Tag: Art Education

Categories
Arts

Artmaking and teaching during the pandemic

Transcendence raises questions about the future of art education

Presented by student-teachers in Concordia’s undergraduate Art Education program, Transcendence explores growth during isolation. The exhibition, which was created for ARTE 432, Community Art Education: Theory and Practice, offers a varied body of work that aims to explore notions of making and teaching, and their effects on one another, during the pandemic.

Showcased with artsteps, an online platform for creating virtual spaces, Transcendence, which opened on Dec. 3, offers viewers an immersive experience. Viewers can interact with the works, which are exhibited in a realistic, simulated gallery-space named Tempo Gallery.

The viewer can make their way around as if they were in a video game. Clicking on an empty patch of grass leads their “player” running to the selected location. Other viewers, or players, can be seen walking around the gallery and its surrounding space.

Maybe this is the future of art-viewing and art making.

The viewer can explore around the outside of the building, which is situated on a waterfront — probably the closest they’ll come to being near the beach for a while.

Around the perimeter of the building, the works of three artists are exhibited. Among them, a multimedia graffiti piece in tones of red, orange, and blue titled Start Where You Are, by Gardenia-Jane Duverger Sarroche.

“Graffiti helps [express] my spontaneous thoughts with the possibility to spray-paint over my written fears and insecurities,” writes Duverger Sarroche in her artist statement. “Starting with scribbled intrusive thoughts on a drawer I found on the streets, I spat colors until I could not perceive my fears anymore.”

Inside the gallery, a series of nine paintings line the first wall. Each one of them features rocks and pebbles balancing atop one another, painted in muted tones of grey, blue, and orange. The digital illustrations, titled Douce Metamorphose, by Pauline Acchab, explore balance and growth.

“Cairns, stacked stones, act as a sign to guide travellers on the right path,” writes Acchab. “The assembled elements, defying the laws of gravity, demonstrate a level of tension with its surroundings while depicting harmony, fragility and stillness.”

Similarly, around the corner, a series of three works by Kassandra Quinteros explore self-growth and development. Braiding Threads is a vibrant photograph featuring a beaded mask worn by a figure who holds and weaves multiple braids in bright purples, yellows, and pinks, which contrast the black background.

“The multitude of threads being braided represents the infinity of information given to me during this academic journey and my personal experiences,” writes Quinteros. “The braid is my way of assembling these threads into one strong creation that defines my own self as a professional and as a person.”

Further into the gallery space, a series of five photographs fills a wall with collage-like images of roads and parking lots. The works, titled Forever Forward, by Rhea Bergeron, all feature a sunset and represent the changes that occur as seasons pass.

“[The sunset moments] could mean that, when a day ends, another begins,” writes Bergeron. “Also, the topic connects to my identity that is constantly changing and evolving throughout the years.”

Be it through Emmanuelle Lemieux’s upcycled papier maché sculptures, Kamila Dube’s mixed media paintings, or Liana Gomes’ photographs and digital illustrations, one thing is certain: self-reflection and experimentation are common themes that have risen as a result of artmaking practices during isolation.

Transcendence makes it clear that isolation is an extraordinary situation which has pushed artists and educators beyond the limits of what is normal. Despite this, these extraordinary measures have allowed for the possibility of creating what could be considered transcendent.

Transcendence will be available for viewing here.

Categories
Arts

Awakening to Art: The healing power of creation

 Clients of Les Impatients find solace through artistic expression

Art therapy is an approach that uses visual arts such as painting, drawing, collage and sculpture, as well as other art mediums, to allow participants to express emotions, deal with past trauma, and use art as a means of communication.

Since 2015, Les Impatients, an organization that offers creative art therapy workshops to clients with mental health struggles, has partnered with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) to exhibit the work of these individuals. Awakening to Art is currently being featured in the museum’s education wing, showcasing the talents and healing journeys of these participants.

Using the techniques and healing modalities of art therapy, participants have chosen the themes of identity and self-empowerment for this year’s exhibition. Volunteers François Martin and Louise Livernoche, as well as the director of Espace Création, Dominique Payette, came together alongside the participants from two Integrated Health and Social Services Centres (CISSS) in Montérégie to create this powerful display.

As you enter the room, to the right, viewers are welcomed with a wall of portraits depicted in white and red paint on black foam core. There is a beautiful cohesion among the pieces hung side-by-side, yet each work was so remarkably individual. The visual as a whole is striking and bold, and the inherent narrative of emotion radiates from each unique piece.

Wire sculptures hung from the ceiling and rested on small white shelves. Bright white lights shone onto the installation, creating shadows from the sculptures on the wall—this gave the illusion of two works of art within the same one. The sculptures themselves, alongside the shadows, give the impression of the installation coming to life. Together, the installation was a sight that would take any art enthusiast’s breath away. Every time you look at the installation again, you see a different dimension to the work.

Fabric arts were also amongst the pieces in the collection. Quilting and beadwork hung on the walls and colourful rows. Included in the collection of artworks were clay and textile pieces inspired by the museum’s current exhibition, Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives.

Make sure you take the time to go to J.A. DeSève Gallery, Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, level S1, the next time you go the MMFA to check out Awakening to Art, on until March 8.

 

 

Photos by Britanny Clarke.

Categories
Arts

Happening in and around the White Cube this week: Finding balance

Writing has always been a subcategory of making for me; they are one in the same.

Hi, my name is Chloë and I am in the midst of a brain fog, of some sort, while simultaneously drowning in coursework. I’ve got one foot in Arts & Sciences (Anthropology), and another in Fine Arts. I write stuff, I make stuff, and I teach stuff. Art stuff. I like stuff – there are lots of projects.

Among all my proposals for my assignments this semester, there is one element in common: my inability to focus, and my interest in finding a balance between working intuitively with what one has, as opposed to buying new, following a strict step-by-step process. I was never one for instructions, I improvise recipes and toy with the proper ways to do things, questioning that very notion of “proper,” “authentic”… Why can’t I be… just?

Why must I do anything in any specific way? I am not trying to copy or replicate. I want to absorb what speaks to me, cycling that knowledge out it a way that is my own. I want to investigate industrial and craft practices, how they can both lead to something very well made, though higher value will be placed on that which is handmade, rather than machine-made.

Finding this balance, drawing a line between different genres of Arts writing, between making, is one I still struggle with.

I think of how power and politics lie in the way a message is embedded, in the material they’re conveyed in. Whether in paint or printed words. There seems to be a tug between that which is free, liberating, therapeutic, and that which is skilled, following a specific framing.

It may be this idea of needing to frame work that frustrates me. To differentiate between my writing for The Concordian and my writing for research projects. Why can I not write in the same tone? Why can that not become my very practice?

I hope to do that without failing my classes. It’s hard to create within your own framework… let alone a professor’s? I need clear guidelines in order to make (write) work in the way they would like. If it were me alone, making, writing, it would be easier. I hope. Otherwise… why bother? What’s the point?

I’ve found solace in my not-so-turmoil-turmoil with The White Pube, an online alternative art criticism platform with pieces like, “I LITERALLY HATE THE ART WORLD,” “WHY MUSEUMS ARE BAD VIBES” and “Are White Girls Capable of Making Art That’s Not About themselves??”

In “I LITERALLY HATE THE ART WORLD,” White Pube creators, Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad write: “art doesn’t have inherent value, it’s always worth prodding […] the art in amongst all of this is hardly ever worth what we put ourselves through to facilitate it.”

I feel that GDLP/ZM, I feel that. And I don’t really know what to do.

 

 

Graphic by Ana Bilokin

Categories
Arts

4th SPACE is as flexible and adjustable as a bento box

A multidisciplinary addition to Concordia’s downtown campus

Concordia University’s 4th SPACE will be carrying out programs encompassing a variety of topics from avant-garde video games to open discussions about Indigenous cultures integrated in artificial intelligence during the upcoming months.

The explorative platform begins with a collaborative process between the school faculty and Concordia’s student associations, but it extends to more than a museum for school projects. After one month of its official launch in January, 4th SPACE revealed its interactive workshops to all passersby. The studio also features space for screenings and prototype installations presented by the university’s faculty members and students. Furthermore, its schedule offers roundtable events, an opportunity to spark conversation between guest panelists and the audience, that usually takes place in the center of the facility.

“Our collaborators, who will be researchers and students, take up residency in the SPACE, then they will transform the venue using specialized furniture,” said Knowledge Broker Prem Sooriyakumar. Designed to be as flexible and adjustable as a bento box, the venue can shift from a traditional science lab to a stage for visual art performances. “The way we’ve conceptualized the 4th SPACE is meant to be an agile space, meaning it can transform itself to the topic we are exploring for that set period,” Sooriyakumar continued.

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Sir George Williams Affair and Black History Month, the integrative studio has just hosted a commemoration of the Affair, Protests and Pedagogy.

On Jan. 31, the second evening of Protests and Pedagogy, Dorothy Williams’s workshop aimed to educate participants a card game she created. Williams is a historian and author of the only book that studied the history of black Canadians from New France era to 20th century Montreal, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal. Her game, The ABCs of Canadian Black History, is a familiar combination between the classic bingo and childhood trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh. Instead of anime monsters, these cards feature prominent black Canadian figures and organizations such as successful entrepreneur Wilson Ruffin Abbott and the Victoria Pioneer Rifles.

Following Protests and Pedagogy, the 4th SPACE will be hosting Landscapes of Hope on Feb. 19 and 20. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Curated by Concordia’s Art Education professor, Vivek Venkatesh, and Communication Studies professor, Owen Chapman, Landscape of Hope is a two-day program in which the first part will be a workshop held at the 4th SPACE on Feb. 19. The workshop gives Concordia undergraduates and CEGEP students a space where they can voice their thoughts on racism and cyberbullying. The program will proceed with a visual and musical art performance led by the undergraduates and graduates of the university’s Communications Studies, Art Education, Music Therapy and Education departments on Feb. 20 starting at 5 p.m.

Affiliated with Concordia’s SOcial Media EducatiON Every day (SOMEONE) project and international touring festival Grimposium, Landscape of Hope aims to teach workshop participants and viewers digital resilience in relation to online hate speech.

Since 2016, Professor Venkatesh and the SOMEONE research team have garnered worldwide attention by sharing elementary to post-secondary students’s narrative on cyber racism through music, theatre and other art mediums. Their project, Landscape of Hope, demonstrated success at their official premiere in Norway last year.

On March 4, 4th SPACE will be housing Arcade 11 in collaboration with Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre (TAG) and the Montreal Public Libraries Network. The arcade will feature experimental video games and “each game would have some kind of research component whether it was the technology involved, the experience or type of play,” said 4th SPACE coordinator, Douglas Moffat. Visitors will also have the opportunity to discuss these topics with the indie video game developers.

This event welcomes people of all ages; parents can mark this event in their to-do list of fun March break activities with their children. From retro arcade machines to a VR gaming experience, Arcade 11 is also the perfect opportunity for Concordia students to play and unwind after a study session for finals.

Taking place from March 18 to April 12, the studio’s planning team will carry out an exhibition centered around artificial intelligence. 4th SPACE will provide a platform for its visitors to reflect on the concept of Indigenous practices within AI. There will also be room for discussion about the hopes and fears of the innovative technology that is frighteningly powerful and limitless.

Since the studio’s opening, many Montreal residents and university students have come to see the new topic  4th SPACE was exploring. Successfully mirroring Concordia’s dynamic and inclusive climate, what was once a dark and forgotten corner at the downtown campus has regained a pulse.

Protest and Pedagogies was held at the space’s last event, a presentation surfacing the traumas and silences of 1969’s Sir George Williams Affair and the reparative work involved post-affair on Monday, Feb. 11. For more information, visit 4th SPACE’s schedule of activities & events.

Categories
Arts

Culture as a political and personal influence

Photo by Mackenzie Lad

Jasmina Cibic considers national identity through art and architecture

“How do governments instrumentalise culture for the formation of national identity and representation?”

This is a question that Jasmina Cibic’s art considers through her multidisciplinary, multi-room, site-specific exhibition, Everything That You Desire And Nothing That You Fear. Showing in DHC/ART Gallery, the exhibition explores the themes of national culture and its production. Curated by Cheryl Sim, the collection of artworks look explicitly at the former nation of Yugoslavia. and concepts of borders and nationality connected to this country that no longer exists.

DHC/ART is a vast gallery, with many floors and rooms. Everything That You Desire And Nothing That You Fear is exhibited in the entire space, with each room dedicated to a different art piece that compliments and connects to the other works. Certain details tie the rooms together in a cohesive way, such as a subtle inclusion of the same pattern, or colour palette, in every room. The artworks shown in these spaces include short videos, dance performance videos, an in-progress tapestry and a large mural.

Walking through the gallery’s distinctive rooms adds excitement to the viewing experience, and further solidifies the themes and ideas of national culture and identity that Cibic presents. Through the focus on a nation and a national identity that don’t exist anymore, having been separated into new, distinctive nations within new borders, Everything That You Desire And Nothing That You Fear considers how the political and the personal connect and intertwine within cultural identity.

As explained in Sim’s curatorial statement, this interdisciplinary, site-specific exhibition uses the subject matter of Yugoslavia and its political and economical history as a lens, “through which to study the employment of art and architecture… in an attempt to achieve the ultimate display of dominance for (inter)national audiences.” The development of the exhibition addresses the contrast between private and public spaces, which also ties into greater themes of the exhibition. Everything That You Desire And Nothing That You Fear considers how art and architecture—and more generally, culture—can be used politically to construct perceptions and formations of national identity.

A workshop titled A Dance Of Symbols will be held in connection to the exhibition. It is organized and run by Leisure—a creative, conceptual, artistic collaboration between Montreal-based artists Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley, who have been involved with exhibitions and creative projects all over Canada. Working together through Leisure since 2004, the group describes their focuses and practices as engaging “with cultural and historical narratives through research, conversation, published texts, curatorial projects and art production.”

For A Dance Of Symbols, Leisure takes inspiration from Expo 67. The Expo, which took place in Montreal in 1967, encouraged different countries and nations to represent themselves through the way of pavilions. The pavilions featured events, performances and art, which aimed to share respective national identities. It is from this that A Dance Of Symbols takes influence, along with the general aesthetics and style of the 1960s. In the workshop, participants can create, through a series of stations, a personal symbolic object. It incorporates details like gradients, stamps and stencils, participants can create these items, which will then work as props for a live dance-inspired composition

The overall exhibition shares a dimensional, dynamic view of the history of Yugoslavia. Through various mediums and forms, Cibic investigates many different complexities of the relationships between borders, identities, and the political and personal. Deploying these through art and architecture creates impactful work that allows the artist and viewer alike to further explore the ties between national and personal identities, cultures and borders.

Everything That You Desire And Nothing That You Fear is exhibiting at DHC/ART until March 3.

A Dance of Symbols is available to groups with a reservation. For the general public, the workshop will be available during the Family Open House on Jan. 26, from 2 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.

Categories
Arts

Fighting homelessness with art

The St-James Drop-In centre takes everything into consideration

While a blanket of fresh November snow falls on Montreal, the St-James Drop-in Centre is warm with laughter. The front room buzzes with activity, and dishes clink together as members serve lunch. In the corner of the dining area is a piano painted in bright colors. In the kitchen, crates of fresh fruits, vegetables and grains are spread out across the counters and in stacks on the floor. Downstairs in the art studio, drawings and paintings hang on the walls, unfinished projects sit on easels and shelves are lined with supplies.

St-James’s members have painted bright portraits on the piano in the centre’s dining room.
Photo by Hannah Ewen.

St-James is a community centre located in the Gay Village, about a block up from Ste-Catherine St. It’s open five days a week and serves as a space for marginalized people. Its members are predominately homeless or struggling with mental illness; as St-James intervention worker Lisa Zimanyi pointed out, the two often go hand in hand.

“We are much smaller than most centres, and the idea there is to make people feel more at home,” Zimanyi said. With just three rooms, the space is certainly cozy. “People who struggle with anxiety or different types of mental illness don’t always feel safe in larger places, so we are kind of an alternative resource for them.”

In addition to offering counselling, crisis intervention or just a conversation over a cup of coffee, the centre hosts poetry, music and art workshops. The centre’s team also hosts several art events in the community, including art exhibitions to showcase the pieces that members make. Although the centre has exhibited work at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in the past, Zimanyi said it’s the smaller vernissages held throughout the year that allow members to connect with the community.

According to Zimanyi, the staff at St-James works hard to get to know members on a personal level. Having worked full-time at the centre for five years, Zimanyi said she has had the chance to “accompany them through all different aspects of their life.” Although the centre provides members with a roof, a shower and hot meals, the staff’s focus isn’t just on survival. “We do meet people’s physical needs, but at the same time, we’re trying to build relationships with people,” Zimanyi said.

Members are also encouraged to volunteer and help out at the centre as much as they can. “I actually rely on the members to help me out with running the place on a day-to-day basis,” Zimanyi said. “The members feel at home, and we get to know each other in a more informal context. It’s more like a family.”

The way the centre hums with jokes, and hearing members greet each other when they walk in, it is clear St-James has created a unique atmosphere—one that feels like home.

Concerned with more than basic necessities, the St-James Drop-in Centre and art studio serves as a safe space for marginalized people.
Photo by Hannah Ewen.

Lysanne Picard is the creative arts program coordinator at St-James and oversees the Concordia art education students who intern at the centre. A Concordia alumna herself, Picard said the students are in charge of running their own workshops with the members and she encourages the students to think outside of the box. “The student workshops really add some diversity and excitement.” This year’s interns, Concordia students Stephanie Talisse and Jude Ibrahim, have done exactly that. With Talisse, members assembled and drew still-life scenes of the things they kept in their pockets. In another activity, Ibrahim had members make prints on postcards, focusing on social change and the message they want to send to the world.

“It’s really neat to see the members meet other artists and experience that artist-to-artist connection they might not get otherwise,” Picard said.

Even after members have gained some stability, they are still welcome to spend time at the centre, and many do. Paul Hicks, a long-time member who also works at the centre, joined the community in the 80s, when the centre first opened. Hicks often participates in the art workshops offered at the centre, but said he particularly enjoys working with the interns.

“I really like when the students come in and do lessons,” Hicks said. Behind him, one of his recent paintings, an intricate and colourful scene of a gondola in the canals of Venice, was hung up to dry.

A few of Hicks’s pieces, along with those of other members, will be available to purchase at the centre’s annual art sale fundraiser on Saturday, Dec. 1 from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. All profits will go towards supporting the centre. Anyone searching for a unique Christmas gift or simply looking to support the centre can stop by 1442 Panet St. to shop and chat with the artists. The centre also accepts donations year-round.

Categories
Arts

Searching for balance in Constellat(i)ons

Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Concordia’s community art education students are at a crossroads

Teaching is everywhere. Whether cultural, from one generation to the next, or through academic pathways, teaching is present in all aspects of life and in every field.

Following a curriculum of practicum-based lecture and studio classes, Concordia art education students learn how to teach, how to be taught, and where art fits into all this. These student artists are interested not only in teaching art, but in using art to teach any school subject and about all aspects of life. Two years into their degree, each student must decide whether to specialize or major in the field, a choice that determines whether or not they will work as a teacher in primary and secondary schools or in the community.

Students who choose the community pathway must take ARTE 432: Theory and Practice in Community Art Education. This semester, the course was taught by grad student Arianna Garcia Fialdini, a former teaching assistant and first-time professor at Concordia. Fialdini’s goal with this course was to bridge her students’ personal art practice and their teaching practices with an exhibition.

Constellat(i)ons, curated by the entire class, served to define who the students are as artists as well as teachers. The work exhibited was a result of the students reflecting on their sense of identity and emotions regarding their position in and concerns about belonging in the art world.

Avery Walker, Emily Sirota and Sylvia Erlichman-Gross are three of the 18 exhibiting student-teachers. Sirota is an independent student and a working performance artist interested in the idea of teaching and learning as a performative act. During the vernissage on Nov. 16, she performed Incommensurate Things, a piece exploring the anatomy of a breakup using controlled projections of dispersed vignettes.

Abstract painters Walker and Erlichman-Gross have similar yet distinct perceptions of themselves as artists and student-teachers. Erlichman-Gross aspires to be an art therapist and is interested in the intersection of art and psychology. Whereas Walker is interested in collaborative learning in community settings and merging her artistic practice with the teaching practice.

Sylvia Erlichman-Gross’ work in progress, A gift to my mother. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Erlichman-Gross’ painting, A gift to my mother, explores the intersection between art and psychology, in conjunction with aspects of home and identity. The piece is a work in progress throughout the artist’s bachelor’s degree and documents her journey as a student. Walker’s Serendipity was made with leftover paint from one of her painting-without-brushes lessons taught as a part of her practicum.

Avery Walker’s Serendipity was created with left over paint. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

 

Other pieces in the exhibition included fibre work as a form of therapy, beading and using recycled materials as a form of cultural education and social resistance, as well as a series of audio-visual and print installations exploring aspects of the individual students’ identities.

According to the students, teaching is many things, and teaching about art or using art as a means of teaching expands upon even more. It can transform fears, anxieties and vulnerabilities into love and encouragement. It requires awareness of one’s identity and the ability to be flexible and open to other perceptions of art and ways of sharing skills. It is a continuous battle, learning from and finding meaning within all realms of experience and connecting them with single threads.

“We are part of a series of networks, just like stars are parts of constellations,” Walker wrote in her artist statement. The class exhibition meant something different to each student but really focused on giving them practical experience not only as teachers but as professional artists.

 

Exit mobile version