Author Archives: soddleif

2020 Mural: Upstream

The summer of 2020 was the first year that visual arts lecturer David Doody taught a fourth-year painting class, leading the students through the many steps necessary to plan, pitch and deliver a public mural.

Eighteen students worked to create a full-scale permanent public mural in the heart of Kelowna’s Cultural District. Over the course of the five-week class in July and August of 2020, the students met and worked collaboratively to paint a colourful two-storey mural adjacent to the CTQ Consultants building on St. Paul Street.

This mural, entitled Upstream, depicts a larger-than-life multicolored salmon swimming upstream in front of a canary yellow Archimedes screw pump. The composition of this mural was designed by artist and UBCO Lecturer David Doody, to highlight and illustrate CTQ’s Harrison Hot Springs screw-pump project. If you stand back, you can see the Archimedes screw pump (dating back to 250 BC) in the background behind the spectacular salmon. This project depicts an actual project that CTQ completed for the Village of Harrison Hot Springs. The iconic canary yellow screw pump was designed by CTQ to protect the Village from annual flooding. The design of this screw pump was engineered to specifically reduce the salmon mortality rate down to zero and to support this valuable and sensitive fish habitat.

Support for this project was made possible with the generous donations from Sunbelt Rentals, CTQ Consultants Ltd., Opus Framing and Art Supplies and Fresh West Official.

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Scary Instructor & Terrifying Students!

For 14 years the Caravan Farm Theatre, located outside of Armstrong, has created a Halloween-themed production, The Walk of Terror, that engages community in an event that Artistic Director Estelle Shook says “blurs the line between artist and audience”.

This highly interactive production incorporates the artistry of professional and non-professional performers who are part of the Caravan community. This year artists came from across Canada as well as from within the Okanagan region to perform in the show, including UBCO students from the Creative and Critical Studies Department directed by performance instructor Sonia Norris. Norris began performing with the Caravan Farm Theatre twenty years ago and teaching at UBCO this fall provided the opportunity to share this experience with her students.

Norris and seven students, Dora Chen, Sage Cannon, Peter Navratil, Hawk Mendoza, Joel Evans, Avril Wood, and Breanne Ruskowsky, performed in four different vignettes along the Walk of Terror and also spent the day working as part of the production team setting up the farm for the performance.

This “terrifying” experience was an amazing opportunity for the students to perform in a professional production, but also to work collaboratively with a theatre company that is deeply committed to, and supported by, community engagement. Hopefully this experience shall lead to future creative collaborations between the Caravan Farm Theatre and UBCO students!

Photo credit: Zev Tiefenbach

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Interdisciplinary Performance

Animals, was the year end performance created/directed by Neil Cadger in collaboration with students in THTR 280/480 Devised Public Performance. Approximately 250 people attended the 8 performances which were situated throughout the building at Bumpershoot theatre.