Jim Tanner
January 2011
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UBC painting and drawing professor Jim Tanner may describe himself as a “two dimensional artist,” but he stands out as anything but two dimensional. Having been instructing students since UBC was Okanagan College, Jim Tanner has shared his knowledge and helped develop the talents of countless students. Having grown up in Calgary, Alberta, during the 1950s, Jim didn’t get the chance to experience art in galleries or museums. Instead, his first encounters with art came in the form of illustrated children’s books. These books filled with colourful and exciting illustrations instilled into Jim the idea that art was about description and storytelling, an idea that would stay with him though his childhood, into his university years, and that would be reinforced after visiting Europe in his twenties, finding himself attracted to artists like Caravaggio, Vermeer, and Velasquez. |
Jim received a scholarship to study art at the University in Calgary during his high school years; however, he decided that it would be hard to make a living as an artist, so Jim decided to follow his best friend into studying engineering. It was after two years working in Calgary as an engineer that Jim made the decision to go back to school to study art. After receiving his Master’s degree in Fine Art, Jim obtained a position as an art instructor at Okanagan College, taking him away from his childhood home of Calgary to move to Kelowna. Having been drawn to teaching as a way of making a living as an artist, Jim found that the profession not only granted him a fair amount of time to practice his craft, but also allowed him to surround himself with art and the people who love art.
For inspiration, Jim draws upon a variety of sources, but he consistently finds a muse in three particular subjects: the works of his favourite artists, his personal experiences, and his interactions/adventures in the natural world (mountains being of particular interest.) It was in Europe that Jim was introduced to the work firsthand of such artists as Caravaggio, Vermeer, and Velasquez, painters who created works that reflected a realist view of our world. These artists put emphasis on reproducing what we see with our eyes. Being a mountaineer and outdoor adventurer, Jim has drawn upon his experiences with nature for many of his creations, be it from climbing a mountain to spending time with his family on a deserted island, the relationship between man and nature remains a recurring subject in many of Jim’s works.
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One painting that Jim holds as being the overarching example of his work is a self-portrait. In the image, Jim sits on a couch dressed in his mountaineering clothes (shabby and worn from hard use) holding a paint brush in one hand and a palette in the other (the pallet holding each colour used in the creation of this particular portrait). Behind him on the wall are two paintings of mountains, replications of paintings by Carl Rungius and Lawren Harris (one of the Group of Seven). Both of these depict mountains that Jim has climbed. On the floor in the foreground is an issue of a newspaper entitled The Times, a name that Jim selected in order to reflect that this is a contemporary painting despite its many references and similarities to pre-20th century paintings, and that it remains relevant to our modern life. On the cover of the newspaper is a picture of a dog, taken from the Velasquez painting The Maids of Honour. The portrait is an extremely intertextual and multifaceted artwork that reflects what Jim considers to be his essential ideas. |
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A particular tool that Jim utilizes quite frequently is a hardboard support, a display board that Jim had constructed out of a panel of Masonite with a length of wood running along the panel’s width, dividing off a third of the board. Jim tacks photos and images onto the hardboard, drapes fabrics and clothes, rests objects upon, and arranges everything until he finds the image that he desires to reproduce. The piece “Hats” is a great example of Jim’s use of the support. The oil painting features two images of a young girl (a member of a friend’s family) working with a pen and pad of paper and reflecting on a deserted island in the summer. These two images are placed in contrast with a bucket hat (wrapped with a long orange strap) and a pair of sunglasses. Jim has clearly painted the support, showing the grain of the wood, nail holes, and the various spots of paint that lie scattered along its surface. |
At the time of this interview, Jim expressed that he was set on further exploring this process, finding that his use of the support serves the purpose of building upon inspiration drawn from member and imagination. Jim describes the process as creating a theme, finding images and objects to add until he has constructed a compelling image. These images are almost always inspired by specific experiences from Jim’s life.
During his years as an artist, Jim has observed how visual art has become extremely diverse; so many different approaches and methodologies have been developed, leading to pressure upon institutions and teachers to accommodate students who wish to practice a wide range of modern art. “You can’t really dictate a singular approach; you need to recognize that there are so many different things happening and you have to try and see the value of them, try and understand them and see the value in them,” stated Jim, explaining how he realizes that he does have a specific skill set (drawing and painting) that he can teach to others, but he is called upon to do more than that. Knowing the importance of being able to find value and meaning in art, Jim builds appreciation for the works that he is unfamiliar with by seeing objectively, commenting, relating it to the world (both the art world and the broader world), seeing where the artist is taking their creation, and providing encouragement where it’s needed.
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Jim remains strongly connected to his passions: exploring territories important to himself, finding experiences and moments to put on display in watercolour, oil, and charcoal, creating scenes and images that Jim hopes his audience will recognize and connect to on a level that goes beyond the act of just looking at a painting in a gallery.
Article by Wyatt McCrae
Fern Helfand
May 2010
UBC Okanagan photography professor Fern Helfand is a woman who responds to her environment. This trait is revealed in both her photographic art works and in her attitude to life as an instructor. Having come to the Okanagan in 1998 after accepting a teaching position with Okanagan University College, Fern has observed many changes in the local environment and has captured many of these moments through the lens of her camera. At UBC Okanagan, Helfand helps students acquire the skills to do the same.
Helfand’s interests lie in revealing the fabricated nature of the world. Her own photography explores issues of veracity both within the experience of the moment caught within a given photograph, and also within the issue of digital photography as a medium. Her work has approached the subject of tourism in locations such as Niagara Falls and Disney’s Epcot Centre, has questioned people’s experience of real events such as the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, and continues to explore the experience of community development within the region of the Okanagan. Helfand takes none of these experiences at face value, nor do her works. Working with the medium of photo and collage, she questions the authenticity of people’s experience with their world, and at the same time, questions whether there currently exists any truth inside photography as a medium.
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According to Helfand, photography once could be touched up or manipulated only by professionals. With current computer technology, entire photographs can be constructed by anyone, until there is no longer any “authenticity.” Photography, therefore, can become a totally fabricated experience. This reality parallels Helfand’s interests in the touristic, which to her is often a commodified, consumer experience. To illustrate such a point of view, Helfand produced art works about Niagara Falls and the Epcot Center in Disneyworld, Florida. In “Tourists at Niagara Falls”, Helfand manipulates the positions of her subjects for effect. Her subjects are positioned in such a fashion that it would be physically impossible for the camera to capture all of them in their relationship to the falls and the surrounding landscape. Yet, Helfand says, “within the work, there is such veracity of the moment, that viewers often fail to recognize this fact even when they are familiar with the space”. |
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In “America Appropriates the World,” Helfand focuses on the Epcot Center, where Disney “Imagineers” have created simulacra, deceptive substitutes that stand in for the real thing. Her series of large digital collages created in 1999 include several pavilions representing different countries, for example, Canada, Italy, and China, full of immediately recognizable clichés of those places. Helfand has written, “A visit to Disney’s EPCOT is a visit to the future and the four corners of the world all in one day. The convincing ambiance is uncanny, right down to the accent of the employees brought in from abroad to provide the right ethnic experience while you dine or shop for authentic souvenirs, which Disney also imports to complete the setting “ There is the implication that you can visit Epcot for a positive experience of the entire world and you do not need to go abroad, where you would have to deal with foreign languages and uncertain experiences. At Epcot, there are even Kodak signs to show people where to stand to take the best pictures. At these sites, many of the visitors' experience is primarily though the lens of their camera, they do not take time to look directly at what is in front of them. It’s one click and then onto consuming the next “attraction.”
After the Okanagan Mountain Park fire of 2003, Helfand created “Interface, Disaster as Spectacle” in collaboration with Portia Priegert. When depicting the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire, Helfand sought to answer the question, ‘Do people need to turn to media for an understanding of real events?’ What interested her was the manner in which people were close enough to “touch reality” by actually looking at the spread of the fire, but then returned to their homes and watched media accounts of the fire. In her work, Helfand deliberately creates mistakes of perspective, suggesting the possibility of a lack of veracity in the overall experience of the fire for Okanagan residents.
At UBC Okanagan, Helfand is one of the professors who experienced the transition of Okanagan University College becoming the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Fern began teaching at OUC in 1998 after having taught for many years at other institutions. Even after all of these many years, Helfand enjoys teaching. For her, it is the students themselves who inspire her to continue. Says Helfand, “Students teach you new ways of thinking.” She also says she enjoys the interpersonal experience of the classroom. This becomes apparent when she pulls out a copy of an alumni magazine from Universiti Sains Malaysia and hands it to me. Recently, she was asked to write an article on her time teaching at USM. Her published article is full of memories and pictures of students from her time there. The article is by no means the largest of her projects, but Helfand is very happy and proud of the time she spent in Penang, Malaysia and she hands me the copy to read
Since so much of her work expresses itself in photo collage, I ask Helfand to tell me what a photo collage of her years as a teacher would look like. She tells me the three major institutions where she has taught would be depicted – UBC Okanagan, the University of Western Ontario and the Universiti Sains Malaysia. The student body featured would be one full of diversity, both in nationality and in the type of students. Finally, in the years she has worked as a teacher, photography has undergone considerable technological changes transitioning from fiber-based paper to resin (plastic) coated paper, to no paper at all with the advent of digital technologies. These changes would also be expressed. “That is a good question,” Helfand says to me, “Maybe I should do that project.”
Currently, Helfand continues exploring the idea of fabricated experience in the residential communities and developments in the Okanagan. Areas of development such as the suburb of Panorama Peaks allow her to explore issues of sustainability and also of community. To Helfand, such real estate projects are problematic. “People buy for a view,” she tells me, “and the developers come in and tear up the mountain in order to build, then people move into their new homes and lo and behold, the other side of the mountain, which had originally afforded the beautiful view has been torn up, as well.” In “Forested Hills to Paved Plateaus,” Helfand observes that public transport is not available in these locations and the only way to access such developments is by car, making them environmentally unfriendly. She also notes that such homes as these are often bought up by investors and then resold at a profit, allowing very little sense of community to be established. She has been working on this project for some time now, and intends to continue.
“A photograph is a cultural artefact,” says Helfand. “It tells a story and preserves a moment in someone’s life. The activity, clothing, and environment all speak to time and situation, and to the technology of the day.” Utilizing collage with such artefacts adds layers of time and perspective and helps an artist, such as Fern Helfand, make a statement about the observations of her own time.
Article by Leigh Macfarlane
Denise Kenney
March 2010
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Professor Denise Kenney is an educator’s educator. I suspect she might be surprised by this assessment, but our one-hour conversation in her UBC Okanagan office was as instructive as it was engaging, and this impression is one I cannot dispel despite Professor Kenney’s multiple accomplishments outside education in the film and theatre industries. Having been a member of UBC Okanagan’s Creative and Critical Studies department for three years, Professor Kenney is the first UBC Okanagan faculty member I have interviewed who has a Bachelor of Education Degree as well as other professional accomplishments. She has worked in theatre, dance, film, television, and on independent documentary production, and when I ask, she tells me her Bachelor of Education Degree has assisted her equally in and out of the classroom. "You know,” says Kenney, “I would have to say, it has been infinitely useful to me. I first worked in Vancouver on a number of features and shorts and wow, that was useful for me because you learn pretty quickly to assess what people’s learning styles are and how they respond to you.” |
Professor Kenney goes on to describe for me the many different people working on film production – from the gaffer to the director – and how they all “speak a different language.” She credits the principles of people management taught in her education courses for assisting her in making such productions move forward constructively. She also says, “Ed training [gives] a clear sense of learning outcomes, what you think you are doing, and what you are actually doing. Because you are not teaching curriculum, you are teaching students. With an ed degree, that is pounded into you.”
I listen to Professor Kenney discuss her experiences in the film industry and her ideas about education, and realize that hers is an intellect that is equally creative and analytical. She tells me that her education training prepared her to communicate and collaborate and facilitate environments. She tells me these are the exact things she has done in her professional film career: “So, I have to say, in terms of my under-graduate work, my education degree was as important in some ways as the theatre training was.” Then she concludes, “Weird, eh?”
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It takes only moments in Professor Kenney’s company to realize that she enjoys and excels at imparting her knowledge, observations, and also technical skills to others. She brings complicated technical practices to an attainable level for me during our conversation, and yet manages to keep the conversation both interesting and inspiring. Her work reveals that the situations that stimulate her interest are social ones. Reflecting the intricacies of human experience, her professional projects have included observations of the gaze on women (Other Eyes), and domestic violence (Captive Theatre). She tells me that rather than being encouraged to explore themes, “I simply respond to what is interesting or what I am drawn to. I think in all my work I engage in something that I am genuinely interested in or questions that I have or can’t answer... In some ways I don’t set out to make any big changes – they’re just issues I am interested in.” |
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This credo is also what Professor Kenney would most like to impart to her students: “The biggest job [students] have is to pursue their genuine interest and let the chips fall where they may. And to pursue meaning. That is a huge job.” She also feels this is the best thing that has ever been taught her, and says, “If I am not doing something that is meaningful for me, then why bother.” On the other hand, the most useful critique she has ever received or could offer involves overcoming fear. She feels it is important to learn to separate her sense of herself as a person from her work. Sometimes her work might fail; it doesn’t mean she as a person has failed. This is the kind of knowledge that allows artists to continue to pursue meaningful projects and still take the criticism that enables the project and the artist to become stronger. “If you are a committed artist then your stuff is out there and... you have to figure out pretty quickly, I have to separate this or I can’t survive this environment... You have to look at [criticism] as potentially diminishing the piece, not you personally.”
Currently, Professor Kenney is excited to be helping her students prepare for a spring presentation with the working title Inside Out. For this performance, Kenney’s students explore the public and private personas of students at UBCO, what is meaningful for them and how this conflicts with public pressures and opportunities to act. “[The performance] is in the ballroom,” Kenney tells me. “The audience will move around the space and there will be little private performances as well as public performance spaces. It is infinitely fascinating when people are being honest and talking about what matters to them. It is theatrical and interesting, so our challenge now is to translate that into performance.”
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It is a good challenge. So is the self-actualization Professor Kenney wants her students to attain. Theatre students at UBC Okanagan, she tells me, tend to be mature with previous theatre experience. When potential students approach Professor Kenney, she tries to direct them where their interests can best be served. Says Kenney, “We often get students who have the notion they want to be actors and they have an image of what that means. I find myself asking the question, do you want to be an actor, or do you want to act? If you want to be an actor, then in some extent you are subscribing to the notion that you need to train for work within the conventional theatre of an actor; if you want to act, well, then you simply act.” It is the later type of person most predominantly attracted to UBC Okanagan, Professor Kenney tells me. “In a really simple way, [acting is] not a commodity but a regenerative process by which you live your life.” Finding meaning within this process can, according to Kenney, be much like the greyhound chasing the rabbit across the track. “The thing in and of itself is fairly meaningless, but to achieve is extremely difficult, so it becomes the holy grail just because it is hard to be successful.” |
In her current professional life as an artist, Kenney has just applied with colleague Michael V. Smith for a participatory film project and is working with Professor Nancy Holmes on the Woodhaven Project as well as writing an article for Canadian Theatre Review on Eco Art. She is also working with Professor Neil Cadger on a multi-media interdisciplinary performance piece, previously named Inner Fish but currently called The House at the End of the Road. The change in title Kenney relates to an extreme wide shot narrowed down to a close up. With so many projects on the go, however, it seems clear that Kenney is nowhere close to the end of her own road.
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Professor Kenney does tell me that as artists it is possible to lose meaning amidst the struggle to survive. Her own path, though, has been and continues to be full and varied. She is passionate about what she does, and about seeing other artists realize their paths, as well. At UBC Okanagan, Professor Kenney enjoys being a part of facilitating the artistic experience for others. "The very nature of the work is such that other artists will inevitably have their own journey,” says Kenney. She tells me that she and the other professors at UBC Okanagan are committed to helping students on this very personal journey. |
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Article by Leigh Macfarlane
Aleksandra Dulic
February 2010
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When UBC Okanagan drawing and computer arts professor Aleksandra Dulic is asked for a word to describe herself, she says professionally she is an animator, personally, she is a mom. After only an hour in her company, however, it becomes apparent that there are many other words that describe her: enthusiastic, inspired, visionary, brilliant. Professor Dulic is still new at UBCO, having arrived less than one year ago from Vancouver. Originally from Serbia, Professor Dulic has been in Canada for twelve years, moving here to study contemporary art at SFU in Burnaby. She chose to remain in Canada despite offers elsewhere because of funding and professional opportunities. Much of her recent work is reflective of the multi-cultural nature of Canada’s West Coast society. At UBC Okanagan, Professor Dulic teaches first and second year courses in drawing and computer imaging development, courses which, as an instructor, she finds complementary. In computer imaging, she says, the students need to develop a technical literacy so that they can access their own personal expressiveness with the materials. |
Because of the constantly shifting and developing nature of technology, however, Professor Dulic’s courses revolve around composition and how composition functions rather than around software: “One of the challenges in our field is that the ground is constantly shifting. [You are] constantly having to teach tools and instruments that are changing and evolving. You can get used to approaches and strategies that haven’t changed, but it is hard for students. [As an instructor] you really have to focus on teaching students how to learn, rather than to learn a particular software.” This is one reason why she enjoys teaching her drawing classes, as well. “Drawing hasn’t changed in thousands of years, so it is nice to be connected to that, as well.”
Professor Dulic brings more than just her skill and understanding of her subject matter to class. She also brings a number of well-funded animation arts projects in which, with the help of UBC Okangan’s work study program, she is able to involve her students. Having three times been awarded SSHRC Funding, Professor Dulic tells me that her projects are expensive and can cost upwards of $60,000. These constitute large productions, and Professor Dulic realizes first-year students would not normally have an opportunity for involvement on projects of such a size. It is one reason she came to UBC Okanagan – to “expand her collaborative field. It is okay for me to allow students to learn, and they can be part of a big production that they never as first-year students would be able to part of and to collaborate with international artists – real opportunities to be involved in major collaborations and majorly funded.”
Professor Dulic currently has students collaborating with her on more than one project. She has been funded through a Canada Council grant to develop music and scroll painting animation based on Chinese landscape art. For this project, she sent a cinematographer to China to film Yellow Mountain, and now has hours of film of mountain peaks in clouds. She describes the work as both abstract and also a common theme for painters. Her own approach, however, considers the notions of meditation, and yin and yang, and will feature her own particular touch on the brushwork and flow of the work. She will then put all the techniques and approaches into a performance state. She has several students working on the project with her: “I have already done a bunch of the work, but they will take it to their own places. That is the beautiful thing about living in multicultural Canada – everybody brings their own.”
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Another of Professor Dulic’s current projects is nearing its completion date. “Marathonologue” is a project in which Aleksandra Dulic and Kenneth Newby collaborate for Art Partners in Creative Development – for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, in Vancouver, BC. The project combines animation, Scottish bagpipes, Japanese Taiko drums, and Balinese gamelan, and will have a three-day performance run just prior to the Olympic games. This project can be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVwVp_bUGKM . Speaking with Professor Dulic, it is evident that she loves the work she does. She also feels that internet sites such as YouTube, which allow people to access her art for free, are beneficial. “As a teacher and a researcher,” she says, “accessibility is essential. It is my responsibility to share my knowledge.” She does have one lament, though. Unlike a manuscript, which upon completion takes the form of a tangible hard copy, her product has only archived longevity. Although the productions Professor Dulic works on consist of elaborate installations coordinated with performance and media and interactive animation, they will, upon completion, be torn down. Although components remain, “The real magic is in the moment, and it all goes down. It doesn’t exist. You have to let it go and just do it another time and then another time. Even if you have a recording, it’s not the same.” |
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She won’t have this problem with her next project. Professor Dulic tells me that while her inspiration for her projects comes from many sources and what she wishes her projects to say varies widely, her recent concerns have been largely environmental. “I feel that we have an emergency ecologically, and that I should use my own intelligence as much as I can to share the responsibility.” This concern has led Professor Dulic to approach UBC Vancouver professor, Dr. Stephen Sheppard, about a climate change visioning project he has developed for his work in forestry and landscape architecture. She intends to use a down-sized version of Dr. Sheppard’s program to help create a 3-D video game that would feature different climate change scenarios. “It’s a kind of visualization project. It’s based on climate change science, but is trying to employ game strategies and basically reveal the different possibilities. [For example] in the environment of Delta, there is no question the water level will rise and wipe out the whole community. The question is, how do we adapt?”
Games, according to Dr. Dulic, are important, since people learn through play. The skills involved, however, extend beyond technology. While technology can add layers of information to the environments computers generate, the skills Dr. Dulic believes people most need to develop are those of drawing and painting and music and poetry. If you learn poetry, Dr. Dulic says, you will be able to add layers of metaphor to your work, and that will add meaning. “It is good to be a good writer and a good drawer. If you have those basic skills, you can make the computer sing and fly.” Still, Dr. Dulic says the best advice she can give her students in terms of drawing is to go out into the world and observe. In terms of computer arts, Professor Dulic advises her students, “Practice and all will come.”
Article by Leigh Macfarlane
Virginie Magnat
January 2010
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In theatre, the voice and the body are the actor’s most important tools. This is what UBC Okanagan theatre professor, Dr. Virginie Magnat, tells her students; these are the concepts she most wishes to impart in her studio classes. According to Dr. Magnat, the importance of the actor’s voice and body is stressed in the branch of theatre studies known as ‘poor theatre,’ a concept coined by Jerzy Grotowski suggesting that if you strip everything away all that remains is the actor and the work of the actor. Dr. Magnat is trained in a branch of experimental theatre which comes out of Europe, but which is very intercultural in nature as it is derived from multiple cultures. This diversity appeals to Dr. Magnat, herself an import from France. |
 Photo by Francesco Galli |
One of her original post-secondary education experiences occurred at Vancouver Island’s Pearson College. It was at Pearson that she first became interested in experimental theatre, largely because it involved studying and participating in intercultural performance. Such intercultural knowledge and experience is what Dr. Magnat feels she brings to both her research and her classroom.
She also brings the perspective of one whose first language is not English. Performance in one’s native tongue is very different from performing in a different language, according to Dr. Magnat:
There are some personal associations you have with language that have to do with your mental processes that are really strong and will never go away. But then as you learn another language and you live in another language, the associations you have in that language you don’t have in your native language. When I was in France, I translated into French a paper I had originally written in English. I had to take a dictionary; I’d been thinking in English and there was no equivalent in French, so I had to work it out for myself. It is the same with performance. It is so personal to use text and language that if you work in different languages you are going to do something in a completely different way.
This multi-lingual association may be why Dr. Magnat loves the work of Samuel Beckett. That he chose to limit himself by writing outside his native language, then also chose to write in a minimalist fashion impresses her. Dr. Magnat finds this quality in his work both innovative and provocative.
 Photo by Leigh Macfarlane |
Dr. Magnat’s responsibilities at UBC Okanagan involve both teaching and research. In her teaching, Professor Magnat seeks to impart that which she has learned, while in her research she is very focused on looking at women from different cultures and generations who work in the experimental theatre tradition. Her background in anthropology and specifically the anthropology of performance likely contribute to Dr. Magnat’s interest in the intercultural nature of performance; her teaching and research feed and reflect upon each other. Women are rarely in the forefront of theatre for reasons ranging from a lack of leading lady roles to cultural and societal expectations regarding female conduct; therefore, Dr. Magnat questions how such work benefits women, what it might have to teach women and why women would chose to do work which more highly esteems and prioritizes men. |
Her research aims to challenge the traditional idea that performance be associated only with men. Dr. Magnat suggests that men, rather than women, are associated with physicality. Since performance is visual by nature, when people see bodies on stage, they see gender. Experimental theatre, according to Dr. Magnat makes it possible for women to challenge some of the ways they are represented where realistic theatre does not provide such a space. Rather than simply acting roles they would already be living in real life, the experimental stage offers women a venue for breaking through limitations and transforming and behaving in ways that could not happen in real life. Opening to new possibilities on the stage often carries over into an actor’s life. Dr. Magnat feels this occurs because whenever you commit to anything with your whole body – your imagination, your senses, desires and needs – the moment bleeds into your life; it has become a lived experience, and as such, becomes part of your accumulated knowledge. Professor Magnat feels experimental theatre can be transformative for students and performers. This is what she believes, also what she hopes.
In her teaching, Dr. Magnat uses Asian traditions to assist her students in transcending the stereotypes of gender. In Asian performance, gender is thought of in terms of energies. However, there are no masculine and female energies, rather, the energies are soft or vigorous. When Professor Magnat works with her students, she asks them to experiment with using soft or vigorous energy. She asks students to see how that changes their experience of the world without being limited by their daily physical reality.
Dr. Magnat has an educational background in anthropology and this affects her ideas about theatre. Teaching, in her opinion, is very much part of a transmission that is connected to participation. Professor Magnat does not sit at the front of a room and lecture, but rather joins with the class in the exercise they are performing. She believes there are many practitioners who are also teachers, since you learn as you teach. This mutually beneficial process created a curiosity in Dr. Magnat about the theoretical and anthropological context for performance. For her, theory and practice must always be linked – otherwise she quickly loses interest: “Pure theory without practice doesn’t make much sense. And sometimes practice without context, without idea and thought, can also be limiting.” Dr. Magnat also realizes that her personal experience of theatre has nothing to do with what it means for those who don’t come from the same tradition or culture. Other cultures can teach us the limits of our own cultural uses and understandings of performance and how to open ourselves to alternative viewpoints.
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In fact, UBC Okanagan is specifically interested in developing a theatre program that is both intercultural and interdisciplinary in nature. The Interdisciplinary Performance program has been developed in part by Dr. Magnat. Students specialize in performance and also train in two other disciplines. The program is designed specifically for students who are interested in creating their own work as performers and who want to know more than just mainstream techniques. Dr. Magnat feels that as there are no jobs for actors in this world, performers must become creators of their own jobs if they are going to survive. |
 Photo by Leigh Macfarlane |
In her classes, Dr. Magnat also works with students to develop their voice. She uses traditional songs since these are very ancient and are connected to people’s ancestry, even when the people themselves no longer are. The songs become a means of connecting with one another, since the power of voice really happens through vibration. It is possible to feel these vibrations very palpably, even if you do not understand the language or the meaning of the words, since people feel the difference in the air through the power of sound. Such a participatory approach to classes allows the students to enjoy themselves regardless of whether they are majoring in theatre or not. Professor Magnat feels her classes challenge traditional ways of learning and working together. Her classes are, in a sense, looking back at the past for a new way of looking forward into the future.
With her classes full of people from different backgrounds and generations, Dr. Magnat has learned there is no right way or wrong way of thinking, and diversity adds richness to a setting. This concept is, for Dr. Magnat, the point at UBC Okanagan; embodied learning and intercultural knowledge is what the theatre program is aiming to promote.
Article by Leigh Macfarlane
Johann Feught
November 2009
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There are many offices on the UBC Okanagan campus, but none which compare to that of Professor Johann Feught. Entering the drawing instructor’s office is a lot like entering a highly personalized cave or den. Replete in highly coloured art works, the space is interesting from top to bottom. And no wonder. Professor Feught, who had an extensive and highly successful career in the art world prior to his academic life at UBCO, began his career in Germany, apprenticing at the age of fourteen as a window front designer. This prestigious European tradition was the beginning of an art career which has spanned decades and also continents. Johann grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. The ruins of bombed out buildings were his childhood playgrounds. This early proximity to geometric designs and broken-down architecture became reflected in his art, when, as a successful printmaker, Johann incorporated the interplay of geometry and ruin into his designs to reflect both interior and exterior spaces. His prints feature bright, clear jewel tones, which Johann attributes to his early love of architecture and the prismatic colours of the stained glass windows of the cathedrals of his childhood. |
Printmaking also indirectly led Johann to teaching. Despite a successful and lucrative business as a creative director of a display company, Johann knew he was first and foremost an artist. He decided to walk away from his six figure income and dedicate himself to art full-time. Having long admired the printmaking of Albrecht Dürer, Johann chose to study printmaking at the University of Alberta, and while completing his Master’s degree in printmaking, first experienced teaching as a teacher’s assistant. He found he enjoyed being part of an atmosphere where like-minded people were studying and discussing art, and so after graduation he obtained teaching positions at several Canadian universities. In 1992, Johann was hired by the fine art department at Okanagan University College to create a co-op design program with a solid graphic design component. After the transition, the design program never was re-established at UBC Okanagan. “It is my hope,” Johann says, “that a design program will resurface in the not so distant future.”
At UBCO, Johann teaches first year 2D drawing fundamentals, but to add extra interest to the curriculum, he includes his own area of expertise – illustrative drawing. The course teaches aspects of graphic design without excluding traditional drawing. In fact, Johann worries over the infrequency with which members of today’s society actually use their two hands to create. With increased reliance upon computers, Johann feels hand-on drawing may even be something of a dying art. It is one reason why he does not allow laptops or cell phones in his classroom; there are just too many distractions today. The best tool he can give a student, Johann says, is the ability to listen and to think for one self. He sees the change in his students as a term progresses. Within weeks, they come to welcome his class as a place free of technological distraction where they can just get down to the business of learning to draw.
As a professor, Johann feels strongly that it is important to give students the skills to convey their personal interior through their art. Students have their own needs, their own capacities; students comprehend at their own pace. Therefore, for Johann, teaching is not simply about standing in front of a class and relaying information. Instead, teaching is about communicating with his students, assisting them in finding their full potential. He chooses to gear his classroom to individual needs so that he can assist in growth and in fulfilling potential.
With such an attitude towards life, it should probably not come as a surprise that when asked to name his greatest success in life, Johann does not single out an art work or professional moment. Instead, Johann feels his greatest achievement is himself, the person he is becoming: “the state of mind I occupy at this time.” And as to failure – he replaces the term “failure” with that of “unsuccessful”—being unsuccessful can be a realistic part in any learning process; therefore, there is no failure. “Which,” Johann points out, “doesn’t mean I have always had things go exactly the way I envisioned them. But to call something a failure – I really don’t.”
Instead, Johann says there is one major secret to the success of an artist. He is tempted to say it is hard work, but that answer is too self-evident to satisfy him. The secret to artistic success, Johann feels, is being inspired, where inspiration is “a self-motivated observation of an idea.” It comes from passion, and it is the responsibility of the artist to find and access. “The key is to literally… self-motivate. You cannot just sit and wait for so called motivation – that is a fallacy. You have to become self-motivated to define inspiration.”
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For now, Johann’s personal inspiration has shifted from printmaking to painting. This is where his current artistic focus lies. He wants to work very traditionally within a Renaissance tradition; for example, preparing in part his own color pigments and building up transparent layers. Asked where he’d like to be in five or ten years, Johann answers simply: he’d like to be on his way to becoming a good painter. |
Johann’s life is an example of a career building upon itself one step at a time. He has had several solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and other international venues and is working on paintings for an upcoming exhibit in Germany. Johann smiles when he considers that he will be returning with a certain success to where it all began. His paintings are well received in Europe. “And what,” Johann says, “could be better? Coming from there and having my work circulate in cooperative and private collections of the European art market. It’s just wonderful.”
Article by Leigh Macfarlane
Anne Fleming
October 2009
Anne Fleming teaches Creative Writing at UBC Okanagan as an associate professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies. She is the author of a volume of short stories entitled Pool Hopping and Other Short Stories and of a novel named Anomaly. This interview took place in Anne’s office at UBCO on Wednesday, September 8, 2009.
Leigh MacFarlane: It’s nice to see you, Anne. First, would you please tell me, what are your various disciplines and what led you to them?
Anne Fleming: I was just talking to a theatre and performance student yesterday, and he assumed I had done something and I was thinking, ‘Wow, I am really far now, from drama, from writing it and from thinking about it and from writing screenplays.
I started out writing poetry. That was the first thing I wrote, and soon after that fiction, and soon after that drama. Actually, one of the first things I started was a screenplay. A friend and I started it after seeing a really bad movie -- I don’t remember what it was -- but we came back from the movie saying, ‘We can do better than that!’ So we started working on a screenplay.
I have interests in all those areas, and in non-fiction, but I am mostly writing fiction. I only write non-fiction when someone asks me to, which they have done. I have a piece in a book of birth stories, out from Anansi, and another piece in an anthology called Who’s Your Daddy, about queer families. So, mostly fiction. Short fiction and novels.
Leigh: Where were you born, where did you grow up, what are your outside interests, and how does that affect your writing?
Anne: [Laughs.] I was born in Toronto and lived there till I was eighteen, then I moved to Waterloo to go to University, and I stayed In Waterloo after I graduated. Then I moved to Vancouver to do my MFA at UBC, and I stayed. Seems to be a pattern, I move somewhere, and I like it, and I stay. I don’t know how much of this shows up in my writing, but I actually started my University career as a geography student. I loved physical geography, loved drumlins. I liked glacial landscapes, especially, because I was from Ontario and it was a glaciated landscape and the escarpment was a significant feature. I have an abiding love for physical geography, and, increasingly, for human geography and urban planning and those kinds of issues. Actually in Anomaly I used air photos as a way of organizing the book a bit. I knew the dad’s voice wouldn’t be a voice in the novel; he wouldn’t be a point of view character, but I wanted him to be in there in some way. He’s not someone who would talk much, but he collects air photos. There’s him looking at the air photos, and he’s thinking that – one of his teenage daughters has run away from home -- so he’s looking at these air photos wondering where she is. It was really, really fun for me. I got the air photos from Ottawa [she says as she rubs her hands together excitedly]. It was so great. It was so much fun just looking and doing air photo interpretation, just looking at what are the landforms, what are the patterns of building, and figuring things out from a really different view point. There’s that. Also my other interest has been the ukulele. It’s important to mention, I think, that I play the ukulele. I think that’s important to mention.
Leigh: That brings a picture of Matlock to mind.
Anne: Matlock?!
Leigh: Matlock. When he’s thinking about his cases he strums his guitar.
Anne: Oh. Really? No kidding? I didn’t know that. Okay. Well, I don’t know. I’m being a little facetious, but I think there’s something to it. The ukulele doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I think there’s something I relate to in that. Yeah.
Leigh: Okay. That’s fair. We won’t mention Matlock.[Laughter.] Where do you find inspiration?
Anne: Well, kind of different places all the time. Different stories come from different places. Like, one time, I was sitting on my front porch in the fall watching the chestnuts fall from the tree and they hit the sidewalk and I had the line in my head: “Chestnuts are biffing the sidewalk.” I started to write a poem and that was the first line, and it turned into a story very quickly. Then there are other ones that come from really different places. Anomaly has many sources that I drew on, but one of the things that happened was a neighbour of mine, when I was a kid, had a piano fall on him at school. I never knew exactly what had happened, and I always tried to imagine – how did that happen? So, I made up a scenario in which a piano falls on a kid, and that’s the starting point. That’s kind of the beginning of the story of -- the piano falling on her leg and what sort of repercussions that has in the family. So, it just sometimes those little interesting things. Or just a line that comes.
Leigh: How do you describe yourself as a writer? Do you have any processes that are unique to yourself?
Anne: That’s a good question. Well, I like things to be funny. One of my favourite things is to laugh and then, you know, not quite the sucker punch like -- I don’t like that sort of dishonest approach -- but the blending of the comic and the not necessarily tragic, but the difficult together. That’s my absolute favourite thing to read and also to do. I mean, I am very happy if I can really make someone laugh uproariously while making them also kind of suck in their breath about something, So, there’s that.
And then, I don’t really like this about my process, but I find it very hard to move on. It makes it hard to write novels, because I find it very hard to move on until I’ve got a scene that is really alive. I’ll sketch out a scene, and it’s really just a sketch and it’s not alive yet, and I can’t move on to the next scene until I have that first one really working. It’s not an efficient way of working, at all; that’s why I’m not so happy with it. But it seems to be what I do.
Leigh: What are some of your past works and which are you proudest of, and why?
Anne: [Laughs.] Well, I have two books, Anomaly, and my first book was a book of short stories called Pool Hopping and Other Stories. The first chapter of Anomaly was a story in Pool Hopping, and I always knew I would turn it into a novel. In fact, I wasn’t going to include it in Pool Hopping, but my editor really wanted me to, so I did. I’m equally proud of both of them, and also of the book I have finished which I am trying to find a publisher for right now, which is another book of short stories called Gay Dwarves of America. I am really pleased with it, which is making it frustrating, you know, publishing. There’s a bit of a crunch in the publishing world these days. They’re a bit less willing to take chances, and short stories don’t sell as well as novels so a lot of publishers are reluctant to take them on. So it’s very frustrating when I feel I’ve got this really good book ready to go, and they’re not biting yet. But they will. Yes.
Leigh: Well, actually, this wasn’t one of the questions I originally had for you, but do you ever hold onto your manuscripts and then bring them out in the future? Or are they pretty much time specific.
Anne: Well, I might end up holding onto this one, but I don’t want to. I want to get it out, you know?
Leigh: Prior to teaching at UBCO what other professional experiences did you have in the arts?
Anne: Well, I had a rare bonus, I think, in that when I did my MFA in Vancouver my screenwriting prof recommended me to CBC TV Drama to be a script reader -- which is in some ways very lowly. Basically, they had a story development department where they would read anything that anyone would send them, and people sent them a lot of stuff [laughing]. A lot of it was awful, but some of it was pretty decent. The script reader was the first person to read the stuff. You write up a little report and then send it on and recommend it yes or no. I learned so much from doing that about so many things, I read hundreds and hundreds of scripts and pitches for TV series and TV movies and stuff like that. I learned that it’s really easy to say no, and it’s really hard to say yes. It takes a lot more courage to say yes than to say no. It’s important to keep that in mind every time you are reading something. You want to be looking for the things that are good. This is true not just of script writing. You can fall into a sceptical frame of mind, and you have to keep yourself fresh and out of that try to see with fresh eyes. So, I did that. I also did a lot of theatre reviewing for the Georgia Straight, and that was super fun. I loved doing that; it was great. There was a challenge too, to encapsulate what you saw and give enough of an impression so the potential readers know whether they’re going to like the show or not. There’s the craft of getting it all, making it good – because most people are never going to go and read the books you review, or sometimes even the movies you review, but, hopefully they’re going to enjoy the piece of writing. You want them to enjoy the review as a piece of writing. So that they don’t have to see it, but then they get to say, ‘Oh, yeah, no, I read a review of that!’[chuckling]. It’s funny how much our knowledge of culture is made up of how much we’ve read of reviews, versus actually seeing or reading something. So, that was another thing that I did.
I was on the board of a professional theatre company. We tried to start a gay and lesbian theatre company in Vancouver called Out West Performance Society which ran for a number of years and was successful, but then all of us ran out of steam and stopped wanting to be volunteer board members. It was a lot of work, but it was also really fun. We offered some training and workshops too. So, clearly I have a lot of background in the theatre. I was on the screening committee for the Vancouver International film festival for the Canadian Film Series, which was also fantastic. That was great. We got to see all the submissions and decide which ones we would accept.
That’s about it. And then I started teaching. I taught at Emily Carr, which was a really neat place to teach, because the most consistently experimental writers I have taught have come from Emily Carr. They have already learned an approach of doing their own thing; it’s part of their identity and what drew them to art school in the first place. So, that was really interesting. I taught there, and I taught at UBC Vancouver, and at Douglas, and Kwantlen, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Victoria School of Writing.
Leigh: Okay, well, possibly your Master’s might have done this, but what led you to UBCO and how did you acquire the position?
Anne: Um, [sigh and chuckle] there was a job posting; I applied for it. I’d done sessional teaching, and I really enjoyed my teaching. It was a good way to make money while I was working on my novel and my first book and it gave me autonomy and freedom, but it didn’t pay very well. I did sessional teaching for ten years, and your pay almost never goes up as a sessional instructor.
Also, I really wanted to teach upper level courses. I’d been teaching a lot of intro level, and while those are really fun, they are some of the hardest ones to teach because students are often still very sensitive about their writing, and you have to be extra diplomatic in giving feedback and really, you know, just careful with people’s feelings. It’s rewarding to do that, but very draining also. It takes a lot more time, for one thing, than just clearly writing what you think, when you know this person is not going to feel like they’ve had a knife to the throat. It’s so nice to work with upper year students who have developed that sort of detachment from their work that their sense of self is not affronted if someone says they don’t like something about what they have written - mostly. [laughs].
Leigh: How would you describe your teaching style? Do you have a particular philosophy on teaching or the arts?
Anne: [No hesitation.] I do. I hate the word facilitator, because it’s often used in a poor context, but people learn best when they teach themselves. So really I want to help people to learn to teach themselves. They can because of what you learn; you learn how to write from writing, and you learn how to read from reading. It’s all there-- you just have to learn how to teach yourself. I mean I could come in and just lay down a whole bunch of things and lay down some laws or guidelines, but those can always be broken -- well -- by someone. And for myself as a student I just always have this automatic mistrust when someone tells me something as a blanket truth. I immediately want to show how it’s not a blanket truth. So, as an instructor, I don’t want to be doing that. I want to be getting people to tell me. I try to be in the background a lot, and to ask questions, to get people to do it for themselves. Um, sometimes it looks like I’m not doing much (laughs), but in fact, I think, I’m helping people draw out what they already know or what they are learning that they know.
Leigh: Have you seen changes as a teacher since your first class?
Anne: Well, you know the very first class I taught that was not in a continuing studies context was at UBC Vancouver in 1995. I was filling in for a maternity leave. As a grad student, I had previously done a workshop as at a high school, and the very first day of the class at UBC I was so nervous that I failed to recognize that two of the students in my class had been in my high school workshop. After the class I went, “Oh my God, that was Sherry and Amanda! They must think I’m a total moron, that I didn’t recognize them, that I didn’t acknowledge who you are!” And it was just because I was so nervous about that first class. Once that first class was over – I’m still nervous. I’m nervous about this 116 that is coming up [referring to a first year course Anne is currently teaching at UBCO with sixty students], but once you meet the students and see them as people and get to know them, then all that goes away and it just comes. There’s still that sense of tension, hoping that each class goes well and that students get what I want them to get out of it and that sort of thing.
Leigh: What are you working on currently?
Anne: I am currently working on a novel set in the early 17th Century in England and the Netherlands, and in the New World. It is about a collector of curiousities, an accused witch, an anatomist and a ship’s surgeon. Although the research is heaps of fun, now I really need to put research aside and write the story.
Leigh: Do you set projections for yourself?
Anne: In terms of I want to be done when? Yes I do, and I’m usually a year behind.
Leigh: Now, I know you currently reside in Vancouver and teach in the Okanagan. Why did you make the decision to do so, how does it work for you, and do you think it would work for others?
Anne: Umm, that’s a good question. Well, I mean, there’s a variety of family reasons that I decided to do that. I don’t usually frame it like I live in Vancouver and work here. It’s more like I split my time between the two places. I feel a sense of connection to the community here in Kelowna, as well, and like to be a part of community events and stuff. I am actually on campus more now than when I had a permanent residence in Kelowna. I used to come into Kelowna for my office hours and then I would go home because I like working at home the best. Now I am on campus three full days a week, so I think I’m a lot more accessible to my students. But I don’t need to be; hardly anyone comes to see me. I always puzzled in the course evaluations when they ask about the instructor’s accessibility outside of class. Some people say they’re neutral. I think, did you even try? How do you even know? Maybe they called one time, and I wasn’t there.
Leigh: Well, that’s probably what they mean – they never tried so they have no opinion.
Anne: Yeah. So, I mean, I know there are other people doing it. There are a number of people who split their time between Vancouver and here, in a number of faculties, so... so.
Leigh: Do you have a piece of advice for aspiring writers? Advice for writing and for publication.
Anne: I was reading -- um, I don’t know who it was -- awhile ago, but a writer was talking about a young person had come up to him at a reading and said, ‘I really want to be a writer, what do I need to do?’ And the writer said to him, ‘Well don’t tell my agent I said this, but, do you like sentences?’ And I really loved that, because sentences are important. So, my first answer was going to be write and send stuff out. Really, that’s all it comes down to. If you want to do it, do it. Don’t be chicken, because it will never happen if you are chicken, and will happen if you’re not. And really, I can find it kind of helpful to look at all the bad writing and think you know – it’s there! I mean, I can do at least that well. But I think that reading and liking sentences are a good thing, also.
Leigh: Okay, so that was going to be my last question, but one thing I would personally like to know is how do you deal with nerves as a writer?
Anne: With respect to people reading it?
Leigh: Um, I think with respect to a sense of inadequacy maybe. Or, you know, I really want to write and to be a success. So, to really want something is a lot riskier.
Anne: Yeah, it is. Yeah, that’s true. I don’t know. I think I’m kind of – it’s tippy. Like, I think there’s times when I tip on the side of probably not that well founded confidence, you know, you don’t like it? Too bad. I don’t care, I think it’s good.
Leigh: All writers are like that. They have to be. A little bit arrogant.
Anne: Yeah. And, Richard Hugo in a book called The Triggering Town talks about that. He’s an American poet who taught creative writing for a long time, and he says you need to be able to cultivate a kind of arrogance as a writer, that what you write is good because you wrote it. And then he goes on to say, you know, not in real life. In real life, try to be nice [laughter]. But, um, so there’s that. And then the other part of that honestly is just showing it to people, because almost always we are more afraid of what people are going to think. Showing it to people gives you a reflection, lets you know you’re right! You think it’s kind of good; it is. And there.
Leigh: And there. An hour of dialogue with a very interesting, intelligent woman. Thank you, Anne, very much.
Anne: You’re welcome.
Leigh: [pointing to notebook] I wrote it right there. So I wouldn’t forget.
[Laughter].
Sharon Thesen
March 2009
Click here watch a 4-minute movie featuring Sharon Thesen.
Interview and movie by Melissa Larkin
Michael V. Smith
February 2009
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Our conversation began with me lucky to find Michael in his office; an ambient space, decorated with many books I myself would love to read. This new addition to the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, on the Creative Writing side of things, seemed well at ease during our chat about “who he is” which brought significant depth to our dialogue. He was quick to mention the “V” was a way of personalizing his so-called common name, though I could tell it was less the “V” and more his warm personality and vibrant engagement with art that will set him apart from the other Michael Smiths of the world. |
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Michael is a self-described “artsy” kid, who grew up dreaming
1998 is Michael’s self-described watershed year. In 1998 he |
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From his earlier comments about the financial ease of writing, Michael began to discuss in-depth his
philosophies for artistic practice, including something he calls DIY Culture, Do-It-Yourself art projects. For
Michael, the best communities are those that are organic and local. His ideal project involves friends coming
together to create art, maybe a film or performance, and then posting it on YouTube, or sending it to
festivals … or the creation of a new festival! He explains that just because these communities are small and
local, doesn’t mean they don’t source outward – that Toronto can’t be considered a place of organic artistic
community practice – bridges between small communities can be built, and micro-cultures can exist within
a larger geography.
Michael’s enthusiasm seems boundless, as he described the kinds of DIY projects already happening at UBC O.
His ideal is making work at home and then sending it out into the world. For Michael, the best part is when that
art manifests itself, develops an audience, is spread around in a positive way – and it all happened without
enormous resources. In his own work, Michael loves how easy it is to make art, to be generous with himself,
and to be vulnerable. The more work he puts out into the world that terrifies him, the more genuine and
heartfelt responses he receives. And it is this that I interpret as part of Michael’s motivation. He tells me he is
constantly shown though his artistic practice that he is not alone in the world – the more isolated he feels, the
more people come to him and share their similar experiences.
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Michael explains that he really has no dislikes when it comes to making
Michael’s other teaching philosophy centers on creating permissive
As I ask Michael what he would say to students interested in the
“I like my students to live big and demand a lot of themselves - and |
And so our conversation ended with Michael excitedly showing me a book entitled “Body of Text” which was
co-created with a photographer friend, David Ellingsen (dotcom). It is a body-based work, which includes
photographs of Michael in different contorted positions, exploring the sensual aspect of language. Michael
relates that the disappearing and materializing of body reminds us that we understand the world through
our senses. And with that, a student materializes at his door – and I will have to wait for another chance to
strike up an interesting conversation once again with Michael V. Smith.
Photos by David Ellingsen, Article by Melissa Larkin
Stephen Foster
January 2009
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Coming from York University as a Sessional |
Stephen has been making videos for over twenty years, along with other experimental work in audio
and digital photography, and interactive web based projects. He began his artistic career in performance
at Malaspina College (VI University), utilizing video technology in his pieces. “What interested me at the
time was this entitlement of being broadcast and disseminated.” The idea of shooting, recording, and
instant playback attracted Stephen, leading him away from performance and towards his current artistic
endeavours in video art. He transferred from Malaspina to York University in Toronto to complete his
BFA, and continued at York to complete his MFA.
“Still today, this is an interest that I have in digital media, especially with the web and dissemination.
But also that ability to become self-reflexive … to shoot something and then be able to present it
immediately; you can really react to it.”
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His MFA thesis dealt with the illustration of indigeneity
“With a non-linear interactive narrative you can have
Stephen continues to work with First Nations issues, |
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Interactivity has become a key word for Stephen, emerging and paralleling much of his own digital
photography work. With more interactivity his work has become a reflection on the viewer’s position and
in terms of interpretation - how one might read the images that they see.
“The way I teach new media, the way I use new media I tend to think along the lines that one shouldn’t
work within one software package, [I think] that they should work between software packages and with
multiple software packages.”
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Depending on what Stephen wishes to achieve in his work he will jump
Stephen comments that a new media artist may use a variety of processes
When working as an artist in new media, Stephen comments that there are |
“An image has a texture in the way that it is presented. An image presented on a video screen has a
texture or quality that makes us relate to it in a certain way – not just mood, but certain connotations.”
Stephen relates that, for example, when TV wants to do reality shows, they do it all on digital video to
give it a low-grade look, and therefore an element of the documentation of reality. But when working
within the fantasy genre, something that is illusionistic or escapist, creators turn to film because it has a
‘transparent’ quality. For Stephen these different modes have different effects on our consciousness -
how we consume these images. And this has a profound effect on his work.
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Referencing one of his prints, Stephen explains that images work upon our consciousness in different ways. A digital horizon
For students thinking about a Visual Arts degree, or thinking about |
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Stephen relates that if students are interested in working with new media and digital facilities, and if
they’re interested in the Visual Arts, UBC-Okanagan probably has the best facility in all of BC, if not one
of the best in Canada. Access to equipment is open 24/7, so if there is an interest in working with leading
edge technology, and with instructors who have a wealth of experience like Stephen Foster,
UBC-Okanagan is the place to be.
Article by Melissa Larkin
Neil Cadger
December 2008
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I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Neil Cadger,
Interest and curiosity stirred Neil to take a theatre class |
Taking the next steps forward with this positive experience, Neil travelled to Paris to take
professional acting lessons, eventually deciding to stay and attend school. Following this education,
and with other students he had met during his three years in Paris, he travelled to Belgium and
created a theatre company. Together with this group he devised performances and travelled
extensively throughout Belgium, the Netherlands and England.
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Initially expressing an interest in poetry, and then thinking he might |
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Neil eventually decided to return home to Canada, and pursue an academic career. He completed
his MFA at UBC Vancouver, putting together The Fire Raisers as his thesis production. He subsequently
obtained a post at the University of Saskatoon and has been in academia ever since.
 Click here for Ground Rules 2008 4.5 minute video. |
Currently, with Denise Kenney, Neil is working on a performance I won’t give too much away, but Ground Rules is a devised performance inspired by a number of contemporary concerns such as the plight of the global environment. It focuses on what Neil eloquently calls “the live body or the communicative body”. This performance will also address the “mediated body” or the intervention of technology in human communication - something that Neil finds intriguing. |
“Who are we if we have pieces of ourselves all over the place –our understanding of place and identity
is becoming unclear … is that picture of you actually you, or is that a picture of you? We have split
ourselves up.”
Neil stresses that while Ground Rules and other performances have messages, concerns or theoretical
ideas playing out, that he also wishes performances to provide “the beauty and delight of the theatre.”
For Neil, part of creating a performance is the spectacle; the ability to take an audience out of their
daily lives. He hopes his audience will forget they’re sitting in seats watching something happen, but
become immersed in the fantasy and collective imagination created by the performance.
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While Neil’s teaching is generally centered around hands
“[For first year students] there is a general sense of being
Neil is also teaching a studio course, Acting 1 Body and |
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Both are essential to developing both the physical body and the intellectual depth of a performance. In
discussing these courses, Neil imparted to me that you don’t have to be good at performance, but a
willingness to learn and ultimately an ability to fail are necessary. In live performance, the audience is
part of the uncertainty. If, as an actor on stage, you know everything, then the audience is abandoned.
But, for Neil, if as an actor you embrace the uncertainty of the audience and their reactions and wholly
be in the moment, then a really amazing performance can unfold.
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“In studio acting failure is essential. You have to actually fail, publicly. You
Neil is an excellent example of curiosity revealing a rewarding experience. By |
In the first and second year, in the interdisciplinary performance program, a student can come in contact
with creative writing, visual arts and performance. Neil relates that it is a good exposure to different
approaches and a way for students to work towards finding their own internal creativity.
“UBC Okanagan [and the arts] provides opportunities for people to reflect on what they do, how they relate,
how they communicate, what makes them laugh, what makes them cry … it’s about making art … make
music, make poetry, make performances, make art and get it out to people … it’s not about moving people,
it’s about stopping people, intervening with art … get out there and do something!”
Article by Melissa Larkin
Briar craig
November 2008
 |
His first year back teaching full time
“Printmaking involves a number of
He completed his BFA at Queen’s |
He wasn’t involved in any printmaking classes until third year, but he grasped tightly this single
purpose of becoming a printmaker.
|
“From that moment on I didn’t really think about being anything
And rather than be disappointed when he arrived at the
Briar completed his Master of Visual Arts (MVA) at the University |
 |
He relates that students who have graduated are coming back and taking printmaking courses
so that they can keep working with the equipment. He finds it really stimulating to engage not
only with senior students, but with those who have graduated and have found that printmaking
resonates with them. The community atmosphere is developing. With the collaboration of the
Vernon Public Art Gallery and the Kelowna Art Gallery, and Briar himself, the first Okanagan
Print Triennial Exhibition has been developed. In 2009 the first OPT will occur – the first
exhibition is open to Canadian printmakers, the next, in 2012 will be for all of North, Central
and South America and by the third exhibition in 2015 it will be open to any and all International
|print artists. Briar hopes this will stimulate students and the Fine Arts program at UBC
Okanagan as well.
 |
Briar’s MVA culminated in an exhibition of his print-based work
“In fact I did have one that was called “relic”, which was sort of
Briar included a lot of crumpled coke cans and crumpled candy |
He found that at University it was a whole different world of exposure to the printmaking medium;
it encompassed a depth and a critical approach he had not experienced before. “It yielded much
more rich results.”
|
Briar considers himself a very solitary worker. The print process
He enjoys the presence of the slightly evil collaborator that may,
“So to me [printmaking] it still has a kind of mystery and maybe |
 |
Presses, screens, etching plates or acid, there’s this kind of the slightly evil collaborator that
you’re working with. At times it can pull the rug right out from under your feet and completely
change what your intentions were and then you have to deal with that. And I find that really
exciting.”
When Briar isn’t teaching you’ll find him working hard on his own artistic development and
production. Over the last five years his work has become more text based, inspired by “the
found object”; the detritus left behind by society. Just walking down the street he’ll find little bits
of interesting information, and in collecting those, for him, patterns will begin to emerge. Briar
likes to play games; when walking around and seeing bits of information, he’ll spend the rest of
the day imagining how to finish what he’s seen. For example, seeing a crumpled bit of newspaper
with only part of the headline visible, Briar wonders, “how would I finish that off?” It’s a game that
comes to him naturally and is reflected in his work.
 |
“So the body of work I am working on right now is a kind of reference to the Dada art movement, and the Dada poets in the 1920s and 30s … I’m playing with the same kind of randomness. I’m connecting things in the dictionary in a systematic manner, and the result would be a print where the text might be something like “utopian vacuum.” It doesn’t exist as a phrase but you put those two words together and there’s some content there. It’s somewhat indefinable and open to interpretation by the viewer but it is, to me anyway, a wonderful bit of accidental poetry.” |
Briar notes that UBC Okanagan is lucky to currently have a smaller program and small class sizes.
There is an element of personalized attention, and individually giving feedback to students in the
process of developing their own artistic expression. For Briar this is a very demanding thing and it
really requires an understanding of the student, and the ability to speak a language that that person
understands. It’s not always universal. He observes that “there’s art lingo and there’s art terminology,
but getting that to make sense to individuals really revolves around teasing that out of them and
finding out who they are and how you can support the things that are really vital to them, and redirect
them when they seem to be coming off track.” The UBC Okanagan Visual Arts program isn’t afraid to
get its hands dirty, to use the equipment that’s available in a productive way. Briar remarks that UBC
Okanagan boasts a Visual Arts faculty that has a vested interest in the University and the Visual Arts
program. They are all full time faculty, working for the program and for students.
|
“So I would say people should just come, experience our program. I
A Wonderful Anecdote …. |
 |
“What the heck could I possibly teach these people” because I’m so nervous, I can’t even get my
own thoughts straight. But in a way it kind of works somehow; maybe it breaks down barriers of the
stuffiness that is presumed in higher learning. There’s this person being nervous and goofy in front
of the class, but I think it breaks down barriers and hopefully helps people immerse themselves a
little more quickly into what really is a very foreign process.”
For those that are curious about the deeper parts of Briar’s psyche, he confided in me that his
favourite television show is the Amazing Race. “What appeals to me about it is it’s so much about
how we perceive the world; these people are racing blindly through these amazing places but they’re
just trying to get to a flag. You don’t get a sense of them really taking in the culture and I find that
both fascinating and frustrating to watch.”
Knocking on Briar’s office door and getting a chance to open up a dialogue with him is a wonderful
experience; one that I recommend.
Article by Melissa Larkin
Nancy Holmes
October 2008
 |
“Poets, step out of your rooms, |
Nancy Holmes, the head of the Creative Studies Department at UBCO, says the highlight of her
job is talking to people. There are lots of meetings to attend, and e-mail to answer, but making
sure departmental business is taken care of frees up the department to continue its focus on art
practice and teaching. Nancy has her M.A. in English with a Creative Writing thesis, specifically,
poetry. She is interested in Poetics, Artistic Strategies and Eco-Poetics, the integration of
environmental philosophy and theory in poetry. A bookworm at heart, she has wanted to be a
writer since she was 11 years old. Reading a vast number of books when she was young, Nancy
naturally progressed from a reader to a writer.
“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was about eleven and I took an awful lot of creative writing
classes when I was an undergraduate at the University of Calgary with a crazy guy called Bill
Kinsella (W.P.) and a wonderful poet, Christopher Wiseman.”
After her B.A. in English at the University of Calgary, she left academics for the “real world”. But
there was once again the draw of academia, and she returned to the University of Calgary for
her M.A. in English, with a Creative Writing thesis. Interested in Canadian texts from the 19th
century and the “women in their long skirts doing all sorts of interesting things” she took the form
of the long poem and wrote her second book of poetry entitled Down to the Golden Chersonese:
Victorian Women Travellers, as her M.A. thesis project.
“Women who travelled had to have an excuse to travel, so they were flower painters ... in
Jamaica, Malaysia, India and they would paint flowers and orchids and things like that, so nature
was “seen” from the civilized view of the lady. The flower painter was a role they took on in order
to be adventurous ...”
Offered a job at Okanagan University College in 1991, she has been in the Okanagan ever since.
She doesn’t consider her work to date to be the “traditional kind of academic job” as she spent
her first fourteen years in Penticton at the college there.
“It was a tiny place; there were only ever two English instructors, one biologist and one historian.
And it was a very interdisciplinary place and that’s in fact how I became quite interested in
environmental issues, because my office just happened to be next door to the biologist.”
Reading what others say about the world is something that all disciplines at a University do, but
also something that is a source of stimulation for Nancy’s writing. Reading non-fiction, for example,
and how another person interprets the world around them, digging into the minutia of a subject,
hold a lot of value as an inspirational resource.
“I really like nature writing, because it’s paying attention to the world and trying to explore what
people take for granted.”
The “dailyness of existence”, is also something that inspires Nancy’s writing. The act of looking
after your children, driving your car to work, working in the garden, cooking your dinner, cleaning
your house; these are all constant sources of stimulation for her work. There is a Zen quality
about trying to be in the moment and for Nancy this could mean opening an excellent bottle of
wine accompanied by braised lamb shanks (one of her favourites!). Cooking and working in her
garden are very centering activities, and they are part of the dailyness that feeds her writing. She
confesses that writing is a wonderful experience, that when she’s in the moment the world can melt
away, and all that’s left is the writing. Looking back after the Zen experience she might be more
critical of her own work, but that’s part of the draw of creativity. For Nancy, anyone who cares
about their work is critical: “it’s just part of the experience.”
“And that seems kind of uninspiring [dailyness] but in fact it’s how we spend our lives ... and it
seems to me that’s perfect material for poetry.”
Of her experiences in Graduate School, this episode comes to mind ...
“I was in Grad School in the late 80s at the University of Calgary and it was right when the French
Theorists were starting to infiltrate the academy. And I remember sitting in the Grad Room,
seven of us in this big room, and I was sitting there ... trying to write some poetry and the door
slams open and this woman, this other Grad student comes into the room crying, ‘Derrida is so
hard, I don’t get it! What do you mean the author is dead? How is the author dead?’ And I thought,
‘oh my god’, no wonder I can’t write anything, I’m dead’. I just felt this horrible feeling that I was
missing something crucial.”
Nancy has just finished editing the very first anthology of Canadian nature poems, which is coming
out soon through Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She has spent the last two and a half years
working on it, reading almost the entire corpus of Canadian poetry. Now that she has completed
that mammoth undertaking, she is enjoying the opportunity to return to her own creative work,
writing poems about the Okanagan and working on historical fiction.
For Nancy, the Creative Studies Department is an excellent place to work in a multidisciplinary
area. It is an integrated department with three program areas in the fine arts. It also has a brand
new interdisciplinary performance program designed for students interested in more than one of
the arts. She notes that students will come out of this program with a solid background in two fine
arts, plus experience in all three (Performance, Visual Arts, and Creative Writing). The program is
focussed on artistic practice and artistic production. And in her opinion that is an integral part of
what makes the Creative Studies Department a great place to be.
“If you’re interested in any combination of creative writing, visual arts or theatre performance,
this is a really happening place to do it ... we want to have students come out of the program as
writers, as artists, as performers.”
Article by Melissa Larkin
Last reviewed 
3/11/2011 11:39:26 AM
