Alumni Profiles Archives - ɫ��ƵAPP

ɫ��ƵAPP alumna Lucy Pullen encourages viewers to reach for the stars in her latest exhibit

Sarah Poko — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:31:17 +0000

100 Closest Stars series was conceived in New York City, but deeply connected to a history of conceptual art and printmaking at ɫ��ƵAPP.��

Multi-disciplinary artist (BFA 94)—splits her practice between drawing and sculpture. Her studio is a storefront called . It’s in Ridgewood, a neighbourhood in Queens, New York, “…which feels like the North End of Halifax,” says Pullen.

“It looks like a shop, but it’s not. People come in for handmade parchment shades. The conversation quickly turns from commerce to art, and they leave with ideas,” she continues.

For the past 15 years, Lucy Pullen has been based in New York. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions, as well as included in group shows and festivals across Canada and the United States. She holds degrees from ɫ��ƵAPP University (BFA 1994), Tyler School of Art (MFA 2001), and held a tenured position in Visual Arts at The University of Victoria (2002-2013). She also studied spatial analysis and visualization at the Pratt Institute (2016-2018), through its continuing education department. Pullen studied painting at ɫ��ƵAPP in the New Seattle era of the 90s and was responsible for some of the city’s legendary public interventions. Eat Your Words (1994) and 2,500 Superballs with Sandy Plotnikoff (1997) ��involve slipping cookies baked in shape of the word ‘words’ on supermarket shelves and tossing superballs off the roof of a parkade.

In addition to her wry sense of humour and creative use of public space ��Pullen’s work ��consistently demonstrates an interest in ��science and mathematics. For the past six ��years she has been working in Ridgewood Queens. Two years ago, a moved their showroom across the street. Last summer a hip opened next door. To participate in the cultural life of the street she opened her studio as Lovitt NYC, in August 2023. People come from all over the city to shop and eat. They consistently say “OMG I love it,” as they walk through Lucy’s front door. ��

Lovitt, a surname from Yarmouth, is also Pullen’s middle name. She loves wordplay and talking about art. Conversations in her space often start with parchment shades and quickly go all over the place, she says. She recently met a local video editor this way. They discussed , a work Pullen made with Dr. J.E. Albert PhD in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria, that presents cosmic rays from outer space – in real-time to the naked eye, inside a sculpture. They discussed ways to visualize 24 hours of cosmic footage in the heart of New York City.

In the Winter and Spring of 2024, visitors to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton saw her series on display as part of , an exhibition of new Canadian sculpture curated by Ray Cronin (BFA 87). Pullen designed a series of one hundred unique wall sculptures with actual star data from NASA, with a data scientist in 2016. This work contributes to a history of conceptual art and printmaking that is the cornerstone of the College. It was designed in New York and made in Nova Scotia. Pullen works with Mohammed Issa, a master printer in ��Lower Sackville, who prints each work three-dimensionally in exquisite colours. She also makes steel sculpture versions of these stars. She made Sol (2022) in the Catskills with guidance from her husband, American sculptor.

“Sol (2022) is an orange powder-coated steel sculpture of the sun. At the Beaverbrook, it stands on one side of a Salvador Dali painting beside its counterpart Sol (2016), a 3D printed version of the same form,” she says.��“The steel pieces are designed to withstand the elements and reside outside, in naturalistic perennial gardens like .”��

How did you get into art?

I learned to draw by watching my mother. She has raw talent and studied art at Beal before we moved to Halifax. I grew up on Watt and Chestnut Streets. One naughty afternoon my mother, rather cross, said, ��“Go to the art gallery,” meaning ��The Anna Leonowens, ɫ��ƵAPP’s gallery on the corner of Coburg and LeMarchant. So, my friend and I wandered in there as rambunctious children, expecting to see paintings in rectilinear frames and sculptures on plinths. The gallery was wide open and totally empty—it floored me. We did several laps of it like marbles in a shoebox. I remember thinking to myself, What is this? We walked home in total silence.�� I never forgot that experience. When I got to ɫ��ƵAPP, I learned about the conceptual artist ’s installation in the early 1970’s, at The Anna Leonowens on the corner of Coburg and LeMarchant. He emptied the gallery which was also a thoroughfare, ��left it open, and that was it. That work changed my perception in a profound way. Though I was just a kid, it was very clear this exhibition undermined assumptions I didn’t even know I had.

What inspired the 100 Closest Star series?

��A lot of my work is modular or geometric and collaborative. My practice is somewhat social.�� I look for new ways to turn an idea into a physical form, so that someone else can have it in the world. I get it to a certain place and often meet someone who can take the idea somewhere else.

The stars come out of my experience with the community, which is made up of enthusiasts, data scientists, archivists, city planners, coders, public policy advocates, researchers, and developers interested in the technical and social potential of contemporary map making. People are doing things with information that you wouldn’t necessarily think of. The star series is a case in point: it’s a collection of 100 unique geometric forms. Their geometry is informed by the geography of their neighbours; they could nest like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. ��I put them in a grid because it’s an artwork, and I like minimalism.

The geometry is called Voronoi. You easily can’t hold it in your head as an image like a square, cube, Platonic or Euclidean forms, like �� map projections. Each one represents the space between stars.��

The colour is in the material. They’re not painted; they are painterly: monochromatic sculptures that behave like paintings. Different values emerge from one hue. The American artist �� would say it’s a ‘specific object’ that is, neither painting or sculpture. As a student I read the ɫ��ƵAPP Press book of Judd’s early writings. Each star is an object; when light falls across it and the hues change.

Each object in the series has a magnetic mount and comes with a flat washer. They can be installed anywhere. Accessible, portable, and beautiful, fluid scale, it could be somebody’s lucky star. It’s abstract in ways that make it yours; it belongs to you.

You hold the belief that showing the work changes it. What does that mean?

It means that, “Unperformed work is unfinished,” to borrow a phrase from John Cage (Emma Lake Diary, 1965).�� Studio practice is essential. Until a work of art reaches the world, it’s unfinished, impossible to predict what will happen next, or understand what it means. I am totally curious about that experience.

Here is a tangible example: 100 Closest Stars grew out of direct contact with the GIS ��community in 2016, in New York City. There was no exhibition on the horizon or opportunity to show the work. I made them anyway, out of curiosity, because I am a studio based artist. They were shown for Bushwick Open Studios with Carto for two days, with (MFA 1996) actually, and stored in a box.

Two years later, a text came from someone at the asking if I had any work they could show. I put four boxes of stars in the car with four paintings from the Bee Series and drove up to Ontario. PI is an architecturally designed building.

The interior and exterior walls are clad with beautiful black anodized aluminum with space enough for a butterfly cleat to span the gap between panelling with flat washer, made for one-inch rare earth magnets from Lee Valley Tools mounted to the back of each individual sculpture. Now the magnets are an integral part of the work. The goal is to stay open and curious about what might happen next.

You can keep up to date with Lucy’s work and many of her artworks on her website .��

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From clay to television: ɫ��ƵAPP alumni Brendan Tang shares his journey in ceramics

Sarah Poko — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 18:30:31 +0000

The Vancouver-based artist and ceramist is a celebrity judge on ��’s The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown.

Vancouver-born ɫ��ƵAPP alumni, (he/they), enjoys working in their home city, but his studies took him to different landscapes like Edwardsville for his MFA at Southern Illinois University, and to ɫ��ƵAPP University for his BFA.

“What drew me to the East Coast was the great studio-based, practice-based program at ɫ��ƵAPP,” they say.

Now an instructor at Emily Carr University, Tang works with multiple mediums—including a life-size Ford F150 truck constructed out of watercolour paper—but is best known for his sculptural ceramics. This is part of the reason he ended up as a judge on the inaugural season of executive produced by recreational potter and actor Seth Rogen.

How did you end up in Halifax from all the way across the country?

Most of my education has been looking for a studio-based program. Academia means a lot of reading and philosophy, but I was looking for a program that would meet my technical making needs. When I went to ɫ��ƵAPP to visit, I met Walter Ostrom and immediately, that East Coast welcome was there— he’s such an open, generous man.

I ran into him at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and he said, “Come down to Ceramics [at ɫ��ƵAPP] and I’ll get someone to show you around.” That open-door vibe that is so great about the East Coast.

You talk about belonging to “the remix generation,” what does that mean to you and how does it apply to your work?

A lot of my training comes out of that late-90s post-modernism vibe, a deconstruction/reconstruction kind of aesthetic; that really informed my practice. As a young person I was emulating a lot of pop culture—it’s almost like I understood it through a lens of popular culture, hip hop, EDM. I feel in a lot of ways, my work approaches it that way. Reprocesses it and remixes it.

I feel like back in my day, finding trends was a way of defining yourself and finding the communities you wanted to be a part of. When I came out to ɫ��ƵAPP in the late 90s, rave culture was really big and that was such a wonderful experience as part of my education. It was a way of finding your people.

You work with lots of materials but what is it about ceramics that you connect to?

��Working with my hands is a draw. I like the order of a process—I find something delightfully predictable about knowing what you have to do next. It’s a little more sophisticated than a Sudoku puzzle, but there’s joy in completing it.

There’s a flow state about these things that’s satisfying on a mental level, getting into that zone. The process gives you a structure, the space created with the process helps me figure out the world. I’m always in awe of painters—there’s a process but it’s also so amorphous. Ceramics has a timeline.

A lot of ceramicists dive into the alchemy, but I’m so controlling of the process of how I’m carving things and painting things. Where there’s more improvisation is how I do my compositions or modelling things, there’s space to do the free-form jazz sort of thing. So, it’s less ‘gifts from the kiln’ and more ‘that’s exactly what I wanted.’

Competition shows usually have a template—there’s the nice judge, the mean one, the wild card. How did you fit in at The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown?

��I could just be myself, which is a big ceramic nerd!

We all know these competition shows and the kinds of characters that are part of them. During COVID, The Great Canadian Baking Show was my comfort show, and I knew it wasn’t the backstabbing, teaching through cruelty and shame that a lot of competition shows tend to be.

Essentially the goal was to have the people compete with themselves and be the best they could be. Basically, the rising tide lifts all boats approach. I teach from a place of care and I’m genuinely interested in what these people are doing. They were into that vibe.

Are you getting recognized?

��I haven’t been recognized yet, but I did cut my mullet off so maybe I’m incognito. I miss that beautiful mane.

followers are definitely going up though, which is a hoot, but I don’t know what to do about this. Art school in the 90s did not prepare me for social media management.

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ɫ��ƵAPP University mourns the loss of Richard Serra, 1938-2024

Andy Murdoch — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 15:12:50 +0000

ɫ��ƵAPP University mourns the loss of artistic giant Richard Serra. Serra died at his home in Long Island on Tuesday, March 26. He was 85 years old. You can read obituaries of Richard Serra in the , in and in newspapers around the world.

Serra had several connections with ɫ��ƵAPP over the years. He attended the now infamous “Halifax Conference” in 1970 but didn’t participate in the conference when he found out that the artists would be in one room and the students in another. Since 1970, Serra, and his wife, Clara Weyergraf-Serra, split their time between New York City and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. His time in Cape Breton was not for ‘vacation’ but a place for intellectual, creative and physical production.��

Most notably, Richard Serra received an honorary doctorate degree from ɫ��ƵAPP in 2004, and he addressed the Graduating Class during convocation.��At the same time, the late Professor Gerald Ferguson had arranged with Serra to display five works in the 1995 suite entitled WM Prints at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. To the delight of everyone, Serra then donated the works to the University’s Permanent Collection.

Eric Fischl (DFA 2002), who taught at ɫ��ƵAPP from 1974-1978 and knew Serra, says he was ‘truly one of the greats’.

“I knew him to say hello and we were always cordial. He surprised me when he saw a show of my sculpture and made a point of telling me that he liked it. I was expecting a straight-out dismissal of my figurative works from the giant of reductive abstraction but he was generous in his compliment and said he could see that they were authentic.”��

“Nobody knew scale like he did. Not size but actual scale. The way the body related to each work so specifically. How it enlarged or shrunk you as you moved through it, all the while maintaining your sense of awe and wonder. End of an era.��Thank god I was around when he was still on this earth.”

The following text is taken from Canadian Cultural Property Review Board and gives some sense of the significance of his gift to ɫ��ƵAPP and of the artist’s deep relationship to Nova Scotia.

“WM��Prints consists of five etchings created in I995 with reference to the sculpture Weight and Measure installed in London’s Tate Gallery in I992.�� In these etchings,��Mr. Serra placed the emphasis on the distinguishing relationship of two graphic elements.�� By using a square, etched copper plate, 8I by 8I cm in size,��Mr. Serra strategically placed inked plates on two abutted sheets of paper that vary in relationship to each other.�� In each etching, a perceptible force-field develops between the two elements, a reciprocal relationship of attraction and repulsion.�� Although each of the black elements is printed with the same plate, using slightly different sized sheets of paper, the fields seem different in each print and, above all, different in weight.”

Given the long connection between Serra and ɫ��ƵAPP, it was most fitting that this important selection of Serra’s work was left in public trust to the people of Canada and the province Nova Scotia through the auspices of ɫ��ƵAPP in its loan-agreement with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

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From sneakers to clippers: a ɫ��ƵAPP alumni’s resilience in the pursuit of art

Sarah Poko — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 08:00:49 +0000

ɫ��ƵAPP alumni, Kemmy Smith, shares his career shift from sneaker art to barbering, and the realities of trying to make it as an artist.

Kemmy Smith’s sneaker art is as bright as his infectious energy.

The ɫ��ƵAPP graduate (BFA 2018) pours his heart and soul into his work, customizing colourful sneaker art for clients across the country and around the world. However, his artistic journey was never linear.

“I was originally going to Dalhousie University, but then I lost my scholarship, and it was too expensive. So, I had to figure out the next steps,” he said. “My mom was an artist, and my grandmother was an artist; so, I decided to pursue my art and see where it takes me.”

Smith’s interest in art started when he was a young boy. And he thought he was pretty good at it –��until he got to high school.

“Everyone said I sucked, and one time my teacher asked me if I was blind,” he recalls, laughing. “But I knew I could draw, and I wanted to prove everybody wrong.”

And he did. Smith won the Art Award at his high school graduation ceremony, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Arts from ɫ��ƵAPP.

STEPPING INTO SNEAKER ART

After graduation, Smith became a sneaker artist. He loved the look and feel of sneakers growing up but couldn’t afford the ones he wanted.

“I got tired of Nike making the same shoes over and over. So, I decided to paint my own shoes to get the designs I wanted,” he said. “I figured I could make some money off it and sell the designs.”

And sell, he did. In the last six years, Smith has sold over . His custom sneaker art ranges from paintings of flowers, portraits, textures like denim, to donuts with sprinkles — his most popular design.

“I remember I made almost $20,000 one summer,” he said. “I was able to save up and buy a house that same year.”

Smith’s sneaker art has been worn by Olympic athletes, NBA players, and has even been featured in the Atlantic International Film Fest (AIFF). But like any other artist, he had to stumble a few times before mastering his craft.

“Nowadays, you can just hop on a YouTube video and learn how to make things work,” he said. “But I didn’t have a blueprint for that back then. I kept messing up shoes, I kept buying shoes, and I didn’t have money to invest in the right stuff to make the paint last. I was using a lot of random products before I got the right products. I was trying to make the product work before I could make it into a product I could sell.”

One of his biggest hurdles was finding funding to continue making his art; but with the lack of Black representation on grant committees, that was far and few between.

“I tried to get a bunch of loans and grants, but no one gave me the time of day until I had celebrities wearing my stuff,” he said. “It’s especially hard as a Black artist because we have the talent, we just need the opportunity. But you can’t really get opportunity because there’s not many people of colour in power that can give Black artists that chance.”

‘I WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING’

While Smith was working on his goal to become a successful sneaker artist, he had another skill that had helped him many times before — barbering.��

“My uncle was a barber, so I was able to learn that skill and use it to make money while I was in school,” he said. “I was making about $25 an hour as a student. So, if the art thing didn’t work out, I can always cut hair and I’ll be alright.”

When his first child was born, financial stability became Smith’s priority, and he needed a stable wage to provide for his family. Though he was grateful for his success as a sneaker artist, he had to pivot and become a full-time barber. He still makes custom sneaker art, but he has also grown a huge clientele as a barber –��and he works evenings as a tattoo artist.

“I thought I was going to graduate, and someone would give me a good 60k job,” he says with a laugh. “But when you’re young, you don’t really realize how it works in the world.”

His advice to young, emerging artists is to branch out into different career paths.

“You got to figure out a difference between your job and your work,” he said. “I’m a barber by day and an artist by night, so I have money coming in constantly. You need to figure out a median; there will always be a time where you’re doing more artwork, and there will be a time where you have to focus more on your job.”

Though the journey has not been easy for Smith, he says he would do the same thing all over again if he had to start over.

“I might take a few jewelry design classes to add to my portfolio,” he joked. “But ultimately, I wouldn’t change a thing. Everything happens for a reason, and I think I’ve chosen the right path for me.”

Smith plans to return to sneaker art full-time in the future.

To see more of Kemmy Smith’s work, visit his .

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Championing Visual Art and Black Culture in Nova Scotia

Sarah Poko — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 16:48:56 +0000

Renowned artist and ɫ��ƵAPP alumni, Dr. Henry Bishop, recounts his journey as an African Nova Scotian visual artist from the 1970s to present.

Dr. Henry Vernon Bishop is a source of inspiration within the Nova Scotian arts community.

Renowned for his unwavering dedication to promoting the rich heritage and artistic endeavors of African and Black Canadians, Dr. Bishop strives to help young emerging creatives discover their artistic genius and find their footing in the arts sector.

“I’ve had the amazing opportunity to meet many great people in my life and they told me, it’s not about you, it’s about others who are influenced by you,” he says. “So, I tend to use that as my motto.”

Graduating from ɫ��ƵAPP University in 1975, Dr. Bishop has achieved several accomplishments in his career as a visual artist. His art works have been featured in museums, publications, and various galleries across North America. He served as creative director and curator of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia for 30 years, and was the first African Nova Scotian to be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Art from ɫ��ƵAPP in 2000.

ART AS WELLNESS THERAPY

Born and raised in the historic Black community of Weymouth Falls in Digby County, Dr. Bishop’s family roots in Nova Scotia stretch back over 300 years, empowering him with a deep sense of his ancestral legacy.

Before embarking on his journey to ɫ��ƵAPP, Dr. Bishop’s inkling towards art started when he was a youngster growing up on his family farm.

“I was always doodling or doing something with a piece of pencil or crayon,” he says. “And as I got older, I took solace in drawing and got encouragement from my mom to take it seriously.”

“I was always doodling or doing something with a piece of pencil or crayon."

Dr. Henry Bishop

As the young Dr. Bishop honed his artistic skills, he had to cope with low self-esteem, shyness, and stuttering issues throughout school, as he struggled with poverty, self-identity, anxiety, and systemic discrimination. Nature, drumming, and drawing became his outlet and refuge from the societal pressures he faced at that time in his life.

“Exploring nature became my joy and freedom from all the negativity that was happening,” he explains. “Kids can be very cruel around that age, so drawing was one of the ways I used to cope and start that healing.”

Despite these challenges, Dr. Bishop gained recognition for his artistic ability. His teachers would usually ask him to draw art for a school play, concert, holiday celebrations or other events happening at the school.

“They would ask me to draw a Halloween pumpkin, or Santa Claus or Easter Bunny; they were using me like crazy for free,” he says, laughing. “But they never really gave me credit or the encouragement to go to professional art school.”

THE JOURNEY TO ɫ��ƵAPP

A pivotal point in Bishop’s artistic journey was when he was in Grade 10. He remembers two ɫ��ƵAPP representatives coming to his Weymouth High School and giving a presentation on the various programs and courses at the college.

“They said, ‘Anybody here who’s an artist, raise your hand,’ and I did,” Dr. Bishop explains. “They told me, ‘You’re a born artist, you should come check us out,’ and I was very excited because I didn’t think you could go to school to study art. That is what sparked the flame in me; I ran home that day and said, ‘Mom, I want to go to art school,’ and she gave me permission.”

Dr. Bishop applied to ɫ��ƵAPP after his high school graduation in 1971 and was accepted. He went on to become the first African Nova Scotian man to graduate with an Associate Degree in Graphic Design at the university.

“Sometimes my fellow students would try to intimidate me.
They felt like I shouldn’t be there, and I don’t belong there."

Dr. Henry Bishop

In addition to being the only Black student in his class, Dr. Bishop had to navigate life as a Black artist in an era where civil rights and racial discrimination were at the forefront of the political landscape in Canada.

“Sometimes my fellow students would try to intimidate me,” he says. “They felt like I shouldn’t be there, and I don’t belong there. The same thing happened when I tried to get jobs after graduating; as soon as I show up and they saw I was a Black person, suddenly the job opening was gone. However, if my White colleague came after to apply with the same credentials as me, the company would give him an interview!”

Dr. Bishop didn’t allow this to deter him and continued to apply for jobs normally reserved for non-Black individuals. Eventually, he landed jobs as a graphic designer in various companies and Black organizations, creating logos, posters, publications, and other graphic images.

“I became determined and resilient,” he says. “I told myself, these people don’t define me, I define me. This is what changed my whole perspective in life.”

Since then, Dr. Bishop has been dedicated to amplifying the contributions of Black artists, past and present. During his tenure as curator of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, he recognized the importance of representation and diversity within the art field.

“A lot of the art I see from African Canadian artists has been flying below the radar and that has to change,” he says. “We have so many great African Nova Scotian artists here, but a lot of it has been overshadowed by other industries. When people think of Black artists, they think of Drake or The Weekend; they don’t think about visual art displayed in galleries or museums. We need to find better ways to promote Black excellence in all forms of art!”

NUTURING AFRICENTRIC ART

Dr. Bishop also emphasizes the need for systemic change and institutional support for Black artists; this includes scholarships to art schools, partnering with communities to create Africentric art exhibitions, and colleges like ɫ��ƵAPP offering art presentations, like the one he attended in high school.��

“Go into the Black community,” he says. “Go into the Black churches, go into the schools, go into areas with large Black populations to market the potential of art. Talk to diverse students about art school and the kind of jobs they can get with their artistic talent. Art is everywhere, but you have to educate folks and expose them to it to begin with.”

His advice to emerging Black artists is to surround themselves with positive people that have the same values and goals as they do.

“It’s not the crowd that makes you who you are; it’s those that hold you up to higher standards,” he says. “There will be people that do not want you to succeed, but don’t lose focus of what you want to be. Remember, you are not an exception — you are exceptional!”

Learn more about how to organize a ɫ��ƵAPP presentation at your school.

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Sweet stuff: ɫ��ƵAPP alumna shares her decadent journey to chocolate-making

Sarah Poko — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 19:56:04 +0000

Lynne Rennie completed her Bachelor of Communication in Design at ɫ��ƵAPP and is the design director for Calgary-based chocolate company, Cocoa Community Confection Inc., also known as .

Lynne Rennie’s sweet tooth is as fervent as her business acumen. As design director of the Calgary-based chocolate company, , Rennie gets to merge her skills and love for chocolate into one sweet package.

“I’m actually eating chocolate right now,” she says as she slips out of a meeting.

With the theme — “together in cocoa, together in community, together in confections” — at heart, Rennie creates branding, packaging, displays, content, and other sundry design delights for Cococo’s products sold in-store and online.

Rennie completed her Bachelor of Communication in Design at ɫ��ƵAPP in 1994 and after time in Vancouver, London, and New York, she continued her career in Calgary where she also teaches at the Alberta University of the Arts.

“I haven’t been back to Halifax in a long time, but I dream about it—those little stairways leading from the painting studio to the streets,” she says. “It’s just wonderfully symbolic of the creative process.”

Cococo currently has five store locations in Alberta and one in British Columbia. Rennie took the time out of her busy schedule to discuss her journey from graduation to ganache.

How did you end up at ɫ��ƵAPP University?��

At the University of Calgary, I did a minor in screen-printing and a major in English lit. I loved screen-printing because every time you went into a studio you could come out with a finished piece rather quickly. You could make a number of these things and sell them or hang them up.

The combination of those two insertion points—the finished product of the thing that could be multiplied and manufactured, combined with how people interact with that thing. Those two points led me quickly into design.

Design is trying to communicate ideas, to make an inanimate object emotionally appealing to a human being. We communicate and develop a brand, brand voice, and a mode of understanding. Then we have design thinking and the design process—research, ideation, iteration and then development of a final concept. And then testing that thing in the marketplace and asking—is it working, where do we tweak, where do we tighten up?

It’s circular in that regard: design is never finished. I didn’t understand that until I came to ɫ��ƵAPP.

How was your time here?��

My instructors were German and British, and the influence they gave me—which we know now is male, white, European, and colonial. Back then, the famed “Swiss designers” were guys, there were no women.

Our storytelling machine, the art history machine, didn’t share those stories. But Frank Fox and Hanno Ehses, the group of men who taught at the time, were excellent instructors in terms of the craft. Hanno taught about semiotics, the theory of meaning —why does the shape of a tree mean “tree?” How do we as humans understand what is being shown to us, and mindfully choose images, fonts, colours and layouts to communicate to a particular group of people?

They opened my eyes to that; how to design as a communicator and creator with an audience and message in mind.

We always felt it was an important and valuable profession; a profession that smart people did. A vaunted, excellent, and appropriate career for any of us, because you were making things that affect people. Now I’m in my 50s and I’m as passionate about that as ever.

How did you end up in chocolate?

My husband had an opportunity to be involved in a company that was in bankruptcy; he had a background in operations and law from Dalhousie, and I had a background in design. I worked for free because I wanted the flexibility to parent our three small children at the time, and I helped with development of packaging, chocolate collections, professional photography of the work, press releases. Anything I could help with I did.

I got trained on the factory floor by the team I work with now. I took courses myself in chocolate-making, cannabis pairing, chocolate-tasting, and I’m WSET (Wine Spirt and Education Trust) certified. I was just very interested in the product and the experience; its manufacturing, its story, its beautiful appearance, encased in packaging. It comes right back to my undergrad— connecting the end-product with communication about the product.

I get to work with chocolate — it’s just the best and it’s so much fun. If I didn’t have this design education I wouldn’t be as good at my role. Design education is transformative. I use design thinking every day, and I have ɫ��ƵAPP to thank for that.

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Governor General Literary Award-winner Jack Wong talks about his path from engineer to artist

Andy Murdoch — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 15:16:39 +0000

There are two stories Jack Wong tells to explain his journey from engineer to children’s author: One rises out of the types of projects he worked on in his hometown of Vancouver leading up to the Olympics circa 2008. “A lot of those projects were controversial—relocating vulnerable populations, widening all the highways to increase vehicle capacity, perhaps at the expense of public transit,” he says. “Outside of my job, when conversations came up about what I did, I found myself avoiding questions about it. It was troubling that I was lying about my work, not because I knew what I was doing was negative, but because I didn’t have the critical capacity to actually form an opinion. When I started having those feelings, I knew I was in trouble.” The other is how when he was a kid, he excelled at both drawing and math, leading grown-ups around him to urge him towards an architecture career. When he graduated engineering school, he visited Europe with the intent to draw iconic structures en plein air to create an architecture portfolio, “then had the realization… I didn’t actually like buildings! For so long I’d gone on other people’s assessment of me based on aptitude alone.” he says. “I went to Europe telling everyone I was preparing to apply to architecture school, and I came back wanting to go to art school.”

He moved to Halifax in 2010 to pursue his BFA at ɫ��ƵAPP. His debut children’s book, When You Can Swim, received both the and the . His third book, All That Grows, is out in March and can be pre-ordered now wherever you buy books (Wong likes in Halifax).

What made you choose ɫ��ƵAPP from the other side of the country?

I wanted to shake things up—I’d lived in Vancouver most of my life. In February of 2010 I went to Portfoilo Day at ɫ��ƵAPP and visited the other campuses in major cities. Halifax was the most different I could get while still being in Canada. I loved it as soon as I got here. After the visit, Bryan Maycock sent me a hand-calligraphed postcard telling me to apply to ɫ��ƵAPP. I ultimately took Foundation Drawing with him, and had the pleasure of working with him for several years at the ɫ��ƵAPP Drawing Lab.

I can’t even imagine the differences between engineering and art school.

It’s so night and day in every aspect. I went from a lecture hall with 100 students and never finding anything in common with the person in front of the class, to having instructors that encouraged one-on-one interactions. If I had any questions, I had someone to talk to. Having professors to go to not only for the content that’s being conveyed in the class, but everything outside of it—from career-planning to getting settled in Halifax.

And what were your career goals?

I came into ɫ��ƵAPP with a fairly conventional view of being someone who made painting or drawings for galleries. By third year, a lot of those ideas were challenged and I also found it a lot of fun to work in installations and performance art. So at the end of ɫ��ƵAPP I was thinking about everything from making imagery to being a curator and finding my place in the artist-run centre ecosystem.

Do you have kids?

No.

So how did you end up a children’s book author and illustrator?

As you get older you have more kids in your life, so I was reading to my nieces or friends’ kids. And several chance encounters I had with kids’ books were some of the most impactful aesthetic experiences I’d had in a long time—just by opening a kids’ book I had a private gallery in my hands.

Do you physically draw the illustrations or is it a digital process?

I am physically drawing for a lot of it. Making art at an institution like ɫ��ƵAPP is so cerebral, and yet it’s still just about getting materials to cooperate at the end of the day. How the physical world isn’t behaving in ways you want it to—paint isn’t drying the right way—always served as some sort of indirect but profound parallel for the problems we face as a whole: a housing crisis, for example, needs to be solved politically and intellectually but we can’t forget that it’s fundamentally physical when someone doesn’t have a place to lie their head. I’m not saying digital takes away the real-world connection, but I’m always reluctant to put away the physical aspect because of the way it speaks to something larger. If I didn’t have that in my practice—if I wasn’t just constantly frustrated at a layer of paint not being opaque enough or something—I don’t know what else I would have!

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Steven Holmes on Sol LeWitt and ɫ��ƵAPP

Andy Murdoch — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 19:54:47 +0000

#iamnscad is a series of alumni stories where graduates tell, in their own words, how ɫ��ƵAPP has influenced and shaped their creative practices.

I arrived in Halifax to begin the MFA program at ɫ��ƵAPP from, of all places, divinity school. I had done some art history in a previous graduate degree and had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with the two years of the program.�� My plans were very specific and narrowly focused on photography and theory. These goals�� – very specific goals – were never really achieved.

Instead, I was introduced to an entire universe I never knew existed.�� In the bowels of the sculpture department (then situated in the basement of 5163 Duke St), and at cafeteria tables over egg salad sandwiches, I listened to faculty and other students talk about Agnes Martin, Jeff Wall, Martha Rosler, On Kawara, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Ann Hamilton, John Baldessari (of course) and the many others that were closely associated with conceptualism and minimalism. As my failures as a photographer mounted, I began to understand myself in a much broader context than the confines of disciplines. Art is expansive and cares little about modes of production.

I left Halifax in 1997 and moved to the US where I now live. Eventually settling in Connecticut, I was working as a curator at an alternative space in Hartford when I was introduced to Sol LeWitt who lived a short drive away in Chester. I would eventually become friendly with Sol, doing a couple of projects with him and working with his personal collection – rich with work by many of the artists I had learned about in the cafeteria at ɫ��ƵAPP listening to Gerry Ferguson, Garry Neil Kennedy, Kelly Mark, Stephen Horne, Thierry Delva and others.

In conversations, Sol eventually learned I had been at ɫ��ƵAPP. And he lit up. He talked about how important ɫ��ƵAPP was for him and others at a critical moment in their careers (and art history). ɫ��ƵAPP “took us seriously at that time” I remember him saying. I listened to him talk about how he and others were just beginning to describe what they were trying to do, a description reflected in 1968 with LeWitt’s own�� Sentences on Conceptual Art.�� Garry Neill Kennedy had only just arrived in Halifax the year before. The rest, as they say, is history.��

And then one day in late winter I was having lunch with him in Chester when he asked about my own art practice.�� I described for him my experience at ɫ��ƵAPP, and, slightly embarrassed, talked about my having stopped making art. I described my work as a curator having taken over, and how I struggled to restart art making after a long period of dormancy.

I remember him asking across the table what the problem was. I described my frustration at trying to return to artmaking only to repeatedly find myself returning right back to the ideas and themes that I had been occupied with ten years earlier. I described feeling like I should do something new, something different, that I should move beyond what had felt like a failure. Puzzled, he said “I don’t get it. You are returning to where you left off for a reason. You are returning to what is yours. It’s what you do.�� Just do it and don’t worry.”

It was a major moment in my life. Though it would take me ten more years to return to making the work I had abandoned in 1997, the insight was powerful for another reason altogether. It changed the way I think as a curator. Morandi, Opałka, Kawara and others all made a new kind of sense. My time at ɫ��ƵAPP and my conversations with Sol began to converge.

As a curator, I am now a part of the international conversations ɫ��ƵAPP had introduced me to, conversations Sol had been part of and found support in, conversations Sol insisted I return to and participate in. I have worked with work by LeWitt himself,�� as well as Hanne Darboven, Tracey Emin, Marina Abramović, Cornelia Parker, Agnes Martin, On Kawara, Roman Opałka, Joseph Albers, Giorgio Morandi, Fred Sandback and the many others ɫ��ƵAPP introduced me to – curating exhibitions from the collection I now manage as well as with work from other private collections and museums. ɫ��ƵAPP had taken Sol and others seriously when it wasn’t completely clear what they were really doing. ɫ��ƵAPP had introduced me to these artists and ideas. And Sol had helped me find my way back into the global conversations those artists had started.�� ɫ��ƵAPP took Sol seriously. Sol was taking me seriously.

While at ɫ��ƵAPP, though, there were those that critiqued the celebration of ɫ��ƵAPP’s history as an international hub of global conversations in art and ideas.�� In the late 80s and early 90s, there was a strong element at ɫ��ƵAPP that saw those global conversations as exclusionary, hegemonic narratives we would now call colonialist.

Artists and the art school should be much more concerned with the local, the specific, the individual went the critique. The idea of grand narratives was ridiculed. We were in a postmodern era where the focus ought to be on localized questions and concerns, questions of identity and specificity – not the ideas and concerns of artists in New York, Paris, London, Berlin or Los Angeles.�� There was – and is – validity to that critique.

Over the past twenty or more years, though, I have met many artists, art historians, critics and curators who – upon learning I went to ɫ��ƵAPP –�� talk excitedly about how influential the school had been. Isaac Julien, Norman Bryson, Laurent Grasso and others have spoken to me about ɫ��ƵAPP’s historical importance.

ɫ��ƵAPP’s presence continues to be felt well beyond Halifax. In that, the postmodernist critique missed something. While hegemonic narratives might have been problematic in overwhelming local histories and identities, it is not like Halifax didn’t influence those it was in dialogue with. Conversation goes two ways. Today, ɫ��ƵAPP’s DNA�� is everywhere.

Steven Holmes MFA 1994

_______________

Steven Holmes has been the curator of The Cartin Collection in New York and Hartford since 2005, and was curator of the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach from 2008 to 2013. He lives in Collinsville, Connecticut.��

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Alumna Emily Falencki talks about fostering community at the Blue Building

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 18:02:50 +0000

sits back from the street in full view of a construction site and in the shadow of another, an arts centre painted the colour of the sky on a late autumn afternoon. Its owner, Emily Falencki, is a New Yorker who came to Halifax “for love and ɫ��ƵAPP—that’s what makes people move, isn’t it?” she says. Half of the 10,000-square-foot space’s bottom floor is Falencki’s commercial gallery, —fresh off a group show featuring ɫ��ƵAPP Alumi, ɫ��ƵAPP staff and long-time ɫ��ƵAPP faculty members: Ursula Johnson, Melanie Colosimo, Sarah Maloney, Tim Brennan, Sheilah ReStack, Ryan Josey, Jenny Yujia Shi, William Robinson, Kayza DeGraff-Ford and many more. The other half houses the , which runs arts programs and outreach. Upstairs are artist studios (there’s a long waiting list of prospective tenants), a dark room, meeting spaces, and a communal kitchen. 2482 Maynard opened in October of 2020.

What made you want to create a space like this?

The whole idea came from living in the city for many years, being in the arts community, and seeing the need. One of the main needs was studio space—there is very little. A city of this size, a city bigger, a city smaller—they all support the arts and dedicate those kinds of spaces for making. And this city (surprising to no one who has lived here for a long time) does not.

The other thing was falling in love with—through my children and the work that they do—Wonder’neath. Wonder’neath had very precarious, not accessible housing for many years. I really didn’t want them to have to leave the neighbourhood, and they were facing that. The other thing I wanted to do for a very long time was open a commercial art gallery. This building allowed us to do it all.

Is there an existing space somewhere else that you modelled this on?

No, there are spaces—I’ve heard of them in other cities—but I think it’s quite different in terms of collaboration between private business and a non-profit. And in terms of the way we all operate separately, and do our own thing and our own programming.�� But we are all committed to using the entire building to support the arts and Artists.

We could fill it five times over. It has proven how much the city does need space for Artists, and how much it brings to a neighbourhood, and how successful it can be.��

When you become involved in the business of art, does it take away from the practice of art?

That’s a very good question. The way that I present this commercial space and what I do here is very much artist-led. That’s my expertise, and that’s where I come at this from—even though I’m using a commercial model and what I’m trying to do is hustle and make money for artists. Does it take away the time? Always.

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Alumna’s film Analogue Revolution opens at AIFF –��but her activism started at ɫ��ƵAPP

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:54:12 +0000

“Halifax introduced me to lesbian feminism, to lesbian activism, the peace movement,” says (BFA ‘81). “There was a lot going on—the 80s were a high point of activism in Canada, across many movements, and a lot of it hasn’t been documented in a way that’s accessible for younger generations.”

Bociurkiw has changed that with Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World, making its at the Atlantic International Film Festival on Friday, September 15. Part of Bociurkiw’s three-year investigation “The Personal is Digital: Remediating and Digitizing Canada’s Intergenerational Feminist & Queer Media Heritage”—a project funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada—Analogue traces the deep history of feminist newspapers, radio shows, film collectives, and movements.

The filmmaker’s own history begins in 1979 via her BFA at ɫ��ƵAPP, “thanks to H.W. Janson, the author of The History of Art, the 800-page tome we had to purchase for art history,” she says. “At the time, there was not a single woman in the entire 800 pages. So I decided to start a woman’s file. I knew nothing of archiving—I think it was just a collection of clippings about women artists. Then I became part of the Women’s Committee at ɫ��ƵAPP; I’d never seen women like that before, they were fearless. It was a very impressive group.”

The committee pushed for the creation and staffing of a course about feminist art, and started Lifesize, a women’s film screening series, among many other activities. “It was a really interesting example of student activism, which is often the genesis of larger movements,” says Bociurkiw. “It all started at ɫ��ƵAPP.”

Bociurkiw teaches Media Theory at Toronto Metropolitan University and has seen many students interact with feminism for the first time, often with trepidation. “As a professor I’m very motivated by my students who have not had sufficient exposure to feminist theory and art. I got that at ɫ��ƵAPP, but that was a peak time of feminism,” she says. “I’m introducing students to what feminism actually is. They may have received a neoliberal framing of feminism, a la Barbie, et cetera. They also have these misconceptions that second-wave feminism was a white supremacist movement—there’s a grain of truth to that but they’re missing the women of colour who were leading the movement. It’s really important to correct the record. It’s an anguished form of sexism, the ways the younger generations have been taught to revile feminism.”

The film—which Bociurkiw says is not a historical document but “in dialogue with historical moments and different activists”—charts the likes of Studio D, the National Film Board’s women’s studio that produced dozens of documentaries between 1974 and 1996; the Halifax feminist newspaper Pandora’s fight against the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission; Our Lives, the first Black women’s newspaper in Canada (there are a lot of firsts in Analogue Revolution); and the venerable radio show Dykes on Mykes.

“A theme of the film is collectivity,” says Bociurkiw. “Sylvia Hamilton talks about how collectively�� decided to make their first film about Black women. There was collectivity, but there was also intersectionality, it wasn’t invented in the 21st century. It was part of the practice.”

The AIFF screening of will be followed by a Q&A with Bociurkiw, producer Éponine Young, and doc participants Jayne Wark, Sharon Fraser, and Sylvia D. Hamilton.

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Alumni Profiles Archives - ɫ�����ƵAPP

ɫ�����ƵAPP alumna Lucy Pullen encourages viewers to reach for the stars in her latest exhibit

From clay to television: ɫ�����ƵAPP alumni Brendan Tang shares his journey in ceramics

The Vancouver-based artist and ceramist is a celebrity judge on �����’s The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown.

ɫ�����ƵAPP University mourns the loss of Richard Serra, 1938-2024

From sneakers to clippers: a ɫ�����ƵAPP alumni’s resilience in the pursuit of art

ɫ�����ƵAPP alumni, Kemmy Smith, shares his career shift from sneaker art to barbering, and the realities of trying to make it as an artist.