected works.

    The Editor of ti< makes the final decision to publish after consultation with the organizer/instructor and other peers.

    Open Access Policy

    This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

    Sponsors

    Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (MLLC)

    Brock University

     

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Media Releases, News, STAC Courses, Uncategorised

  • CrissCross, a new student exhibition at the MIWSFPA

    Sunday, March 08, 2020 | By

    EDITOR’S NOTE: This exhibition is unavailable for viewing until further notice. It is closed as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Please check here again.

    CrissCross, a new student exhibition at the MIWSFPA

    March 5 – 28
    opening reception: March 12th, 5 p.m.
    (This is also the reception for the Artist Talk by the Walker Cultural Leader, Landon Mackenzie.)

    VISA Gallery and Student Exhibition Space, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine & Performing Arts, 15 Artists’ Common, St. Catharines, L2R 0B5.

    The gallery is open Tuesday-Saturday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

    An exhibition by students from the Studies in Arts and Culture and Visual Arts programs. Our hybrid assemblages celebrate incongruity and unfettered associations. Whether abstract or figurative, paintings, or texts, they are intended to trigger reactions, prompt comparisons, and challenge the usual. Beyond the immediate effect of surprise, they provoke, their apparent disparateness nevertheless generates, on closer view, a semblance of overall coherence.

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  • Industrial Niagara, a new exhibition at Rodman Hall Arts Centre, on view March 7

    Thursday, February 06, 2020 | By

    (image: Shawn Serfas)

    EDITOR’S NOTE: This exhibition is unavailable for viewing until further notice. It is closed as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Please check here again.

    Industrial Niagara
    March 7-22, 2020, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Brock University
    Saturday, March 14, 2-4 p.m. Speaker Series

    Industrial Niagara, an exhibition, brings together key works by members of the Research Centre, Studies in Arts and Culture, Brock University.

    Visual artists Candace Couse, Catherine Parayre, Shawn Serfas, Donna Szőke, and ARTIndustria share their insights by responding to the natural environs and the features that distinguish the presence, loss or history of industry in Niagara’s landscape. A combination of hinterland, cataract and escarpment, waterways and canals, hydro-electric generators and high tension wires, manufacturing facilities, factories, subdivisions and farmland, this is the first of a series of reflections or aesthetic interpretations on the meaning of locale (genius loci).

    download poster

    Curated by Derek J.J. Knight, with a speaker series programmed by Catherine Parayre, on Saturday, March 14.

    Visit the Industrial Niagara Virtual Gallery.

    See the video produced by YourTV Niagara, on March 16, 2020.

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The below event has been cancelled as part of Brock University’s ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and the community in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

    Rodman Hall Art Centre will host a cultural event on Saturday, March 14, 2-4 p.m. featuring readings by award-winning authors Natalee Caple and Adam Dickinson as well as short reflections by Niagara residents on their observations, research or experience, from the impact of the Welland Canal to the generation of hydro-electric power: Clark Bernat, Derek Knight, Reinhard Reitzenstein, David Sharron, Penelope Stewart, and David Vivian.

    Open to members of the public this event is organized as part of the Research Centre’s outreach and to encourage future partnerships in an ongoing series of thematic projects.

    download the program for Industrial Niagara

    The Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture acknowledges the support of Brock University: Centre for Studies in Arts and Cultures, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Studies in Comparative Literature and Arts, Dean’s Office in Humanities, Research Services, and Rodman Hall Art Centre.

    New research centre fosters interdisciplinary approach to arts and culture
    [brocknews, alison innes. MONDAY, MARCH 02, 2020]

    The Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture (RCIACC) establishes a network of researchers and creators across Faculties at Brock and beyond the University. The research centre is part of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC).

    “STAC has an established reputation as an interdisciplinary academic centre and it was therefore logical to home an interdisciplinary research centre in the unit,” says Associate Professor Catherine Parayre, who led the initiative with Associate Professor Derek Knight and is the Centre’s new director.

    The Centre will engage with a broad range of creative expression, including visual arts, dramatic arts, music, creative writing and translation, book and graphic design, cultural heritage, and photography.The Centre includes faculty from Arts and Culture, Visual Arts, Dramatic Arts, Music, Curatorial Studies, French Studies, English Literature, Digital Humanities, and Education.

    The centre will be doing outreach at Rodman Hall Art Centre through exhibitions and talks and in collaboration with the Willow Arts Community.

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    Categories: Announcements, Events, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised

  • Imagined Urban Gardens opens at Rodman Hall Art Centre

    Friday, January 31, 2020 | By

    Imagined Urban Gardens: Student Exhibition
    Jan. 30 – March 1, 2020

    download the poster

    Rodman Hall Art Centre
    109 St. Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, ON

    Responding to the explorations of urban architecture and its materials in Teresa Carlesimo and Michael DiRisio: more light than heat (on exhibition at the Rodman Hall Art Centre), Imagined Urban Gardens also reflects on today’s global warming and how we could live in the future.

    We dream of green spaces and pleasantly warm cities.
    Students in Visual Arts and Studies in Arts and Culture envision in text and image what could be in a livable world.

    See the YourTV Niagara video spotlight about this exhibition, featuring interviews with the artists and curators.

    Read the article by Bart Gazzola in The Sound STC.

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  • Donna Szőke presents ‘On Invisibility’, January 21 at the MIWSFPA

    Thursday, January 16, 2020 | By

    On 21 January, the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture welcomes artist Donna Szőke, Chair of the Department of Visual Arts and a member of the recently created Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, as a Walker Cultural leader for 2020.

    Szőke will present an artists’ talk “On Invisibility” at 7:00 pm at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts of Brock University (MIWSFPA). This is a free community event and everyone is welcome to attend.

    Invisibility is this year’s theme at The Small Walker Press, a small press valuing interdisciplinary cooperation and the exploration of image and text, homed in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) at the MIWSFPA.

    Szőke creates expanded animation, media art, video, drawing, and collaborations. She investigates immanence, embodied perception, and the fluidity of lived experience.

    In her artist’s talk, she will present her work and her current book project The Dark Redacted in cooperation with author Gary Barwin, to be published in April 2020 by the Small Walker Press.

    In an excerpt from the forthcoming volume, editors Catherine Parayre and Derek Knight write:

    Donna Szőke thoughtfully investigates the fluidity of meaning and presence. Rather than elucidating a concept or an experience, she proposes a semi-abstract perusal of collective or intimate issues. Offering a reflection on the evocative instability of the biographical and the personal, and opting for an approach close to autofiction, her work constellates subtle possibilities and its scope defies the limitations of certainty. The artist is a compelling storyteller for whom the quest for meaning and the vagrancies of that search are more significant than plain facts. For The Dark Redacted Szőke proposes traces of a fragile story and never-faltering endurance. Her sequence of images alternates beautifully detailed natural life – a buffalo, intricate vegetation – and minimally sketched-out human presence and personal objects. As a result, her work addresses the viewers’ intuition and sensitivity to the environment.

    The event is presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture for the Walker Cultural Leader Series, generously founded by Marilyn I. Walker. The Walker Cultural Leader series brings leading artists, performers, practitioners and academics to the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. Engaging, lively and erudite, these sessions celebrate professional achievement, artistic endeavour and the indelible role of culture in our society.

    Please join us.Join us on January 21, 2020 at 7-8:30 pm.  The presentation takes place in the Art & Val Fleming Smart Classroom (MWS 156), located on the lower level of the MIWSFPA.  Limited parking is available at the MIWSFPA, with additional parking nearby at the Garden Park/Carlisle Street Parking garage and adjacent lots.

    Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture: Walker Cultural Leader Artist’s talk
    ‘On Invisibility’, with Donna Szőke
    21 January 2020, 7-8:30 pm, MWS 156

    download the poster

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  • Art is in the City

    Thursday, September 03, 2015 | By

    itc-poster-cmMEDIA RELEASE
    R00125
    2 September 2015
    Brock University — Communications & Public Affairs

    Art is in the City

    As Brock University’s Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts opens a new era in its new urban setting, it is launching a performance series to celebrate the bond between the community and the new arts centre of excellence in downtown St. Catharines.

    The series Imagining the City – part of the Walker Cultural Leaders Program, 2015/16 – consists of performances, exhibitions, concerts and conferences, all themed around ideas of the urban, and the relationship between the City and the University.

    “Our goal is to invite the community to engage with us in a series of celebratory events, 40 or more, that run the course of the academic year,” said Derek Knight, MIWSFPA Director. “Formal or improvised, these activities will take place in our dynamic new building and in venues across the City, from the café to the concert hall, the theatre to the gallery, the outdoor environs to the street itself. What a wonderfully immersive way to bridge between our communities and to strengthen our ties.”

    Knight said events will build on the creativity and vision of faculty, students and the professional talents of many sister organizations and collaborators. “The idea that the city is a crucible for creative interaction and collective reflection, is a powerful concept and demonstration of the arts at their most compelling,” he said.

    The series will be dynamic and original and appeal to a variety of people, whether they are fans of theatre, musical performances, exhibitions or discussions.

    Imagining the City will bring Brock, the downtown and the greater Niagara community face-to-face with leading arts professionals and educators, with events occurring at the MIWSFPA, Rodman Hall, and venues within the developing creative arts hub of St. Paul Street.

    “At this crucial moment in the revival of our downtown the vitality of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts is manifest in programs such as the Walker Cultural Leader Series,” Knight said.

    The series will consist of more than 40 wide-ranging events, including:

    • performances of First Nations writer Marvin Francis’ epic poem City Treaty, adapted for the St. Catharines setting (September);
    • a Guitar Extravaganza concert featuring faculty, alumni and aficionados of the classical guitar in the local community (November);
    • Confluence, a walking project and virtual reconstruction by acclaimed artist Elizabeth Chitty offering the student community and public an opportunity to explore the environs beyond our new building (January);
    • a collaboration between the Shaw Festival and the Department of Dramatic Arts on a staged reading of George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara, entitled Major Barbara/Major Predictions(February);
    • a concert by the Department of Music’s Wind Ensemble in St. Catharines’ Market Square (March).

    The full program can be found here. Stay connected on social media by following @miwsfpa and #itc.

    All events for Imagining the City are free, and open to the public (the only exception being Poor by Essential Collective Theatre, co-presented by FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre with production assistance by DART).

    For more information or to arrange interviews: Marie Balsom, Communications Coordinator, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University mbalsom@brocku.ca, 905.688.5550 x4765

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  • The Avanti Chamber Singers celebrate the release of their new CD “Beauty is Before Me” with their concert Viva La Musica!

    Saturday, November 01, 2014 | By

    voice-of-niagara-cdSaturday, November 15, 2014, marks the release of the Avanti Chamber Singers’ third CD “Beauty is Before Me,” the fifth installment in the “Voices of Niagara” CD series, featuring works by local composers.

    The release will occur in conjunction with the Avanti Chamber Singers’ (ACS) season-opening concert, Viva La Musica! Presenting compositions from 1600 to the present day, this concert is a celebration of the joy and power of music. Rising Toronto oboist Aidan Dugan will perform as the featured guest artist.

    The CD is a collaborative project by ACS, Brock University’s student choirs, and the former Niagara Vocal Ensemble, all conducted by Harris Loewen. The sequence of works on the album flows through a variety of themes: the beauty of nature, the patron saint of music (St. Cecilia), the War of 1812, elegiac reflections, and a group of spirituals.

    The occasion also marks the re-release of the first two CDs in the series, recorded by the Niagara Vocal Ensemble, an all-women’s ensemble that was active in the Niagara Region between 1991 and 2011. All CDs are available through ACS and the Department of Music at Brock University.

    As with all five recordings in the “Voices of Niagara” CD series, the music on every track is written or arranged by composers with a Niagara connection, most recorded for the first time. Composers represented on this latest recording include Penny Blake, John Butler, the famous Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943), Erik Gero, Brock professors Peter Landey and Harris Loewen, Gail Poulsen, folk singer Stan Rogers, Matthew Tran-Adams, and Ronald Tremain (1923-98), Brock’s first Professor of Music.

    The concert opens with a rousing fanfare written especially for the occasion, based on the familiar round “Viva La Musica.” The program includes works by the great Renaissance composers, Jacob Handl and Orlandus Lassus, as well as a variety of more modern pieces. Canadian composers (e.g. Stephen Chatman, Eleanor Daley, Ruth Watson Henderson) are well represented, and the concert also provides samples of works from the latest CD. Oboist Aidan Dugan will perform lyrical pieces by familiar 19th century composers Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann.

    Conductor Harris Loewen states, “This latest album marks an exciting milestone in this multi-choir CD project that has been developed and released to the public over the last few years. I’m so extremely grateful for the fine and energetic musicianship that all the singers and instrumentalists have contributed in both concert and recording. It’s a truly wonderful choral legacy for the region.”

    The Viva Voce Choral Series, presented by the Department of Music, is a key part of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts’ mandate in building connections between the community and Brock University.

    Come and enjoy this choral celebration and CD release on Saturday, November 15 at 7:30 p.m., held at St. Barnabas Anglican Church, 31 Queenston Street, St. Catharines. Admission at the door is $25 for adults; $20 for seniors & students; $5 for the eyeGo program for high school students. A $5 discount is available for advance tickets (excluding eyeGO) and can be purchased at two St. Catharines locations: BookSmart (Scott & Vine Plaza) and Thorold Music (Glendale Avenue).

    For more information contact: Marie Balsom, Communications
    Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts
    T: 905-688-5550, ext. 4765 | E: mbalsom@brocku.ca | W: brocku.ca/miwsfpa

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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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