Articles tagged with: imagining the city

  • 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.

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    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!

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    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!

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  • Art is in the City

    MEDIA 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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