VISA instructor Amy Friend’s piece, “Hands on Water”, is featured today on the Instagram page of the Museum of Modern Art as part of their MoMA R&D Salon 19: Modern Death. Have a look! Congratulations, Amy!
Amy Friend, instagram, MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News
VISA 3F99 Independent Study
February 9 – March 10, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 9 from 6 – 9 pm
A Fibre Arts installation created from community donations – come out and be a part of the opening reception and see how the donations have been recycled!
The opening will be held in the Art Gallery in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts on Feb 9th from 6 – 9 pm. The exhibition will be installed until March 10th, 2017. Gallery Hours: Tues. – Sat. from 1 – 5 pm
Want more information? Connect with us at our Facebook event page.
Arts, Exhibition, Fibre, Independent Study, Threads, VISA 3F99, Visual Arts
Categories: Events, Exhibitions
(Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, January 18, 2017 | by Alison Innes. Photo: Lauren Regier (BA ’14) works on her photographs in studio.)
Three classes into her first Brock University art course with Professor Keri Cronin, Lauren Regier (BA ’14) knew she wanted to study art full time.
She has since continued to nurture her passion for art and recently launched a photography exhibit at Malcolm Gear Studio in Welland.
Regier called her connection with Brock and the local arts community, as well as an artist residency she took following graduation, critical to her artistic development.
It was her professors at the University who explained the residency process and shared their professional experiences to help guide her in an appropriate direction.
With the support of professors Amy Friend, Irene Loughlin and Donna Szoke, Regier opted to participate in the Sointula Art Shed Residency Program near Vancouver Island in March 2016.
Lauren Regier’s Bioart piece Aroma Illius Laqueo.
The residency was an important opportunity for her to explore functional and survival properties of plants, humans and animals, and to apply that research into the construction of the plants in her Bioart series.
The series is a collaboration of science and art that creates new, interesting organisms by meshing together existing bits of plant matter.
Regier’s work combines plants with industrial products to create strange new prototypes. She documents her creations in black and white photography, hand-tinted with watercolours.
Regier’s current exhibition, Fantasy Fleur, is an offshoot of her Bioart series.
“I wanted to break with the notion of idealized beauty — something that is manufactured and very commonplace when it comes to depicting nature, such as floral wallpaper and furniture patterns,” Regier said.
The Fantasy Fleur photographs feature plants in different stages of their life cycles. They are printed on aluminum; the highly polished surfaces allow for interactive play between the viewer and the work.
“Similar to species that bloom at specific times of the day, these metallic prints respond to their environments and viewers are forced to physically interact with the work in order to see the image,” Regier said.
Producing the pieces has been a highlight for Regier over the past year.
“Meeting wonderful people in the community through Brock University and Rodman Hall has been crucial in developing my practice and providing me a platform to show my photographs,” she said.
Regier first met Malcolm Gear in her curatorial art class at Brock.
The artists recently reconnected at a Rodman Hall event at Mahtay Café, which ultimately led to Regier’s exhibition being launched at Malcolm Gear Studio, 464 East Main St. in Welland.
Her work is on display until Jan. 31.
Regier’s photography is also available for viewing on her website.
ART BLOCK showcases the artwork of Brock University students and is hosted by the Brock Art Collective. All artwork has been created on 6″x6” panels in a variety of mediums and will be for sale starting at $40.
January 10 – February 3, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 12, 2017 from 6 – 9 pm
Art Gallery, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, 15 Artists’ Common, St. Catharines
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 1 pm – 5 pm
Free community event
See a preview of the exhibition courtesy of TVCogeco:
Brock Art Collective, Exhibition, Free, Visual Arts
Categories: Events, Exhibitions
(Source: The Brock News, Friday, December 9, 2016 | by Alison Innes)
Professor Linda Steer has been fascinated with photography since she was a little girl looking at her grandmother’s photo albums. Her interest in photography and surrealism has now led to the recent publication of her book, Appropriated Photographs in French Surrealist Periodicals, 1924-1939.
Steer says understanding the appropriation and recirculation of images is an important part of our media-rich culture.
“Research on photography is becoming increasingly important as we live more and more of our lives through visual images,” she says.
Memes are one modern example of how the meaning of an image changes.
“They are typically photographic images that have been appropriated and altered through the addition of text or juxtaposition with other images. They circulate on social media. That process of adding text and re-circulating changes their meanings,” Steer says.
The surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s were doing a similar thing in their magazines: taking existing images and juxtaposing them with other images or text. In this process, surrealists turned established images, such as medical images or crime-scene photographs, into works of art with very different meanings from the original photographs.
It’s important to our image-laden lives to understand this process and what it means, says Steer.
Her book is structured around four case studies and is the first of its kind on this topic.
Since art history is an interdisciplinary field, Steer’s analysis engages with histories of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, ethnography, anthropology, literature and poetry, criminology, forensics, politics, religion, and popular culture in late 19th and early 20th century France and beyond.
While the book is for an academic audience, Steer hopes those interested in photography and art will also find it appealing.
“I hope that my book gives readers a new way of thinking about the complex relationships between surrealism and photography, and that it allows readers to understand, in a more general way, how photographs work and how they come to have meaning,” Steer concludes.
Linda Steer, Photography
Categories: Faculty & Instructors, News
December 3, 2016 – February 12, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday 8 December (18:00/19:30)
Location: Rodman Hall Art Centre,
109 St Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, ON
Curators: Catherine Parayre and Shawn Serfas
Reflecting on the exhibition A Painter’s Country: Canadian Landscape Paintings Selected from the Permanent Collection (curator: Stuart Reid) presented at Rodman Hall during the summer of 2016, Abstract/Abstracted: ‘This is not a tree’ presents works by Karel Appel, Frederick S. Coburn, Hans Hartung, Kazuo Nakamura, Carl Schaeffer, and Tony Tascona. Put together, these artworks, also from Rodman Hall’s permanent collection, explore a different problematic. How much abstraction is there in representation? In turn, to what extent is an abstract work abstract? Abstract/Abstracted highlights, but also questions the contrasts between abstract and figurative art.
Brock University students in “Intermediate Painting” respond in selected artworks, while students in “Interpretive and Critical Writing in the Arts” provide critical texts that explore these questions.
The catalogue will appear in the 2017 issue of A Journal of Text-and-Image Criticism/Creation
abstract art, Catherine Parayre, exhibitions, figurative art, Rodman Hall, Shawn Serfas, stac, visa
Categories: Events, Exhibitions
November 22 – December 9, 2016
Artist Talk: Thursday, November 24, 2016, 6 – 7 pm, Foundation Studio (MW 151)
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 24, 2016 from 7 – 9 pm
Location: Art Gallery, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts,
15 Artists’ Common, St. Catharines, ON
Art Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 1 – 5 pm
Free community event!
The Walker Cultural Leader Series presents work by Brock University Visual Arts students in response to workshops with New York artist Liz Sales, from the International Center for Photography. Also featured are photographs from Liz Sales’ Camera Obscura series, The Weather Inside. Students worked alongside Liz Sales to construct a Camera Obscura for the production of their work on the grounds of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.
Arts, Camera, Darkness, Light, Obscura, Visual Arts, walker cultural leader series
Categories: Events, Exhibitions
(Source: The Brock News, Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | by Alison Innes. Photo caption: Brock Visual Arts students work to build a camera obscura in front of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.)
Constructing a large outdoor camera has given Brock Visual Arts students a freeze frame of photography techniques of the past.
As part of the Walker Cultural Leader Series, 40 students from Prof. Amy Friend’s Camera and Darkroom Process Photography course and Candace Bodanski’s Baroque Art and Architecture course worked to build a three metre by three metre camera obscura in front of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts in downtown St. Catharines
The camera obscura gave students an opportunity to experience an early form of photograph making.
“Their interactions with the structure coerced new methodologies and much trial and error to achieve a successful photograph,” Friend says.
After working with New York artist Liz Sales and Friend to build the camera, the students used it for about a month to produce photographs.
The result is a new exhibit at the downtown Brock opening Thursday, Nov. 24.
The term camera obscura was coined in the early 17th century and means “a darkened room.” The device works on similar principles to a pinhole camera. A dark room or tent with a small hole in one side allows light to pass into the darkened space and create an image of an object. This image can be captured on photographic paper or by drawing.
Making the structure light-tight was a challenge, requiring students to hand stitch the black-out material directly onto the structure so wind couldn’t lift the fabric and allow light to leak in and interfere with the exposure of the silver gelatin paper during production.
Friend said that she witnessed some hesitancy with the new structure at first, as it disrupts modern understanding of what a photographic capture is.
“As a practitioner,” she said, “I love that reaching into the vaults of history reveals new ways of seeing and thinking. Students pushed their experiments with impressive results.”
Other Brock Visual Arts classes also interacted with the camera obscura while two high school classes visited the project and attended a workshop with Sales and Friend in which they engaged with the camera and darkroom facilities to produce photographs.
In Light and Darkness: A Camera Obscura Project with Artist Liz Sales and Brock Visual Arts Students runs until Dec. 9 in the MIWSFPA Art Gallery, and also features work from Sales’ own camera obscura series The Weather Inside. An opening reception and artist talk by Sales will be held Thursday, Nov. 24 from 6-7 p.m. in MW151 at the downtown campus.
(Source: St. Catharines Standard, Monday, November 21, 2016 | by John Law. Photo caption: An image from photographer Liz Sales’ series The Weather Inside. CREDIT: Liz Sales / Submitted)
New York photographer Liz Sales will team with Brock University Visual Arts students for a camera project opening Nov. 22.
In Light and Darkness will spotlight the results of a ‘camera obscura’ collaboration on the grounds of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts in downtown St. Catharines.
Prior to an opening reception Nov. 24, Sales will host an artist’s talk at 6 p.m. in the school’s Foundation Studio (MW 151).
“(Liz) has a knowledge base that’s quite extensive,” says Department of Visual Arts assistant professor Amy Friend. “And she’s quite adventurous. She doesn’t have a traditional set of what is expected, and I thought that would be really useful for the students.”
Sales currently teaches at the International Center of Photography. Her work focuses on the relationship between perception and technology, and is seen in several photo-based magazines.
Friend was already familiar with Sales’ work when the photographer contacted her two years ago for a magazine interview. She knew her unpredictable style and methods were ideal for Brock’s visual arts students.
“She’s definitely an experimenter, which was really important to bringing her to work with the students. She has a background in motion picture cameras, and also builds her own cameras by hand to shoot her photographs.”
In addition to student work, the show will feature selections from Sales’ camera obscura series The Weather Inside.
Camera obscura is the optical result of an image projected through a small hole, seen as reversed and inverted.
Friend says the students built a ten-by-ten foot tent with blackout material as an exterior darkroom for the project. It’s located directly in front of the Marilyn I. Walker school.
“There’s quirks whenever you’re building something new in a different place, so it teaches them not only about the construction and function of the camera, but also the learning that happens along the way for everyone.”
(Source: Niagara This Week, Wednesday, November 16, 2016)
ST. CATHARINES — What happens when Brock University visual arts students work alongside a celebrated New York photographer? A special collaborative gallery show.
In Light and Darkness: A Camera Obscura Project will hang at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts’ art gallery from Nov. 22 to Dec. 9, featuring the work of Brock’s visual arts students along with photos from Liz Sales’ camera obscura series The Weather Inside. Camera Obscura, sometimes referred to as a pinhole image, is a natural optical phenomenon that occurs when light from an external scene passes through a device – usually a box – and strikes a surface inside, reproducing the scene inverted and reverse while preserving the colour and perspective.
As part of the Walker Cultural Leader Series, students from Brock participated in a workshop with Sales, a New York artist from the International Centre for Photography. The students worked with Sales to construct a camera obscura for the production of their work on the grounds of the downtown performing arts school. The work being displayed as part of the series is the students’ response to those workshops. An artist talk is taking place Nov. 24 from 6-7 p.m. in Foundation Studio at the school, with the opening reception to follow from 7-9 p.m. The art gallery is located at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at 15 Artists’ Common. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 1-5 p.m.