UBCO Creative Studies Virtual Gallery
The Advanced Practice in Sculpture exhibit Behind a Head explores the theme of the human head and psyche. Each student developed their concept through a learning process of creating a sculpture armature, oil-clay original sculpture, multi-part silicone mold, and casting the works in plaster.
Makeena Hartmann
Jordan MacDonald
Sara Richardson
Bruce Zhou
Crystal Przybille
Sea Dreams
An exhibition by alumni Joanne Gervais (BFA ’06, MFA ’10) and Shauna Oddleifson (BFA ’98)
This animated tale that tells a story of a little girl character wearing an octopus mask and her interactions with sea-creatures, underwater plant life and the impact of human negligence. With increasing temperatures brought about by climate change, and the accumulation of plastics, the health of the oceans is under threat. With this work we are referencing the affect we have on our environment, and how the way we interact with nature can have consequences. The naive drawing style allows for a buffer for the deeper meaning of our human condition and interactions with each other and natural environments. The elements that make up the animated narrative are hand drawn and sewn creatures along with photographs that are cut out, staged and brought to life through a combination of stop motion and digital media.
Sea Dreams was on display in the Project Gallery at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from January 28 to March 12, 2022.
Photo courtesy of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art.
Homescape
UBCO BFA Students
Under the instruction of David Doody, this group of Introduction to Painting (VISA 215) students present these paintings that explore the interior landscapes of one’s “own space”. Homescapes consists of portraits of physical and psychological residuals left in the wake life lived indoors, during a year of global pandemic and self-isolation. These works were created during the first semester back to in-person classes during the September semester of 2021.
Caity Dueck
Nick Tai
Chandler Burnett
Amy Marui
Peyton Lynch
Lauren Johnson
Hannah Palomera
David James Doody
Jenna Cooper
Serena Arsenault
Ella Cottier
‘Collective Relevance’ can be interpreted in two manners. Meaning can be attributed to seemingly unconnected works through mutual exhibition, but also that the collective remains an important strategy for sharing ideas and values.
This term’s component of the Advanced Practice in Photography course is dedicated to independent research, and some of the pictures here were produced in recent weeks. Others were created during autumn, 2021. Regardless of their date of creation, the work speaks to strategies for coping with the trauma associated with a global pandemic, and celebrates a return to face-to-face learning and physical photography.
Often considered a solitary medium, especially in its digital form, photography benefits from collective experience. The primary success of this exhibition lies in our ability to come together and consider these images in a new context.
One Chair
What is a chair? Visa 105 sculpture students were asked to reflect on the manner by which we define objects, but also on how objects also define us. Using as a point of departure Joseph Kosuth’s seminal 1964 installation ‘One and Three Chairs’, they had to create a chair that would reveal something about them. These self-portraits in the form of common furniture had to be personal and unique, but beyond anything, they had to be constructed well enough to support the weight of their instructor (exact weight not disclosed). This proposal led to the creation of 19 unique pieces, thoughtfully created with materials of their choosing, relevant to the ideas they wished to share.
Samuel Roy-Bois, VISA-105 Instructor
Students: Maddy Bohnet – Faith Bye – Nadia Fracy – Cady Gau – Hailey Gleboff – Elly Hajdu – Asahna Hughes – Jordin Kolmel – Laura McCarthy – Connor McCleary – Grace Nascimento-Laverdiere – Kate Nicholson – Damla Ozkalay – Freddie Thacker – Telina Wales – Wenjing Wang
By UBCO Master of Fine Arts student Michaela Bridgemohan
Rooted sentiments seek our individual memories as a point of origin. In Sisters of the Yam: black women and self-recovery (1993), bell hooks assert that “knowledge of who we are and where we come from…is an act of political resistance.” In this exhibition, four Okanagan artists explore identity and place through rooted self-determination and testimony. As we continue to endure the pandemic, social calamities and multiple emergencies, how can Black, Indigenous and artists of colour define presence in the Okanagan through personal creative power? Is there comfort within this sentimentality?
We notice these artistic gestures of the ‘self’ located within land and space. Some pieces explore this diasporic experience through film and sculpture. Maura Tamez examines how to be at home when such a place is rooted in a physical relationship with Land, while Moozhan Ahmadzadegan’s suspended textile piece Where Are You Really From? evokes a floating place of cultural in-betweenness. With Promises in Vacationland, Shimshon Obadia interrogates the ways our Okanagan home, as a tourist destination, is crafted and presented for outsiders, and the intersections of gender and sexuality in such a performance of place. Cassandra Adjetey’s intimate portraits speak to the idea of home as a site in the imagination—making home is an act of creation, revealed through the material production of familiar faces.
All exploring these intimate details as intersections of diasporic belonging, Stuart Hall’s essay on Cultural Identity and Diaspora, reminds us that “diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (235). So, within each artwork’s intimate detail, creative power begins at hybridity and testimony. Cultivation and Language. Land and Body. Spectatorship and the Gaze. Each work looks back at you and then away.
Rooted Sentiments is a self-reflexive exhibition; that is, is a contemplation. I invite you to consider the ways we make home for ourselves–the sentimentalities of understanding how the home fits within the land where we currently reside–and the ways we invite or exclude others from doing the same.
By Connor Charlesworth
Upon entering the gallery, visitors are greeted with a wall drawing. I came across this funny passage a while back in Roland Barthes memoir where he lays out some of his most favourite, and least favourite things. They appeared pretty random and lots of them made me laugh. In charcoal on the wall, I copied his list over. I liked how it set up a binary; likes and dislikes, good and bad, right and wrong. I then went through and annotated his writing with snippets of my own thoughts; some doodles in the margins, erasing things I didn’t know, calling him out. Earlier that day I was listening to Joni Mitchell in my studio. Her classic “Both Sides Now”, read different than usual. Something about the importance of nuance, bridging divides (and probably a bit of the charge from her and Neil Young pulling out of Spotify over Rogan’s delusions).
The work in the show is a combination of recent drawings and paintings. Ranging from abstractions, to suggestions, to more naturalistic depictions. I consciously chose to contrast works that are more urgent (like The Dome Drawings), alongside works that are much more slow (like Giant Looks Down to Consider the Lives of Others). The content of the works differ. Some are concerned with sustainability and the climate crisis, others are concerned with art history and aesthetic decision making. It is my hope that viewers are able to make some personal meaningful connections, but also just enjoy the various surface qualities in the works.
Connor Charlesworth is a contemporary visual artist currently based in Kelowna on unceeded Sylix territory. He received his MFA from the University of Victoria (2018) with a specialization in painting, and his BFA from the University of British Columbia in Kelowna (2015) with a minor in Art History and Visual Culture. His subject matter varies, however his current work is primarily concerned with the space between painted images and objects; often looking back at the history of modernist painting. Connor has taught drawing and painting at the University of Victoria, Thompson Rivers University, and the University of British Columbia in Kelowna.
Simone King
“Creatures,” 1:31
Digital Rigged Puppet Animation
An animation depicting two characters made of needle-felted wool interacting with digitally painted environments.
Kathryn Ng
Formation of the Galaxy
Rotoscoped Animation
Frame by frame animation blending ballet (space) and flamenco (sun) choreography.
Amelia Ford
Solo
Rotoscoped Animation
A frame-by-frame animation portraying a dancing individual from three different angles meant to embody oil painting through a digital medium.
Saki Sofie
Dreaming
This frame-by-frame stop motion animation reproduces the boy’s dream. The background is mainly made of clothes and everyday items, and the details are carefully expressed.
Emmah Farrell
Kelowna’s Development
A multimedia video of photographs overlaid with line drawing animations, depicting a timeline narrative of the development of Kelowna from the 1900s to 2020s.
Hei Yu Wong
Title: the plant
frame by frame animation.
descriptions: This animation portrays the growth of plants.
Netra Davar
愛してる = I love you
Animation depicting what trauma feels like based on the conversations with my mother on our family history.
Heraa Khan
Selaab (Flood)
Selaab which translates as flood in the English language is a film about the current climate crisis. Pakistan, the country where I lived, encountered destruction and drowning of cities every year due to severe floods. Having recently moved to Canada I am witnessing the same environmental calamities in this part of the world as well.
I have taken elements from an existing painting of mine which is painted in water-based medium on paper. I re-composed and animated the elements from the painting within three screens for this film. I hope through this film I am able to develop a sense of urgency and responsibility to address the climate crises within the viewers.
Yvette He
The Last Plant On Earth
2D Animation
1 min 15 sec
Humanity has finally achieved planetary immigration because the Earth is no longer fit for human habitation, leaving only the last plant that can survive the harsh climate of the planet.
Alan Zhang
Wonton
Tasting a food is not only a reflection of the nutrition and taste of the food but also a way to open up a warm memory with your family deep inside yourself.
Mine is a hot bowl of Wonton. What about yours?
Skylar Tian
Do Not Want To Get Up
stop motion animation
Is it the alarm clock that wakes us up every day No, it’s the responsibility that is on our shoulders!
Cakeferdays Mei Henderson
Comparing Problems
Digital Drawing – A small book containing easy to read words talking about comparing problems with others.
Bruce Zhou
The significance of bodybuilding
A film about how fitness has changed me and it may change you.
Neima Mehrrostami
Tubes
3D Sound Visualization
SOFIE LOVELADY
PHONE CALL
Stop motion collage animation depicting a phone call conversation. Expressing body image and self-conscious thoughts.
Jayko Buwell Duan
Journey
Animation depicting both the beauty and loneliness often felt while finding one’s way through difficult times in life.
Advanced media students at the RCA checking out their work, Light Up Kelowna.
Are you interested in interactive film? Sound installations? Brand design? Or maybe you’d like to explore augmented reality. Our fourth-year Bachelor of Media Studies students are putting our prototypes into motion in a halfway celebration of our capstone projects. Come into our chrysalis and help us hatch something wonderful! Protomotion is presented by students Jayko Duan, Fiona Firby, Carla Mather, Amanda McIvor, Neima Mehrrostami, Jordan Pike, Lark Spartin, Owen Wong, & Alan Zhang, with Faculty guidance from Dr. Megan Smith & Dr. Aleksandra Dulic.
The Bachelor of Media Studies (BMS), on UBC’s Okanagan campus, is a four-year, direct-entry computational arts program that prepares students for careers in digital media creation.
The foundation of the program is the opportunity for students to experiment with ideas and the newest technologies in a team-based environment, with a focus on innovation in digital media design. The program is designed for students looking towards a future in creative and cultural industries, and to continue their education in design, art, and academics as postgraduates.
The Capstone Projects are the culmination of the degree, where students work independently or in teams over two semesters to develop a major project for their degree.
Follow
