All Posts Tagged With: "art"

Instructor had briefly discussed art project with student

The Alberta College of Art and Design has reinstated an instructor fired after one of his students beheaded a chicken.

The college said Wednesday in a statement that it has learned lessons from the incident and hopes to develop clear policies around academic responsibility and artistic freedom.

“While the College’s decision to terminate Mr. Ferguson was never intended to be about academic or artistic freedom, the College acknowledges the perception this action may have created,” it said.

“All parties acknowledge that this incident has raised important issues about the relationship between a teacher and student, and a student’s work.”

The student killed the chicken with a knife, then plucked it and cleaned it in the school’s cafeteria last month as part of a performance art project. Some students were so shocked they called police but no criminal charges were laid.

The teacher in charge of the class, Gord Ferguson, was fired last week. The Canadian Association of University Teachers quickly took up his fight and filed a grievance with the college.

He had been with the school for 32 years.

Ferguson said Wednesday he’s relieved to have his job back. He found it unfair the college punished him for something a student did, adding students should be allowed to be creative at an art school.

“We never tell them what they can’t do or what they can do,” he said. “Any subject is available to be debated and discussed and investigated and you have to feel free and supported to be able to do that.”

He said the student’s chicken project was about commercial food production. He wanted to remind people that meat doesn’t come wrapped in plastic from a grocery store — it has to be killed first.

Ferguson briefly discussed the project with the student beforehand but, in hindsight, wishes they would have spent more time talking about how best to carry it out.

Ferguson said he has been overwhelmed with supportive letters and messages from students, past students, professors and strangers from across the country.

About 1,400 students also signed an online petition supporting Ferguson. Others flocked to Facebook, planning to protest his firing later this week during the school’s graduation art show.

Ferguson said he and the school have agreed to host a symposium when classes resume in September “to air some of these issues arising from this event.”

“I think that the goal here is to not come up with a set of restrictions where people may not do this and not do that, but rather inform people that they are free to explore any topic that they want to explore — but maybe with a bit of framework.”

Artist Deanna Bowen says work is meant to be provocative

Inside Deanna Bowen's exhibition (M.S.)

Three Ku Klux Klan banners prominently displayed in the vitrines overlooking York University’s Accolade East colonnade are causing people who pass by everyday to literally trip over themselves.

These pieces are part of a daring art exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University entitled Invisible Empires, which presents a collection of archival material that shows how the violent white supremacist organization had a role in 20th century Canadian history—not just American history as many Canadians likely believe.

Hanging such banners on campus seemed likely to cause an uproar among people of colour, and some were indeed initially upset. However, it seems to have sparked a conversation.

“They’re not put up to be harmful,” says Deanna Bowen, the black Toronto artist behind the exhibit. The banners are “meant to get you inside to hear more about this history.”

Continue reading Ku Klux Klan banners hang at York University

Why would someone steal a student’s prints?

A Unversity of Saskatchewan student says that 72 pieces of his art disappeared from the campus printmaking shop. Kevin Bishop, 23, doesn’t know who would have wanted the work that he’s spent six months producing for his Master of Fine Art thesis. The most money his work has sold for is $750, making the stolen collection worth $54,000 “in an ideal world,” he told the StarPhoenix newspaper. ”It was a year of my life,” he said. “I just want it back.”

Students are paying for art supplies, sports equipment, and core materials, finds new report

Students are forking over their own money for art supplies, sports equipment and, in some cases, even having to pay for materials in core learning classes such as science or French just to meet their educational needs, a new report suggests.

“You’re almost penalized if you’re not essentially good at basic math,” said Jonathan Scott, 19, for the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association, painting a picture of students’ struggle.

“If you want to be an artist you’re kind of less important to the school system,” said Scott, who represented students at the Simcoe County District School Board during his last year of high school in 2007-08.

Now, an organization committed to improving public education wants the provincial government to address these concerns.

A new report from People for Education is calling for a “renewed vision” for public schools and lists more than a dozen areas where it wants Ontario to take action.

“We seem to be squeezing out the arts and culture,” said Annie Kidder, the group’s executive director.

Kidder said students in high schools are having to fit arts education and sports activities into timetables already packed with basic credit requirements. Many times, students end up paying for these extra opportunities outside of school.

It’s also an issue for children in elementary schools, where fundraising initiatives in affluent neighbourhoods typically mean those schools have more resources. At home, those parents can also offer their kids books and money for recreation programs.

But in poorer neighbourhoods, which lack the ability to fundraise and can’t provide extra-curricular activities at home, children are “doubly disadvantaged,” Kidder said.

“What’s worrying about this to us is the potential for inequity,” she said.

What happens when imaginary animals escape?

How did Pratt go from engineering student to respected, professional artist?

Christopher Pratt is arguably one of Canada’s greatest living painters. His distant, clinical landscapes are at the same time modern and wholly timeless. I’m certainly no art critic, but when I saw a retrospective show at Quebec City’s Musée national des beaux-arts, I was awestruck. Here was a real artist. Someone who belongs very much to a place (Newfoundland), but speaks, through sparse rural depictions, to a certain universality. That doesn’t do him justice though. You have to see his work (and I mean wall upon wall of it) to really understand its force.

But how did someone like that get a start in life? How did he go from being a pre-engineering student to a respected, professional artist?

The answer is simple. He saw that a life in art was entirely possible in his own environment. And this wasn’t easy. He grew up in a place where there were, as he says, no art galleries, no professional artists and no understanding that one could even make a living through painting of all things.

But Pratt persevered. He did a year of engineering, then switched to pre-med, then finally settled on an Arts undergrad… until he dropped out a year and a half later. In fact, his educational record does not show any sign of the committed professionalism he’d later develop as an artist.

One thing that kept him going were his artistic inspirations. Alex Colville, for example, the well-known artist, taught him briefly at Mount Allison in New Brunswick. And the image of Colville – his paintings showing the world over – who could “live in a little house, have a family with three or four kids and walk to church every Sunday” was indelible. It showed Pratt that it was possible to become a serious artist while staying close to one’s roots. You didn’t have to be brash, or urban, or complicated.

It was possible to make a career quietly, keeping to oneself and working on one’s art.