Once Upon a Pop-up is on display on level 1 (RBSC reading room) and level 2 (main foyer) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre from April 11 through May 31, 2018.

Date: January 16 to February 13, 2018
Location: UBC Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Level 2 Foyer (1961 East Mall) (map)
Hours: same as the IKBLC building hours (see hours)

Join us for a new exhibition highlighting a selection of Rare Books and Special Collection’s 2017 acquisitions, including books, documents, diaries, ephemera, photographs, artworks, and more!

 

 

The Rare Books and Special Collections reading room is open Monday to Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. For more information, please contact RBSC at 604-822-2521 or at rare.books@ubc.ca.

Date: January 16 to February 13, 2018
Location: UBC Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Level 2 Foyer (1961 East Mall) (map)
Hours: same as the IKBLC building hours (see hours)

Join us for a new exhibition highlighting a selection of Rare Books and Special Collection’s 2017 acquisitions, including books, documents, diaries, ephemera, photographs, artworks, and more!

 

 

The Rare Books and Special Collections reading room is open Monday to Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. For more information, please contact RBSC at 604-822-2521 or at rare.books@ubc.ca.

Please join us at an exhibition showcasing the scholarly and creative publications of contract faculty members at UBC. Academics who teach on contract at UBC have published a wide range of research papers and books. In addition, contract faculty at UBC, have produced multi-media presentations and talks, some of which will be presented during this exhibition.

Refreshments will be served.

We are grateful for the support of the UBC Faculty Association and UBC Library.

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Event Details

Date: February 16, 2017

Time: 11am-4pm

Where: Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Lillooet Room

In coordination with our current exhibition Ever Austen: Literary Timelessness in the Regency Period, Rare Books and Special Collections is delighted to host a special Austen-themed panel discussion. We’re delighted to be joined by scholars from both UBC and SFU for this fascinating discussion on and celebration of Jane Austen, in honour of the 200th anniversary of her death.

Jane Austen’s Print Trouble

Michelle Levy
Professor and Graduate Program Chair, Department of English, SFU
Kandice Sharren
Ph.D. candidate, Department of English, SFU

Although today regarded as one of the world’s great novelists, Austen’s success in print did not come during her lifetime. She had trouble finding publishers for her work; several of her works sold poorly; she earned little from them; and received only one major review. Our talk will explore this surprising publishing and printing history, offering insight into the challenges Austen faced in the difficult print marketplace of early nineteenth-century Britain.

Gothic Influences

Scott MacKenzie
Associate Professor, Department of English, UBC

It is tempting to see, in Northanger Abbey, a rejection of the values and conventions that we associate with gothic fiction, but Austen’s investment in gothic fiction is considerably more complex than simply as something to poke fun at. The novels of Ann Radcliffe in particular are among the most important precursors to Austen’s literary triumphs.

Jane Austen as Popular Culture: Then and Now

Tiffany Potter
Senior Instructor, Associate Head (Curriculum & Planning), and First-Year English Coordinator, Department of English, UBC

Jane Austen’s novels are widely read as Important Literature in university curricula, but she was a non-elite, popular writer in her own day, and her place in popular culture has expanded wildly in recent decades. This talk will engage current theories of popular culture to consider Austen’s work in the Regency and in recent popular culture, including film and television versions and novel adaptations that re-tell her stories for new audiences.

The panel will be moderated by UBC’s Professor Emeritus of English Herbert Rosengarten.

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Event Details

Date: Thursday March 2, 2017
Time: 1:00-3:00 PM
Where: Lillooet Room (301), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

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The event is free and open to the public. We hope you can join us! For more information, please contact Rare Books and Special Collections at 604 822-2521 or rare.books@ubc.ca.

 

 

2017 marks the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s death, an author who has left an ever-lasting literary legacy that continually influences popular culture across time. In celebration of this legacy, Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC Library is delighted to present “Ever Austen: Literary Timelessness in the Regency Period.” This exhibition not only honours Austen, but also illuminates the social and material history of her works in the context of the Regency era.
Featuring RBSC’s newly-acquired first editions of Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, as well as thematically-diverse displays, “Ever Austen” invites Austen fans old and new to experience a literary journey through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to RBSC’s new Austen acquisitions, first editions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility will also be displayed and accompanied by several lavish illustrated editions. Austen’s juvenilia, as well as some titles that she kept on her personal shelves, will likewise provide insights into Austen’s formative years. Conduct books and Fordyce’s sermons will be shown as the prescriptions of female virtue, morality, and accomplishment, which Austen instilled in her heroines.

The Exhibition:

Illustrating the rise of a new literary genre, the exhibition will also feature an early Gothic section, a style which prominently impacted characterizations in Austen’s Northanger Abbey. This section’s haunts will loom in the newly-acquired first edition prints of Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, as well as in her romance The Italian. Juxtaposed with volumes of Horace Walpole’s complete literary works, a model of the Gothic villa Strawberry Hill will present an authentic view of these stories’ architectural descriptions. The sly caricatures in George Cruikshank’s illustrations will provide a comic relief for these darker pages, charming the viewer with their implicit social commentary and political satire.
Delicate articles of clothing from the early nineteenth century, kindly on loan from the Vancouver-based Society for the Museum of Original Costume (SMOC), will also be on display.

Finally, the breadth of Austen’s legacy will be exhibited in the many remediations that her narratives have taken in recent decades, ranging from graphic novels to the big screen. In the exhibition’s multimedia display, pop culture will meet period texts with an array of transmutations into diverse forms of media, languages, and images.

As a means to offer further information and insights about the period, a panel discussion organized in conjunction with the exhibition will take place on February 3rd. The discussion will feature talks from professors Tiffany Potter, Miranda Burgess, and Scott MacKenzie of UBC’s Department of English, and will be moderated by SFU’s Professor Michelle Levy, an authority on print culture during Austen’s era.

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The exhibition, “Ever Austen: Literary Timelessness in the Regency Period “, will be displayed in the IKBLC’s main foyer from January 4 to February 28, 2017.

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The Westcoast Calligraphy Society’s exhibition “Things That Go Bump in the Night” features a collection of spooky lettering displays that will be at the IKBLC from September 30th to October 27th. This exhibition theme is part of the society’s meeting about “Words on the Dark Side“. The exhibition shows framed pieces with spooky phrases written in different ways and many other smaller works written in colored pencils against black paper.

The Westcoast Calligraphy Society consists of an enthusiastic group of people who continue to share their knowledge of design, color, illustration, bookbinding, paper making and other talents with everyone interested in the art of letters. Many of their members also teach beginning and more advanced calligraphy throughout the Lower Mainland.

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What is Calligraphy – Watch an interactive video on Old English Calligraphy Style Lettering

The society was first established in September 1978 as the Society for Italic Handwriting, B. C. Branch. As it continued to grow and its members’ interests expanded, the focus broadened to all types of calligraphy and in June 1986, the name was changed to Westcoast Calligraphy Society. Some of the society’s previous exhibitions at the IKBLC include “Letters to the Garden“, “The Lyrical World“, and “Snow, Ice and Gold“.

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Recommended Resources for more information:

Koerner Library | PG3487.I7525 C35 2015

Knight, Stan. Historical scripts: A handbook for calligraphers. Taplinger Publishing Company, 1986.
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre | NK3600 .K55 1984

Whalley, Joyce Irene. The Student’s Guide to Western Calligraphy: An Illustrated Survey. Shambhala, 1984.
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre | Z43 .W53 1984

 

 

 

 

 

“High key” is a traditional style of photography that uses soft lighting for reduced contrast with white backgrounds. In this exhibit, I have played loosely with a high key type of approach in order to create a mood or atmosphere. By exposing only the key elements of an image, leaving the rest to be guessed or imagined, the photographs express a sense of mystery or have a dream-like quality.  I have called this series, “Essences” because the eye is drawn to elements of the photograph that might be overlooked in a more conventionally exposed image.

These photographs are created almost entirely in the camera by selecting a certain exposure at the time of taking the photo.  Post-processing work is limited to “developing” the image digitally. That means working with the image in Lightroom to produce the best possible print, without substantially changing the image.

The photographs in this exhibit were taken in Vancouver, B.C.; Paris, France; and China.

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Artist Bio

Evelyn Nodwell, an Anthropologist and Ph.D. graduate of UBC, attended the Alberta College of Art for two years before moving to Vancouver. She has taken photography workshops with masters such as Sharron Milstein, Nevada Weir and Sam Abell, as well as taken classes in Langara College’s Photography Program.

Evelyn had a one-month solo exhibit at the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Gardens, Vancouver; exhibited in the Art Museum of Guiyang in China as a member of an artists’ exchange group; and had an image in DarkroomGallery.com. She began 2015 with an exhibit in The Gallery at Highcroft throughout January; through The Ferry Building Gallery, has contracted a solo exhibit at the West Vancouver City Hall in May; and in April will be exhibiting at the Burnaby Art Gallery and Deer Lake Gallery along with British Columbian and visiting Chinese artists.

Evelyn has had prints in the Burnaby Art Gallery Sales and Rental division; and has had photos published in Canadian Geographic Magazine, The Province newspaper and Vancouver Coast and Mountains Tourism publications. She has given photography workshops and presentations, and judges for camera clubs. Her images regularly score in the top 2-10% in local competitions.

As an anthropologist and independent filmmaker, Evelyn Nodwell has worked in British Columbia and India. Based on her research in India, she produced two television documentaries in collaboration with Knowledge Network.

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This exhibition runs from March 2 to April 15, 2015 at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 2nd floor foyer exhibition gallery space.

To see photos of this exhibition, please click here.

“The birds are above, the fish are below, and we are betwixt and between.”

     – Charles van Sandwyk, Sketches from the Dream Isle of Birds.

UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to bring you the exhibition Betwixt and Between: The Art and Influences of Charles van Sandwyk.

Born in South Africa in 1966, Charles van Sandwyk is an internationally celebrated artist and illustrator. He gathered worldwide acclaim after illustrating the 2005 edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and is the author and illustrator of several books including The Parade to Paradise, How to See Fairies and Sketches from the Dream Island of Birds.

The exhibition explores some of the connections between van Sandwyk and the artists, writers and teachers who inspired his artistic career. This is not the first time van Sandwyk has paid homage to his influences. For his 2007 publication Twenty One Years, Twenty One Prints, van Sandwyk named each limited edition book after one of his major artistic influences.

From fairies and anthropomorphized animals to detailed drawings of the natural world, van Sandwyk’s whimsical illustrations appeal to both children and adults. Indeed, there are few other artists living today who so completely inspire the inner child in grown-ups. Van Sandwyk’s study of the real and imagined, the past and present, and the young and old provide a much-needed reminder that we are all “betwixt and between.”

The exhibition is hosted in UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections, located on level one of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The exhibition is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., from November 3 until December 17, 2011. For more information, please contact Ralph Stanton, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections, at ralph.stanton@ubc.ca.