News

  • Visa instructor Judy Graham announces upcoming exhibition.

    raw-and-re-imagined-event-posterVisa instructor Judy Graham has work featured in the upcoming exhibition:

    Raw & Re-imagined: Photo Exhibition

    February 29 – March 5, 2016
    Opening reception: February 27, 6 – 9 pm
    Willowbank
    5 Walnut Street
    Queenston, ON.

    For more information on this exhibition please click HERE.

     

    Tags: , ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Brock instructor’s work one of Time’s top 10 magazine covers of the year

    (Source: The Brock NewsThursday, December 10, 2015 | by )

    Time Magazine has recognized the photographic work of Brock University visual arts instructor Amy Friend. A photograph created by Friend for the cover of The California Sunday Magazine’s April 5 edition is one of Time’s Top 10 covers of the year.

    “Our selection of the top 10 covers of 2015 displays an exquisite use of photography,” writes Kira Pollack in Time’s online article announcing the best covers. “With this unranked selection, we’ve witnessed that the cover still holds the power to be iconic and, at the very least, move and delight us.”

    Other covers on the list include the Vanity Fair image of Caitlyn Jenner shot by famous photographer Annie Leibovitz, New York Magazine’s issue featuring black and white images of 35 women who claim to be victims of Bill Cosby and a Harper’s Bazaar photo of singer Rihanna in the mouth of a shark.

    Friend said she is thrilled her work is included in a collection of so many amazing images.

    “It gives a boost to the aspects I really believe in regarding photography and its ability to reach a certain and specific sentiment with people,” she said. “When you are struck by an image, it remains with you.”

    As a fine arts photographer, Friend works with light.

    In her photographic series Dare alla Luce, she uses light to re-make vintage photographs.

    “We loved the work of Canadian artist Amy Friend, specifically her series Dare alla Luce, in which she manipulates archival photographs with a needle and then projects light through the images,” said the magazine’s creative director Leo Jung.

    More and more, artists are being approached to work with mainstream media.

    The California Sunday Magazine cover is inspired by that series and shows the silhouette of a woman with spots of light shining through, giving it a poignant quality. John von Pamer took the picture of the woman and Friend applied her technique on it and then re-photographed it. It goes with the story Death, Re-Designed.

    “The resulting image has an otherworldly, ethereal quality – a perfect metaphor for this story,” said Jacqueline Bates, photography director.

    Friend said it’s not unusual for artists to work in editorial realms.

    “More and more, artists are being approached to work with mainstream media,” she said, noting that’s opening even more doors for her students at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    “There’s fertile ground between the fine arts stream and with editorial based work,” she said.

    Friend said Brock visual arts students are exposed to both digital and analogue photography thanks to the MIWSFPA’s brand new darkroom.

    “It’s what really sets us apart from many other universities, which are mainly concentrating on digital,” she said.

    As a photographer, she knows the value of a well-rounded education in the art form.

    “Every time a student develops a photo in the darkroom, it’s a completely magical experience,” she said.

    In her photography, Friend said she concentrates on elements of history, time, memory and impermanence.

    “Despite photography’s traditional connection with the real, I am less concerned with capturing a ‘concrete’ reality, and instead aim to use and explore photography as a medium yet focus on what lies beyond its immediate visual representations,” she said.

    In much of her work, Friend uses found images and vintage pictures.

    Dare Alla Luce has been published in book form by photolucida.org and one of the images featured hangs in the new FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines.

    Friend’s recent work will be on display at Rodman Hall from Jan. 29-May 1 in a show called Assorted Boxes of Ordinary Life, curated by Marcie Bronson.

    An opening reception will be held Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.

    Tags: , , , , , ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Visa student releases CD and video.

    creaturespeakFourth year Visual Arts student Brittany Brooks has just released a CD titled Shadow Songs as well as a feature video for the song Oh Susana.

    For more information and to view the video please click HERE.

    Tags: , , ,
    Categories: Alumni, Current Students, News

  • Visa instructor Amy Friend announces upcoming exhibition.

    amyfriend-isoldeThe photography of Visa instructor Amy Friend will be featured an the upcoming exhibition.

    Amy Friend: Dare alla Luce
    December 4 > January 30, 2016
    Opening Friday, December 4th at 5:00pm

    For more information please click HERE.

    Pictura Gallery
    122 West 6th Street
    Bloomington, IN

    Tags: , ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Visa Instructor Donna Akrey announces exhibitions.

    craft-martVisual Arts Instructor Donna Akrey is part of two upcoming exhibitions:

    Stories of the City Exhibition
    SB Contemporary
    1017 Church Street
    Hamilton
    Open 12pm – 4pm, Wednesday through Saturday November 6 – 23
    33 University Ave. West
    Open 1pm – 6pm, Friday and Saturday November 20 – December 5 (or by appointment)

    For more information click HERE.

    (F)NOR
    Hamilton Artist Inc Craft Mart.
    December 11 and 12

    For more information click HERE.

    Tags: , , ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Visa Instructor Amy Friend announces exhibitions.

    friend_a-04Photography Instructor Amy Friend is part of the following events:

    CRITICAL MASS

    Amy Friend is one of fifty photographers included in Critical Mass. The selection is based on a juried portfolio process by 200 curators and professionals in the art field. For more information on this click HERE.

     

    FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE FOTOGRAFÍA GUATEPHOTO 2015

    Amy’s work is featured in the group exhibition titled, Seeing Connections, in Antigua, Guatemala, curated by Dr. Rebecca Senf (Curator of Photography at the Phoenix Art Museum and Creative Center for Photography, USA).

    Amy will also present the recently published monograph from the same series at the Photobook exhibition in the Guatemala Photo Festival, and she will also participate as a panelist at the Museo Arte de Guatemala in Guatemela City on November 21, 2015. This panel discussion will focus on New Initiatives and Platforms for Photography on an international scale.

    For more information click HERE.

    Tags: , , , , ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Visa Instructor Judy Graham featured in exhibition.

    noise_0Visa drawing Instructor Judy Graham will be exhibiting drawings at the Niagara Artists Centre, opening Nov. 7th, 2-4 p.m.

    Tags: ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Visa Instructor Irene Loughlin featured in exhibition.

    irene-loughlin_0Visa Instructor Irene Loughlin presents performance art work at kilometrocero International Festival of Performance Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Nov 5-9, 2015.

    The Festival Internacional de Performance Kilometro Cerø will be held in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic from november 5th till 9th. It is produced by El Arañazo, a Santo Domingo-based cultural organization that specializes in literature and performance art. This year, the Festival’s curatorial theme is “Puntos de Partida” (“Points of Departure”). In the view of the Festival’s organizers, the Western point of view of Dominican Republic history positions Santo Domingo as the epicentre of America’s conquest and evangelism. El Aranzo states, “That condition, together with all the importance that we, the Dominican people brag about, seldom generates meditation upon the idiosyncratic contradictions of a society which, starting from dislocation, was raised into a pretend tropical paradise.” From this “departure point” Kilometro Cero’s events plan to de-construct and rethink a tradition that has been sold and/or imposed for more that five centuries.

    Tags: , ,
    Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Donna Szőke: Satellite, Curated by Stuart Reid

    "Invisible Histories", phone app, 2015

    “Invisible Histories”, phone app, 2015

    Monday, October 19 – Saturday, November 28, 2015
    Opening Reception: Friday, October 23, 2015, 7 – 9 p.m.
    Location: Visual Arts Gallery, 15 Artists’ Common
    Satellite is the collected media art works by Donna Szoke, from 2011 to present. It is literally a satellite show of the exhibition Cloud, installed and running now at Rodman Hall Art Centre. While Cloud coalesces print, sculpture and multiples into one body of work, Satellite presents digital drawings, single channel video and media art works that speak to the ethereal regions of digital art practice. These digital artworks investigate the invisible, elided and mysterious.

    This exhibition is running now at the Visual Arts Gallery, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University at 15 Artists’ Common in downtown St. Catharines, and is a free community event!

    Tags: , , , , , , ,
    Categories: Events, Exhibitions, Faculty & Instructors, News

  • Donna Szőke: Cloud, Curated by Stuart Reid

    Donna Szőke, "Decoy", 2015 acrylic paint on ABS plastic, ceramic plate

    Donna Szőke, “Decoy”, 2015 acrylic paint on ABS plastic, ceramic plate

    Saturday, October 10, 2015 – Sunday, January 17, 2016
    Opening Reception: Sunday, October 25, 2015, 3 – 5 p.m.
    Location: Rodman Hall Art Centre, 109 St. Paul Cres., St. Catharines
    Cloud is an assemblage of limited-edition prints and objects that explores relational meaning. Donna Szőke has created a collection of works that convey messages that are sometimes absurd, often humorous, never singular, but existing in relation to other parts of the whole. The materials chosen for the prints usually have an association with the text or message. For Decoy, the artist made a series of 3D-printed, trompe l’oeil Tim Horton’s doughnuts. The relationship between the doughnut and the hole, the original and the copy, the single and the baker’s dozen, may be confounding or irrational, but serves to point out how ideas are ephemeral structures.

    The artist writes: “Absurdity, irrationality, immanence, failure and anachronism are the unifying themes of Cloud… Ideas arise and are fleeting. They form, peak and disappear in sets of relationships to other ideas. Insights echo across instances of ideas.”

    This exhibition is running now at Rodman Hall Art Centre, 109 St. Paul Crescent in downtown St. Catharines, and is a free community event!

    Tags: , , , ,
    Categories: Events, Exhibitions, Faculty & Instructors, News