FCCS ART

Animations!

This 2D animation introduces core principles and techniques required for the creation of two-dimensional digital animation projects.

The students had to create two main projects for the VISA 266 – 2D Animation course.

The first project was a short abstract animated film, edited on a music of their choice (public domain/creative commons music). The minimum duration was 45 secondes.They had to use only shapes, colours, lines and patterns with no recognizable objects. Students had to associate the image with the mood and tone of the chosen music. The films must feature at least two animation principles seen in class (acceleration/decelaration; perspective in movement; stretch and squash).

The second project was a narrative animated film, with an original soundtrack. The minimum duration was 1minute 30 secondes. It had to contain one character minimum, maximum two, and backgrounds. The creative process included storyboard, animatic, character animation and character design. The film could be in colour or B&W.

Mei Henderson

Saki Irie

Amanda McIvor

Nick Tai

Digital Documentary Production

Documentary films by students in FILM 371

This third year course in Digital Documentary Production introduces students to the theory and practice from the point of view of producer, writer, and director of documentary filmmaking. Students build a foundation of directing, shooting, and editing to create a short-form documentary as their final project for the course.

Normally, students in this course would work in small teams on the pre-production (pitching and proposal writing), production, and editing, however COVID-19 restrictions presented each student with the challenge of making a short documentary all on their own. Students were given the flexibility to work in any mode/model of non-fiction film and were encouraged to take creative risks, and were asked to adhere to the “commonsense assumptions” of documentary as laid out by scholar Bill Nichols; essentially, that the films depict real people (not actors), real events, and the real world. They were shown a wide array of example documentary work throughout the term, including traditional interview-based, observational, or expository films; experimental and hybrid documentaries; and personal, portrait, and essay films.

Sheri Ptolemy

“The First Time I Thought I Was Fat”

A 25-year-old college student reconciles with her disordered eating habits and seeks healing during a pandemic.
“Audience Choice” winner (in class)

Fiona Firby

“COVID-19 and the Music Industry in the Okanagan”

After a full year of adapting to COVID-19 restrictions, businesses and performers in the Okanagan Valley music industry grapple with how each might sink or swim.

Olivia Fang

“Spring Festival”
A year after the outbreak of the COVID 19, how did a Southern Chinese family (in Fujian) celebrate the Chinese New Year in 2021?

Jordan Pike

“Living Spaces”
A gritty and striking visual exploration of abandoned spaces reflects on ideas of home, memory, and ephemerality.

Ayush Pratap

“Blue Hills”
A regular phone call between a mother and son reveals how social connections and interactions have transformed since the pandemic.

Isabel Su

“Arriving with Faith”
A Taiwanese ex-pat’s account of her new frontier as she searches to belong, while having faith her destination will be revealed.

Maura Tamez

“Our Memory”
A navigation of Maura Tamez’s family cultural heritage and matrilineal ways that have traveled across borders from Nde ancestral territory (U.S. Southwest) to Sqilxw lands.

Seen | Unseen by Jacen Dennis

Seen|Unseen

by Jacen Dennis

Artist Statement: Seen|Unseen

Jacen Dennis’ digitally animated and projected artwork links the creative process of animating to creating a meaningful relationship between his gender transition to his sister’s death, of connecting a new body to the past, and a past body to the future. He positions himself as a transmasculine artist who started transitioning shortly before his sister died of an unexpected overdose in late 2018. His work explores the fact that he did not have the opportunity to recontextualize his relationship with his sister and how this impacts the parallel positive experiences in transitioning. Seen|Unseen is the final exhibition for his Masters of Fine Arts thesis at UBC Okanagan.

His artwork, it both nourishes and consumes expresses the joy of authenticity and gender euphoria in gender transition; what is seen on the surface of the body. At the same time, what is unseen, under the skin, touches on gender dysphoria.

The artwork seismic reversal represents gender transition and the sudden familial loss both existing together and existing separate. When viewing seismic reversal as a metaphor, the implied positions of the bodies at the graveside (standing over and buried under) are in opposition. Whether or not the earth is reversed to allow the one buried to stand once again, the implied bodies will never stand at the same time, one will always be horizontal in death.

The works the mark left on the carpet and her grass that grew thereafter contend directly with the sudden loss itself. Making the mark is the last action his sister took, but the animation imbues that horrific symbol with continued life. Her graveside in her grass that grew thereafter allows for exploration of the conflict between what is seen and what is unseen, under the surface.

The imagery for the artworks was derived through a process of active imagination, a process within analytical psychology, and constructed within frameworks of expressive art therapy. These methods have allowed unconscious thoughts to be surfaced through the artwork and facilitate healing through the creation thereof. Jacen’s animations are designed as slow and ambient works, ones that move through time and experience change gradually, reflecting his physical transition and process of grieving.

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Black Harbinger of Spring (2021) by Michaela Bridgemohan

Black Harbinger of Spring (2021)

1 person(s): Make a promise to yourself

2 person(s): Make a promise to each other

Black Harbinger of Spring invites the spectator to the potential of playful encounters with the objects. As visitors share the same space as the work, they will come across moments where they can decide to activate them by bodily stepping into the area(s) or communicate through word or gestures. Inspired by childhood activities like criss-cross apple sauce or cross your fingers, hope to die, Black Harbinger of Spring entrenches these innocent acts through a tension of feeling unease or existing conflicting assumptions. Hoping to shed the old and be rebirthed anew.

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Michaela Bridgemohan is an interdisciplinary Canadian artist of Jamaican and Australian descent. She grew up in Mokinstsis, also known as Calgary, but now resides in Syilx nation, Kelowna, BC. She’s currently an MFA student at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan and has received my BFA (with Distinction) from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2017. Bridgemohan’s artistic research examines Black mixed-race subjectivity and the visual ambiguity surrounding those kinds of bodies. Her work has been exhibited across Canada and Australia, in gallery exhibitions reflecting various intersections of contemporary Blackness and feminism.

“HOMEBODIES”- VISA 312 Advanced Painting Exhibition

We all have had to deal with such a strange year. Nobody could have guessed that we would have to work primarily from home form the end of the last semester in 2020 up until now. Today marks the near exact year anniversary of when the university first closed. There is no clear line that connects these works – all of the artists work within varying sensibilities – yet we have all worked and supported one another through the same experience. As I look at this group of paintings I am struck by how well this outstanding group of students has managed to take an adverse situation and sincerely make the best out of it. Most have been “Homebodies” but certainly none have been “couch potatoes”.

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Tiffany Douglas, 2020, Forest Floor, acrylic on a log cookie slab, 50” diameter.

Layla Schmidt, His and Hers, 2021, oil on wood, 27 x 20”

Layla Schmidt, Bananagrams, 2020, oil on canvas, 39 x 30”

Emmah Farrel, Early Morning on Clovernook Farm, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 20 x 24”

Jade Zitko, Enchanted, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 48”

Amelia Ford, #lolsad”, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 30”

Jade Zitko, Charmed, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 35”

Emmah Farrel, New Westminster and Surrey, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 36”

Shelley Sproule, Sorrento Sunset, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 26 x 48”

Reuben Scott, Community Service, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 48”

Shelley Sproule, Silver Star View, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36”

Abigail Wiens, Winged, 2020, oil on canvas, 20×24”

Elizabeth Huang, Wonderland, 2021, Oil on Wood, 12 x 16”

Bronwyn Maddock, Skull Dude #1001″ 2020, acrylic on canvas, 38 x 38”

Candice Hughes, Shipwrecked, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48”

Reuben Scott, Stranded, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 38 x 40”

Angela Wood, Is there such thing as a pink lemon?, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 20 x 24”

Brett Dopp, Untitled, 2020, acrylic on wood, 24 x 16”

Angela Wood, Just a couple of watermelons on the beach, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 24”

Amelia Ford, Spiral, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 24”

Bronwyn Maddock, Till Death Do Us Part, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 38 x 38”

Hana Hamaguchi, Multiply, 2020, Acrylic on wood, 16×14”

Susan Protsack, Pergola, 2020, acrylic on wood, 24 x 18”

Candice Hughes, Cartel Cruise, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 58 x 30”

Hana Hamaguchi, Adrift, 2020, acrylic on Canvas, 29 x 23”

Sara Larsen, Untitled, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 28 x 24”

Abigail Wiens, Venus, 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 20”

Susan Protsack, Capistrano, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”

Elizabeth Huang, Wonderland, 2020, Oil on Wood, 18 x 14”

Light Up Kelowna – UBCO Graduate student works exhibit

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As part of Light Up Kelowna’s art-dedicated urban screen projection in the Rotary Centre for the Arts window, UBCO graduate students are showcasing their work in this fabulous venue.

The exhibit was developed in the context of Graduate Studio in Visual Arts course that involves the critical analysis and production of independent artwork in various disciplines.

Scott Lebaron Moore’s sisymbrium altissimum, 2021, is a three channel video created on the unceded territories of the Syilx/Secwépemc nations in the North Okanagan. It is a pairing of re-discovered home video with found historical text to contextualize the complexity of being in space and place. Scott is an interdisciplinary artist and Master of Fine Arts candidate at UBCO.

Kaytlyn Barkved’s thesis show Neuroqueer Imaging features select digital drawings from her exploration of the unique emotional and sensory perceptions that Autists experience. Kaytlyn is is a queer disabled digital artist and Master of Arts candidate in the Digital Arts and Humanities theme of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program at UBCO.

Sam Neal’s Inland Waters, 2021, captures the exploration of time, place and process. Sam collaborates with water bodies in the Okanagan using an early photographic process, cyanotype; a photographic process that utilizes UV light to create cyan-blue prints. He is a multi-disciplinary photographer, artist and Master of Fine Arts candidate at UBCO.

Rylan Broadbent’s #FAKENEWS examines how a recognizable symbol can be transformed across virtual and physical spaces in an attempt to destabilize and subvert the body of meaning. As a multidisciplinary artist and Masters of Fine Arts candidate Rylan examines the nature of symbols and meaning through a physical language of materials and gestures.

Jacen Dennis’ triptych Continuous Breath explores the concepts of gender transition and familial loss through slow looping animation. The imagery is derived from the recent loss of his sister juxtaposed with his own body, and the joy in its transformation. Jacen is a transgender digital media artist and Masters of Fine Arts candidate at UBC Okanagan.

Huiyu Chen’s the Container, 2020, is exploration and examination of self within the transpersonal bodyshell. The series examines the relations of the self to the world to convey how the body can contain an infinity within it. Huiyu is an interdisciplinary artist and Masters of Fine Arts candidate at UBCO.

Natasha Harvey’s mixed media paintings, Okanagan Lake and Kalamalka Lake, are abstracted landscapes and bodies of water of the unceded Syilx Territory. Natasha’s Masters of Fine Arts thesis art work evokes an emotional connection to the beauty of the Okanagan Valley through poetic juxtaposition and layered metaphor.

Brittany Reitzel’s X, is a land based, site specific performance piece created on unceded Syilx territory near Kalamalka Lake. It is a documentation of reattuning the settler body to the land through the intermediary of clay. As a Master of Fine Arts candidate at UBCO, Brittany works in an expanded field of painting and sculpture.

Yujie Gao‘s media artwork Individuals is about the interdependency between individuals and the constantly chaotic universe. The work is a collaboration with electronic music duo Frankfurt Helmet. With sharing experience of living in Wuhan, China for many years between the collaborators, the work was created in 2020, shortly before COVID 19 lockdown was lifted in Wuhan. The work is dedicated to every individual who’s rights and freedoms were infringed during this period. Yujie is a Ph.D. student in the Digital Arts and Humanities theme of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program at UBCO.

Light Up Kelowna is made possible with a partnership between FCCS, the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan and the Rotary Centre for the Arts.

Skin Hunger

Skin Hunger features works from UBCO’s Bachelor of Fine Arts students, Masters students, and faculty members, displaying works focusing on the theme of our need for touch and the impact that social distancing is having on our “Skin Hunger”. This exhibition is a project for a curating course by Stacey Koosel, instructor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. It allows students to hone their skills into curating their very own exhibition and an opportunity to broadcast their talents.

All the artists are members of the UBCO artistic community, with students from UBCO’s Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts, as well as faculty members.

Jordan Doody, Briar Craig, Brittany Reizel, Avery Ullyot-Comrie, Hana Hamaguchi, Pip Dryden, Ashley Desjarlais, Bethany Hiebert, Arianna Tooke, and Jordan MacDonald.

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Relief, Push, Woe (RYB) by Connor Charlesworth

Relief, Push, Woe (RYB) is a site specific assemblage of various materials including paintings, a wall drawing, astroturf, recycled cutouts of paintings, and text. The phenomenological nature of this work relies on language as a point of entry. During the Covid-19 isolation periods I kept a log of words to describe how I felt during this time. This associative word play was used as a jumping off for constructing digital collages which serve as the reference for the three paintings. I wanted to keep them urgent, focused, and shallow in their sense of depth. Viewers are denied access beyond a flat plane of colour. The paintings sit on top of a hand drawn graphite and ink wall treatment. An image suggestive of broken glass is both a nod to the architecture of the window space, and a gesture of violence drawn from recent images of civil unrest. On the floor in front of the wall is a scattering of various things; painted cutouts of flowers, a smiley face, a note from a recent sketchbook, and woven flowers bought as souvenirs from Mexico. They sit on top of an oval piece of artificial turf. For me, these objects and motifs communicate a kind of empathy and longing for a more effervescent time.

Connor is a BFA graduate from UBC Okanagan campus who completed his MFA at the University of Victoria in 2018.

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Inland Waters – Sam Neal

Inland Waters is an exploration of time, place and process. I grew up in an urban city in Northern England. Wandering, getting lost, and seeing beauty in the banal was where I found my escape from the congested everyday life. Since coming to the Okanagan in 2019, I have found more of a connection to the ground and what is immediately before me rather than longing to be in the distance.

Using cyanotype chemicals, a photographic process discovered in 1842, I brush large pieces of paper that become sensitive to UV light once dry. Each of the works is created in collaboration with a body of water. I have been drawn to how water can appear to change color when light moves across it, how we can see water’s surface and its depths and how it reflects and refracts to create caustics. I carry the sensitized paper to the water and let the water impact or flow over it. The piece is then left to be exposed and dry at the site it is created in. The connection between the overlapping of water, light and my engagement with the process explores a performative relationship with nature that can be visualized as a direct mapping of a place.

The collaborative nature of the cyanotype process involving myself and the body of water embraces the unknown possibility of the work’s outcome; this collaborative process with nature cannot be fully controlled. I decide where and when to place the sensitized paper into the water and how long I leave it to expose. How many times the waves wash over the paper is my decision. All of these become part of a scientific and calculative response to the making of the work. Nature, however, decides the force of the impact with the paper and how it affects it. Some of the pieces reflect a sense of calmness, and some reflect disruption. Different weather affects the process and the very nature of the environment is the ultimate decision-maker in how the process carries itself into the space where it will live.

Inland Waters features detailed, digital photographs alongside the original cyanotypes. The photographs depict the reaction between chemicals, water and light on the paper’s surface during the initial contact with water and after it oxidizes in the following days. Fractured lines reflect the braiding rivers and bodies of water, appearing as if they are a topographical map within itself.

Each body of water acts as a potential threat to the land around it through processes such as shoreline erosion, flooding and other forms of environmental degradation. The cyanotypes in this space are left unfixed, and they retain sediment that is carried along with these bodies of water. They are impermanent objects that are susceptible to growth and decay.

Fixing a cyanotype would require me to thoroughly wash the material and let it dry to its final state. By leaving them unfixed, sediment, algae, and other deposits that reacted with the chemicals remain on the paper’s fibre. The sediment and any other organic material can grow, fall off or stay in place. Ultimately, each piece is a living object within an interior space, reflecting its original environment.

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SPECULATIVE EXHIBITION

In a typical year, the Advanced Practice in Photography course (VISA 362) culminates with an exhibition in the FINA Gallery, exploring concepts of site-specific art photography. The realm of contemporary art has seen many adaptations to conventional exhibitions since the COVID-19 pandemic, with many exhibitions switching to online formats. These formats offer the possibility of reaching a broader audience and renewing interest in art through virtual technologies. Students in the class this term considered what a speculative exhibition could offer an audience. Approaches ranged from using blogs and free platforms for online exhibits, electronic publications, personal websites and social media as means of publishing work. The theme of the photographs remained open, but the response needed to include a biographical element consisting of a brief artist talk, virtual tour or audio recording. We hope that you enjoy the results!