Environmental Design Professor Stuart Reid's BELIEFS exhibition & more...

Hacking Time
Saturday, April 2, 2016 - 11:00am to Saturday, April 30, 2016 - 11:00am

April 2 to 30 -- Gallery Gevik will be exhibiting a new body of work by Stuart Reid during the month of April. This series, entitled ‘Beliefs’ are ‘glass canvases,’ and can be viewed as front-lit paintings or as backlit-illuminated images. Last summer, Reid’s world-class art installation ‘zones of immersion’, debuted at Union Station. This installation consists of a 150-metre screen of glass panels with multi-layered mural images, poetic writings and rich primary colors with black and white drawings.

March 28 - May 15 -- Durham Art Gallery will be exhibiting a trio of work called "Hacking Time" Adam Magyar, Stuart Reid, David Rokeby

April 23 to October 2017 -- a group exhibition of International Contemporary glass at Le Centre du Vitrail in Chartres, France Lumieres du Monde  which features 3 of Stuart Reid's glass works

 

Venue & Address: 
Gallery Gevik 12 Hazelton Avenue Durham Art Gallery 251 George St. E. Durhan
Website: 
http://www.gevik.com www.durhamart.on.ca www.centre-vitrail.org
Email: 
info@gevik.com contact@centre-vitrail.org
Beliefs

WAYHOME Competition Deadline

poster for Wayhome competition with deadline
Friday, March 11, 2016 - 10:00pm

WAYHOME Competition Deadline!

Open to all students and first and second year alumni.  We're looking for teams of students to design and build an interactive installation/spectacle onsite at the WayHome Music & Arts festival.

1st place $5,000 + $18,000 fabrication budget + WayHome passes

2nd place $1,000 + WayHome passes

Teams of 3-6 people may apply

Send submissions to:  ocadu.contest@wayhome.com 

 

Venue & Address: 
Send submissions to: ocadu.contest@wayhome.com
Website: 
http://www.wayhome.com/ocadu
Email: 
rnicholls@faculty.ocadu.ca
poster for Wayhome competition with deadline

Astral Plane

Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - 4:00am to Saturday, October 6, 2012 - 4:00am

A collaborative installation project by Nicholas Robins and Christopher Benjamin Speck that explores the artists’ internal geography and shared personal symbology. Constructions, wall paintings and curated displays will transform the gallery into a personal, spiritual, interior landscape.

Opening Party:
September 13 (6-9pm)

Venue & Address: 
Student Gallery
Opening Thursday September 13th 7PM-9PM 52 McCaul St. OCAD U Student Gallery Sep 5 - Oct 6

Stuart Reid’s Union Station installation inspires awe

Glass panels from Zones of Immersion installation
Artist Stuart Reid at work
Glass panel from Zones of Immersion installation
Friday, April 10, 2015 - 4:00am

Seven feet tall and 500 feet long, Environmental Design professor Stuart Reid’s immense glass mural at Union Station is capturing the media spotlight. Titled Zones of Immersion, the work consists of 166 glass panels of large drawings and writing that convey the experiences of transit riders. In 2008, Reid won an international competition and was commissioned to create a permanent art installation for the new second subway platform at Union Station. The glass panels were hand painted, sandblasted and etched at a glass factory in Paderborn, Germany, and are now being installed.  

Large drawings and sketches that informed the final project are currently on display at Gallery Gevik, 12 Hazelton Avenue, until April 30. Reid will be in attendance at the opening reception on Saturday, April 11, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The monumental work is not yet completely installed and lit; nonetheless, it has been grabbing the attention of Toronto’s arts and urban affairs writers. You can read more in the National Post, Toronto Star and UrbanToronto.ca.

 

 

Engaging Ethnography: creative fieldwork in the everyday

Image of a roll of paper
Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - 4:00am to Saturday, April 11, 2015 - 4:00am

An OCAD U Interdisciplinary Master's in Art, Media and Design Thesis Exhibition By: Miranda Whist

Opening Reception Thursday April 9th from 6 to 10 p.m.

Regular Gallery Hours: 2 to 8 p.m.

Engaging Ethnography attempts to address the everyday with a more fluid understanding of representation. By allowing the tacit and the intuitive to be components of anthropological research, my intent as artist-ethnographer is to communicate the affective and aesthetic nature of the everyday through more corporeal and visually explorative means.
This attempt to visualize the presence of the everyday has come in the form of audiovisual installations. Through projecting small-scale videos onto objects and spaces, Engaging Ethnography offers new (yet familiar) views of the everyday. I want to see how ethnographic consideration and artist engagement can craft a depiction of the everyday that speaks to its embodied, aesthetic and expressive qualities. Ultimately, these works are an attempt to convey a more experiential and perceptive form of communication; the goal being to highlight those understood or implied, yet not stated understandings that contribute to our awareness of the everyday.

Venue & Address: 
Artscape Youngplace, 110-180 Shaw St. Toronto, Ontario. Room 109
Email: 
mirandawhist@gmail.com, mw13gm@student.ocadu.ca

WayHome Music and Arts Festival and OCAD U Competition

Black poster with white text and graphics
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - 9:00pm

WayHome Music and Arts Festival and OCAD U have joined forces to create a Faculty of Art Competition.
1st place winners will receive a prize of $5,000 and a budget of $18,000 to design and build an interactive installation on site at the festival.

The Competition:
WayHome Music & Arts Festival, in partnership with OCADU, is pleased to announce a competition for the design and construction of an interactive/experiential, site-specific installation. We are looking for enthusiastic teams of students who will think outside the box to design (and eventually build) an installation, experience or spectacle, to be displayed at WayHome.

Competition Schedule and Submission Materials
Phase one: 1 page written concept and sketches (min. 3, max. 5) are due at 5:00pm, April 1, 2015. Late submissions will not be accepted. Confirmation of receipt by the OCAD project manager is required.

Please send digital proposals (In PDF form send digital sketches, or any other form of submission) to ocadu.contest@wayhome.com, along with the signed application form.

Each team must submit 2 contact email addresses and phone numbers.

5 finalist teams will be selected by April, 15, 2015.

Phase two: Budgets and 3D model from the 5 finalists will be due on May 1, 2015.

1st and 2nd place proposals will be selected on May 15, 2015. .

Website: 
http://wayhome.com/ocadu
Email: 
rnicholls@faculty.ocadu.ca
Phone: 
416-977-6000 x 330

Experiencing Perspectives: Art and Business Find Common Ground

Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - 5:30pm

(Mississauga—November 11, 2014) Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Canada today announced the 2014-2015 installation of its sixth annual Experiencing Perspectives art exhibition, featuring artwork from students, faculty and alumni of OCAD University. The installation is the company’s largest to date and represents a partnership between art, education and business that remains the only one of its kind with the largest and most comprehensive art, design and media institution in Canada. The exhibition was celebrated at the company’s community art reception in its national headquarters in Mississauga on Monday evening. Attendees included: Stefan Karrenbauer, President and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Canada; Natalie Waldburger, Chair of Contemporary Painting and Print Media, Faculty of Art, OCAD U; and Anda Kubis, Associate Dean, Outreach, OCAD U.

“Our unique partnership with OCAD U has enriched our work environment and enabled us to support emerging and established artists working and studying in our community for six years,” said Karrenbauer. “This is our largest exhibition to date, featuring nearly 100 pieces of contemporary art. As the program has grown, so has our ability to develop meaningful connections between business and the arts.”

In addition to the art exhibitions, the program offers employees interesting opportunities to engage in art tours, visual thinking discussions and community events. Art has also been used as a creative tool in the workplace, empowering employees to give visual meaning to key business themes and topics.

Another signature element of the company’s partnership with OCAD U is a $2,000 annual award given to a graduating student and a $1,000 annual scholarship awarded to a current student. The purpose of the awards is to recognize talented emerging artists working and studying in the greater Toronto area.

“These scholarships build confidence in students while providing much-needed financial support,” said Waldburger. “In addition, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services is giving graduating students opportunities to exhibit, see their work in publications and experience the momentum of a professional event as they transition into their own professional practices.”

Mercedes-Benz Financial Services’ Experiencing Perspectives program includes several creative partnerships that bring rotating exhibitions of artwork into Mercedes-Benz Financial Services facilities in the U.S. and Canada. The program began in 2001, when the company partnered with the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. In 2008, the program expanded to the company’s Fort Worth, Texas, Business Center through partnerships with the art schools of SMU and TCU. In 2009, it expanded to Mercedes-Benz Financial Services’ Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, through a partnership with OCAD U.

“Through our partnership with OCAD U, art has become a foundation that bridges community and workplace culture together,” added Karrenbauer. “Some may wonder if it adds value in a business environment. I would say it has absolutely played a valuable role in expanding perspectives, inspiring creative thought and cultivating innovative ideas.”

 

 

PATHFINDING INSTALLATION EXPLORES MEMORY LOSS

Judith Doyle at the opening of Pathfinding. Photo: Asma Khanani Caporaletti.
The Pathfinding installation

A new media art installation portraying the perceptual experience of memory loss by two artists with amnesia is now on view at Baycrest Health Sciences Centre. Called Pathfinding, the project was developed at OCAD U’s Social Media and Collaboration Lab (SMAClab) by Judith Doyle, chair of OCAD U’s Integrated Media program, and her assistant Emad Dabiri, an OCAD U student and VJ, who worked together with Robin Len and Kang Il-Kim.

Len and Il-Kim both have anterograde amnesia, which inhibits the ability to create new memories, even though their long-term memories remain intact. Doyle and Dabiri spent a year working with Len and Il-Kim to develop the installation, which features video animations created from composited layers of images from nature together with those of neural pathways. The images Il-Kim took of flowers, snow, trees and buddhas were layered together with images of the brain, such as that of dendrites, into montage video loops, which are displayed on 10 crowd-sourced old TV sets. 

“The old fashioned TVs are appealing to people, and each one has its own character and personality, whether its wood-grain or white and futuristic,” says Doyle. “The installation creates a living room-like environment, and the beautiful soundtrack created by high school student Paul Geldart brings it all together.”

The project came about after Len, a former colleague of Doyle’s was in a bike accident. Prior to the accident he was a highly regarded animator and compositing designer who worked on commercials and opening sequences for films, but the accident, which put him in a month-long coma, was severely disabling. Len, like Il-Kim, whose brain injury is a result of the multiple surgeries he had for a brain tumour, remembers things from the past, but because he has difficulty making new memories, he forgets what he’s doing in mid-task and will sometimes even black out. As Doyle describes, it becomes difficult for people like Len and Il-Kim to move through space, because they forget where they are.

Doyle began working as an artist in residence at Baycrest in 2011, where she became involved in the Memory Link Program, which trains individuals like Len and Il-Kim to enlist their procedural memory to form alternate neural pathways in order to accomplish things. The program also looks to find new ways to use mobile technologies to help with day-to-day tasks. Doyle initially began thePathfinding project in a small studio at Baycrest, and later moved it to the SMAClab once her residency was over. In the course of her research and project work, she was awarded OCAD U’s Distinguished Research and Creative Activity Award (2012), and OCAD U also received Baycrest’s Proud Partners Award (2012).

The Pathfinding project itself received support from the Ontario Arts Council, Brain Injury Services of Hamilton and of course OCAD U’s Integrated Media Program.

What Doyle and her assistant Dabiri discovered by working with Len and Il-Kim is that they had knowledge in their hands. Len and Il-Kim could still use video software, and the more they did, the more they began to improve in other areas of their lives.

“The project re-invigorated and re-animated my interests and creative passions,” said Len. "I feel like I'm getting my hands wet again. I can smell the turpentine in the canvas of the video."

“It helped me to regain myself from my brain injury; it made me happier,” added Kang. He described the pleasure he felt taking photos of nature in a ravine near his home for the project. "The ravine path itself represents life. We all have a path that we're going through."

“The process was very productive, for both of them, and there were many unexpected outcomes of the project,” says Doyle, who plans to write a paper about their collaborative experience.

The installation is on view until March 1 at Baycrest Health Sciences Centre. It will also be part of the Inclusive Design Institute’s Disrupting Undoing: Constructs of Disability exhibition at OCAD U’s Open Gallery in April.

ALUMNA SHARY BOYLE REPRESENTS CANADA AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2013

The Cave Painter, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Jessica Bradley Gallery. Photo by Rafael Goldchain

Music for Silence, a multimedia installation by Shary Boyle (AOCA, Experimental Arts, 1994), one of Canada’s most acclaimed artists, is Canada’s official entry in the Venice Biennale 2013. The National Gallery of Canada curated the installation and helped raised some of the funds needed to bring it to Venice.

Boyle, who spent long hours working on the installation seven days a week to prepare for the fair, is enjoying an enthusiastic reception to her work. The Canada Pavilion is reporting long queues. The art fair, which features work from over 90 countries and is considered the world’s largest and most influential, runs from June 1 to November 24, 2013.

Boyle’s installation is intended to get people to slow down and experience silence, and as a result, she worked to create an intimate, darkened space for the exhibition. It includes colourful projections ceramic figures, record players, 16-mm film, and images in sign language. At the centre is a three-metre sea deity in an all-white cave.

Boyle is well-known for her bold, fantastical explorations of imaginary narratives featuring a cast of marginal characters. Her work is multidisciplinary, combining craft, a high degree of detail, porcelain figurines, animist mythologies and arcane techniques to create a symbolic language uniquely her own.
 

Learn more:

Canadian Art profile

CBC profile

Department: 

OCAD & CPAR launch Foodprints exhibit at Canada Blooms

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - 4:00am

(Toronto — March 17, 2010) From a unique partnership comes a uniquely placed installation, at this year’s Canada Blooms flower and garden festival. The Ontario College of Art & Design’s faculty and student design team ‘Frogpond’ and the non-profit organization Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR) have teamed up to launch Foodprints: Edible Environments, Sustainable Gardens, a feature garden installation at Canada’s largest flower and garden festival, opening in Toronto this week.

The partnership originates from early discussions between the Sustainability Office at OCAD, which has a mandate to cultivate sustainability awareness through on-campus and outreach projects, and CPAR, which is committed to engaging the public on issues related to its international development work in Africa.

Frogpond is an interdisciplinary, hands-on extra-curricular forum that grew out of OCAD’s Think Tank program, bringing together students, alumni and faculty on real-life projects responding to the theme, “design for humanity.” Frogpond is lead by Keith Rushton, Chair of OCAD’s Graphic Design program, and Bruce Hinds Chair of OCAD’s Environmental Design program, and comprises of undergraduate students, recent graduates and OCAD Think Tank faculty members Zahra Ebrahim, Carl Hastrich and Andrew Nisker. The project provides students with a practical opportunity to consider sustainability issues in a context where scarce resources are often about survivability and making creative use of materials to enhance community livelihoods.

Foodprints draws inspiration from African farmers’ own design of edible gardens to generate sources of income, nutritious food for their families, and soil and water conservation measures that help small farmers remain resilient in the face of such challenges as climate change and HIV and AIDS. As a design challenge, Frogpond students and faculty embraced the stories, images and approaches employed by the farming communities that CPAR works with in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda to promote food security.

“We are thrilled to be undertaking this project with CPAR,” said Sheila Waite-Chuah, Coordinator of OCAD’s Sustainability Office. “Taking a concept through to implementation is a critical part of the learning process. Our students have contributed huge amounts of time and creativity to this project. They’re excited to be helping create awareness about the challenges and successes of farmers in Africa.”

The mobile exhibit challenges the public to examine the connections between the global and the local. With the growing interest in community gardens and locally sourced, organic food here in Canada, one of the important ‘lessons from the field’ promoted by the exhibit is that growing healthy food grows healthy communities, no matter where one lives.

Creatively employing savaged and renewable materials found at renovation sites throughout the city, and with an eye to a reusable and natural aesthetic for the exhibit, Frogpond students have generated a living, colourful and thought-provoking piece sure to attract interest at this year’s Canada Blooms festival. Foodprints will, post-Canada Blooms ‘go mobile’ — with plans to land at farmers markets, events and on the invitation of members of the public interested in issues of sustainability and local-global food security connections. The exhibit, and the real-life stories which inspire it, can be explored further on CPAR’s new website www.puttingfarmersfirst.ca. (launching Wednesday, March 17).

“This was really a dream collaboration in a lot of ways” notes Anna Miller, CPAR’s Director of Programs. “Not only did the Frogpond students and faculty approach this challenge with a trained eye to sustainable design, but they truly ran with the real life stories and approaches used in communities we work with in East and Southern Africa in such a sensitive and thought-provoking way.”

The CPAR-OCAD partnership was formed in early 2009, and will continue to engage students in practical projects focusing on real life, everyday design solutions faced and employed by the African communities with whom CPAR works.

Foodprints: Edible Environments, Sustainable Gardens will run at Feature Garden #9 at the Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place in Toronto from Wednesday March 17 to Sunday, March 21, daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday). For more information about Canada Blooms visit www.canadablooms.com.

About Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief (CPAR)
CPAR (www.cpar.ca) is a non-profit organization that supports community efforts to ensure access to clean water, adequate food, primary health care services and a safe and healthy environment. Founded in 1984, and staffed at field level by a dynamic team of local African staff and specialists, CPAR works in partnership with vulnerable communities and diverse organizations to overcome poverty and build healthy communities in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda. CPAR’s latest project, a 5-year program entitled ‘Farmers First: Community-led Food Security’ and is funded by CPAR donors and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Putting Farmers First (www.puttingfarmersfirst.ca) will be launched on Wednesday, and will feature further information about the ‘Foodprints’ exhibit, the OCAD-CPAR collaboration and the farmers that inspired the exhibit.

About the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD)
The Ontario College of Art & Design (www.ocad.ca) is Canada’s “university of the imagination.” OCAD is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. The university is building on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinarity, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies. In the Age of Imagination, OCAD community members will be uniquely qualified to act as catalysts for the next advances in culture, technology and quality of life for all Canadians.
 

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For more information and images please contact:

Sarah Mulholland, Media & Communications Officer, OCAD
416.977.6000 Ext. 327 (mobile Ext. 1327)
 

Anna Miller, Director of Programs, CPAR
416-369-0865 Ext. 27 (mobile: 647-241-8714)

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