UBCO Creative Studies Virtual Gallery
This work by Julia Pearson is being showcased in the Kelowna Art Gallery’s glass gallery window space. It brings together photography, serigraphy, and installation to create multiple explorations of self-portraiture.
Julia is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at the University of British Columbia.
This work will be on display at 1315 Water Street, Kelowna, BC until July 2023.
Nasim Pirhadi is a multi-medium artist and current MFA candidate at UBC Okanagan.
As part of this two person exhibit, Nasim explores the current political discourse of what it means to be an Iranian woman both in a diasporic sense and as through lived experience. This important work includes a video addressing misogynist fears of traditional spaces and a painted textile representing protestors on the streets in Iran who are fighting for the lives of women and girls.
It is on view at the Kelowna Art Gallery from January 21 to April 16, 2023
HEARTS TOGETHER
Cool Arts Society Group Exhibition
Together with art educators during the weekly programs held in the Cool Arts Studio in the RCA, artists worked on the concept HEART, digging into the question – what does HEART mean? Artists discussed their feelings, thoughts, and ideas; then began their step-by-step big picture planning. These pieces are all representations of these collaborative ideas.
Each piece was created with a group of 6 to 8 artists working together. This process encouraged and affected constructive communication and sharing ideas; including skill-building, listening, problem-solving, and planning.
The concepts that were shared covered a broad variety. Heart symbolism often conjures up a wide range of emotions, from joy to pain, love and devotion to moral courage and physical strength. The shape is securely embedded in western culture. Represented by an anatomically inaccurate shape, the heart is often used to represent the center of emotion, including affection and love.
Cool Arts looks forward to our annual partnership with the FINA Gallery at UBCO where artists get the opportunity to professionally exhibit their art. Creating these important opportunities in the arts for people with disabilities, neuro-diversabilities, and other exceptionalities aids in broadening connections and creating relationships with other artists on campus and beyond.
Furthermore, It is important to have this recognized and well-funded FINA space to share the work done by people in our community who are seriously passionate about art and who want more public opportunities. What you will see are 24 artists working together on art of all kinds that includes painting and collage.
Please share with your friends! And if you would like to learn more about how you can get involved withCool Arts, please visit our website at https://coolarts.ca/
More on the Cool Arts Studio
The Cool Arts studio is a safe, inclusive art studio that offers programs and artistic mentorship with a variety of professional artists who share their skills and lead classes. Cool Arts is a registered not for profit charitable organization managed by a volunteer Board of Directors and others who share their time in many ways; as classroom assistants, event supports, exhibition installations, and so much more. Cool Arts relies heavily on sponsorships and donors; we welcome your support. For more information, please visit our website at https://coolarts.ca/
Please also take a look at the artists at work for this exhibition:
https://fccs.ok.ubc.ca/2023/02/01/hearts-together-cool-arts-society-group-exhibition/
The Distance of the Sun is a series of five vertical painted diptychs. The work was conceived after a summer art residency inLos Angeles in which I was struck by the height and stability of these thin, spindly trees. Upon returning home to Kelowna, my paint pots in my studio had dried from the summer heat leaving various circular paint skins. I harvested these circular colourful disks and applied them to these panels in the place of the sun. They are sandwiched to the panels with rare earth magnets, presenting the work with a kind of charge.
Conceptually, this work deals with our relationship to our current climate moment. I have consciously distorted the sense of space by placing the sun and various “cloud-like” shapes in front of these tree-like forms. Typically, we know the sun and clouds as backdrops to the landscape. My line of inquiry with this work poses the questions “what would the world look like with that figure-ground relationship distorted, and what value is there in imagining this? I am interested in the potential of presenting these alternative realities as ways of familiarizing ourselves with possible futures. In my work, I try to balance these concepts with allowing the painting to dictate its own outcome and maintain its own authority.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Connor Charlesworth is visual arts instructor, in UBC Okanagan’s Creative Studies Department.
A central aspect of Charlesworth’s work considers the nature of painting and representation. He is interested in taking things that are familiar, and challenging that familiarity through the process of painting. This epistemological approach provides ample space for him to pose questions about the nature of perception; how we understand images, objects, and things. Most recently, Charlesworth has been researching this in relation to the landscape. His appreciation for nature stems from a youth spent birdwatching with his brother, and plein-air painting with his father.
Cultivations is an exhibition of paintings created by students in VISA 312S: Advanced Practice in Painting. Students in this class determined their own subject matter and explored different approaches to scale, space, value and materiality as a method of refining their body of work throughout the semester.
Cultivations includes work by Katya Meehalchan, Sara Richardson, Tin Laam Au (Eunis), Taylor Carpenter, Melissa Clark, Makeena Hartmann, Josie Hillman, Chloe Jenkins, Carly Johnson, Amy Marui, Karina Nardi, Julia Pearson, Christine Wakal and Abigail Wiens.
Behind My Mask, I Am Secure is an exhibition by UBCO MFA Alumni Rylan Broadbent
This exhibition was shown at the
Rylan Broadbent is a sculptor, designer, and fabricator, who resides and works out of the North Okanagan. Employing an array of techniques, ranging from traditional to digital, he is primarily interested in examining the interconnected relationships between object, form, material, and meaning.
Objects, like images and language, can hold information; they are utilitarian in their function and also symbols that reference bodies of meaning. And just as physical forms can be modified, so too can the semiotic attachments. Context can be skewed, shifting definitions, and complicating the interpretation. The objects he selects often speak towards notions of masculine identity, relationship to violence, and social fragmentation.
for more information: https://www.alternatorcentre.com/events/behind-my-mask-i-am-secure-rylan-broadbent
Connor MacKinnon graduated in the Masters of Fine Arts Visual Art programme at the University of Victoria in 2022. He is now a Workshop and Studio Technician for the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBCO.
A Gold Pan stoneware 2023
Generating and using algorithms as tools for creation is a curious process. In many ways, they can be deterministic, repetitive, and reduce the creative act by limiting it to solutions allowable within their bounds. In other ways, they can be generative, speak to unimaginable potential, and ignite a deep sense of questioning. The algorithms at work here are simple. They do not make use of A.I. or neural networks. They don’t feed off big data and aren’t hooked up to any endless networks. In reality, they are more like math equations that deal in digital 3D geometry. Each series follows a unique set of steps which translates some piece of data into 3D models ready for production whether that be 3D printing, CNC milling, or other forms of digital fabrication. While the function of these algorithms ranges from imaginative historical reconstructions to explorations of non-human centered design, and object-based evolution, they all produce and demonstrate a range of variability within a defined system. While some of the strangeness and variability are genuinely produced through the action of the algorithm, it is important to understand that it is a very controlled environment that inherently carries the bias of the person who developed it.
Historical Fictions (Lisbon) 3D Printed PLA & composite gold leaf 2021
While their algorithmic nature directly links these works, they are also a part of a larger and longer-term exploration of material culture through the properties, qualities, and attributes that we associate with objects. In particular, these algorithms examine those object characteristics as variables or parameters. How far can traits be pushed or changed? When does it become a new object or even a new type of object? Like the algorithms themselves, when does a value break the system completely?
Con•com•i•tance
The fact of existing or occurring together with something else.
by Jordan MacDonald, & Nayaab Master
Con•com•i•tance: the fact of existing or occurring together with something else, features elevenartists from VISA 482: Advanced Art Practices who work with a variety of, mediums, including drawing, painting; printmaking, sculpture, photography, and new media, to explore themes related to the relationship of interactions that take place alongside one another. Sharing common interests through the exploration of interconnections.
Entering the gallery space, Julia Pearson utilizes a combination of new technologies and printmaking to form an installation that investigates self-identity with overlapping realms of reality. Delainey Vogan uses cyanotypes as a means to reconceptualize the male gaze through a feminine perspective. While Jordan MacDonald’s installation addresses the relationship between fabric and skin as a representation of mental health issues, and the use of natural materials, revealing the many facets of the self. Claire Worrall’s textile art, likewise, confronts her personal mental health struggles by merging objects and garments to build a tale that ties the audience to the piece. Simone King’s textile work explores themes of catharsis and healing while utilizing animal forms t<? portray emotions that are difficult to put into words. Josie Hillman’s interactive performances challenge one’s physical and psychological understandings of social norms by disrupting the underlying societal standards.
The artworks offered by Nayaab Master engages with the process of creation, focusing on themes of intimacy and moments hidden in privacy through the use of mixed media. Moving into the conventional realm of art, Hei Yu Wong’s paintings engage with the concepts surrounding surrealistic illusions via the exploration of elements found within nature. Whereas Chloe Jenkin’s paintings explore themes of place, atmosphere, and individual experience through still images of spaces gathered from film and television. Moving into the natural world, Makeena Hartmann’s graphite drawings on handmade paper elevate native wildflowers to foster the development of a nurturing relationship with nature in the modern world. Lastly, Bella Jiang’s drawings capture and depict the faded-insignificant moments of memories that carry subtle and sensitive emotions.
Con•com•i•tance aims to open conversations around intimacy, discomfort, memory, and self within the natural world; providing a space for reflection on how these themes affect us psychologically and physically. Exploring themes around relationships, body, land, memory and place, the exhibition invites us to reflect on what defines each one of us and our relationships to the ever-changing world around us.
BECOMING KNOWN is a collection of works created by nine BFA and BMS students enrolled in VISA 482: Advanced Art Practices. Because these students are exploring a number of ideas ranging from themes of the natural world to neurodivergence, this show does not have a specific theme or prompt. However, these students have discovered a common interest in the theme of human experience and collective spirit, which you will find in each of these works.
As the exhibition title suggests, these students are emerging artists just beginning to cultivate their artistic practices. This show serves as a small sample of what these students have in store for their year-end exhibition in April. These artists hope that this show will provide visitors with an enthusiasm for what is to come.
Students featured in BECOMING KNOWN: Cakeferdays, Katya Meehalchan, Mariah Miguel-Juan, Ivy Munro, Emily-Jayne May Myatt, Sara Richardson, Angela Wood, Haonan Zhang and Sikun Zhao.
Soundtracks is a multi-sensory exhibition of artworks by 2nd year Sculpture students made in response to ‘music’, defined in the broadest sense, as a starting point. This eclectic collection of artworks range from sculpture/sound hybrids, participatory ‘noise makers’, an experimental sound chamber, birdsongs, to purely visual works made to evoke memory and requiring the viewer to ‘listen’ to imagined music — all examples of how music resonates as a central theme in contemporary art practice.
Students:
Maddy Bohnet
Chandler Burnett
Ella Cottier
Hailey Gleboff
Mei Henderson
Evan Hildreth
Stephen Ikesaka
Ruth Nfutxila
CJ Ozee
Alicia Phypers
Shelley Sproule
Jian Suniga
Frederik Thacker
Odelle Walthers
Wenjing Wang
Wayne Xie
Instructor:
Renay Egami
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