Media Studies instructor Miles Thorogood demonstrates virtual reality development.

A local West Kelowna winery has contributed $8,000 to the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies for a new award for students.

The donation from Grizzli Winery will allow the (FCCS) to present new awards this academic year to students majoring in fine arts or media studies who display great promise in graphic design and visual communication. These represent the first awards created in FCCS as part of UBC President Santa Ono’s Blue & Gold Campaign for Students, launched last fall, which aims to raise $100 million across both UBC campuses over three years to give promising students access to a life-changing education.

Grizzli Winery is relatively new to the Okanagan, and Edwin Chu says the company is eager to support the arts and culture of this region. The idea of supporting the talented, emerging student-artists of FCCS strikes them as an ideal way of accomplishing that.

Edwin Chu, General Manager of Grizzli Winery

“We are very pleased to offer the Grizzli Winery Awards in Fine Arts Excellence, which aims to honour student creativity. As a supporter of the Okanagan art and cultural community, Grizzli Winery is looking forward to providing this opportunity to foster the creative education of UBCO students,” says Edwin Chu, General Manager of Grizzli Winery.

The fine arts or media studies programs focus on creativity, innovation, and critical reflection. Benefitting from cutting-edge facilities, students learn the techniques of traditional and digital-studio arts, while being given ample studio space and time to explore fully their own projects and ideas, says Bryce Traister, dean of FCCS.

“Grizzli has, in a few short years, established itself as an arts-engaged winery whose support of creativity and community-focussed artistic work closely aligns with our own interest in supporting our students’ artistic endeavours and recognizing their artistic achievements,” adds Traister. “We are delighted to be working with this new community partner.”

The Blue & Gold Campaign for Students supports a range of student awards, including scholarships, bursaries, fellowships and experiential-learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, targeting students in need, students from under-represented communities, and leadership-based awards.

“Awards allow students the much-needed time to focus on their creative and scholarly projects,” says Stephen Foster, head of creative studies. “They are also a wonderful way for the university and the community to recognize student achievement. This helps to create an environment that inspires excellence.”

Grizzli Winery is located on West Kelowna’s Wine Trail. The 23-acre Grizzli estate features one of Canada’s largest tasting rooms, nine acres of vines, a restaurant and a picnic area set against the backdrop of Mt. Boucherie and the surrounding valley views.

Michael Turner and his book cover

Michael Turner completed his MFA this past summer at UBC Okanagan. His book, 9×11 and other poems like Bird, Nine, x and Eleven was recently published by New Star Books.

The launch of Michael’s book was on September 11th at Massy Books in Chinatown in Vancouver, and he will be joining us in Kelowna at the Milkcraters f the Moon Reading Series on September 20th, 7 p.m. at Milkcrate Records.

We met with Michael to discuss his book and to get some insight on his writing process.

Tell us about your new book.

9×11 and other poems like Bird, Nine, x and Eleven was inspired by the events of 9/11: how certain incidents — be they catastrophic or affirmative — can turn us into cameras, where we capture and store details we might otherwise forget.

What was your process in writing the book? How long did it take you? Was this your thesis project, or related to your thesis?

My previous books often began with titles, from which I would write in earnest, usually in a linear fashion. Hard Core Logo(1993) is an example of that. Same with Kingsway(1995) and 8×10 (2009). But 9×11 was composed only after the writing was done. If my thesis is related to this book, I would say that it had me more focused than usual and working at a greater pace. 9×11 was completed in a weekend while taking a break between writing the bulk of my thesis and its conclusion. I literally opened a file I had been contributing to over the past five years, printed out its documents and laid their pages on my living room floor. That was Friday morning. By Sunday evening I had a manuscript.

Tell us what it was like to work with an editor.

I have had the good fortune of working with a number of editors throughout my writing career and cannot imagine publishing anything without one (my blog notwithstanding). Some editors get what you are doing with form, content, tone, etc. while others don’t. Some get what you are doing but edit your work into a house style, while some don’t get what you are doing but come up with amazing suggestions nonetheless. All of us should be so lucky to have another pair of eyes on our work, if for no other reason than to protect us from ourselves.

Tell us about why you decided to complete your MFA degree.

The MFA was an opportunity to get out of myself, refocus, develop some new, more sustainable study habits. I had grown bored and needed to be amongst those from different walks, cultures, generations. I am thankful to those in my cohort, all of whom gave of themselves so generously in our discussions of land, language, identity, aesthetics, ethics. I am also thankful to faculty and support staff, for they too provided related forms of editorial.

Tell us about your other recent publications and articles…or past ones.

During my time at UBCO a lot of my published writing was focused on the work of visual artists living and working in the Okanagan Valley. I am grateful to those artists and institutions who invited me to contribute to their exhibition catalogues: Katherine Pickering (Vernon Public Art Gallery), Scott August (Lake Country Art Gallery) and Gary Pearson (Kelowna Public Art Gallery).

What’s next?

I will begin composing an academic c.v. After that, turning my thesis (Course Language: How the Reader is Encouraged to Collaborate on Our Seminar and Pass Me) into a course I can facilitate through a gallery or museum education/outreach program.

Instructor David Jefferess with his students in CULT 499.

The Cultural Studies program at UBC’s Okanagan campus is offering a course that focusses on community engagement, where students have the opportunity to work in collaborative teams to complete projects that support the work of community partners.

The projects for this coming year include:

• Create a learning resource for promoting decolonization in the Okanagan
• Develop an outreach project for the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art
• Create a promotional video for the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art
• Produce research and resources for a museum exhibit on migrant labour
• Produce research and resources for a museum exhibit on women’s labour

Click HERE  for the project descriptions and application information.

Students enrolled in the course in past years have worked on some interesting and informative projects that demonstrate the skills they developed and the positive impacts they were able to make with their community partners.

Students Tessa Baatz, Chiara Mason and Emma McLeod presented an idea to the City of Kelowna that examines the positive impacts of parking spaces that are reclaimed for public recreational or beatification purposes. Read more about PARKLETS: Innovations in Urban Public Spaces.

Kezia Elaschuk and Safeera Jaffer researched the experiences of early Chinese and Japanese agricultural workers in the Okanagan and presented their finding in an exhibition at the Okanagan Wine and Orchard Museum. Read more about this project.

This course (CULT 499) is designed to provide students experiential learning based on the skills and knowledge of Cultural Studies scholarship. As such, students will complete a tangible research project that will be publicly disseminated, and they will acquire specific professional skills and experience suitable for inclusion in letters of application, resumes, and/or curriculum vitae.

How to apply:

In order to enroll in CULT 499 Community Engaged Research in term two this year, students are required to submit an application that includes a resume, description of related skills and experience as well as a letter of interest. The deadline for applications is September 28, 2018. 

For more information and to submit your application, please contact the course instructor, David Jefferess. david.jefferess@ubc.ca.

Miles Thorogood

Miles Thorogood, instructor of digital media and computer science at UBC Okanagan, is the recipient of two outstanding awards for soundscape and acoustic communication.

The R. Murray Schafer Soundscape Award, is awarded for Thorogood’s thesis, which investigates new ways of analyzing and approaching soundscapes. The audiometaphor.ca project brings together computational systems for analyzing patterns in audio in terms of human emotion and inserts this into a soundscape generation system.

The second award, The Glenfraser Acoustic Communication Research Award, was awarded to further Thorogood’ s research in computational soundscape studies of the Okanagan. His research aims at integrating soundscape analysis, text and audio interviews, and image for building resources to foster resilient communities and art making.

Dr. Thorogood’s research into soundscape and communication as a form of artistic expression has been recognized for enriching the diversity of the program offerings within the BFA and BMS.

“At UBCO we are excited to see our Faculty succeed in all areas of research including creative practice.” Says Stephen Foster, Department Head of Creative Studies. “His success is of tremendous benefit to our students and demonstrates the high level of excellence in our teaching and research within the Creative Studies Department.”

John Braun, Head of the Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics adds, “Thorogood brings dedication and ingenuity to the Bachelor of Media Studies program. It is not surprising that Thorogood has been recognized for his work.”

Miles Thorogood teaches Digital Media theory and creation in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, and Computer Science in the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences. He is an artist and programmer who focusses on cognitive science and audio signal analysis for developing computational assistive technologies in community engagement and creative industries. His work has been featured in public art installations, as well as at international conferences and festivals.

Miles is working with the Spoken Web project to experiment with new methods of understanding speech and ambient signals in tape-recorded Canadian poetry. He is involved with the Waterways team in exploring the historical, indigenous, and ecological patterns of the Okanagan to manifest engaging public education experiences. He is currently proposing the Culture and Environment Archive Toolkit to develop novel platforms for cataloging, analyzing, and retrieving multiple media types in research and creation. A part of Miles’ research-creation work involves electroacoustic performance and an upcoming collaborative exhibit named Journey of a Pod to be displayed at the Kelowna Art Gallery in October.

About UBC’s Okanagan campus

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning in the heart of British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. Ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world, UBC is home to bold thinking and discoveries that make a difference. Established in 2005, the Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

Fern Helfand with her photo piece installed in the airport gallery space.

FCCS Visual Arts professor, Fern Helfand recently installed her new work, Okanagan Log Pile, in the Kelowna Art Gallery satellite space at the Kelowna International Airport.

Fern retired from her teaching position at UBC Okanagan this past spring. Fern taught photography in the BFA program from 1998 until 2018.

Her photo-based work addressing environmental concerns and the medium of photography itself has been exhibited across Canada and internationally.

Artist statement:

Okanagan Log Pile embodies the duplicity of the wood industry in British Columbia. It represents the vast forests of the province, a renewable resource if handled properly, and the lumber industry, one of the major economic foundations of the region, a historical source of livelihood for many.  On the other side of the coin, it speaks to clear cutting, and loss of the forest, not only through widespread logging, but because of the devastation caused by the recent pine beetle infestation and the annual threat of wild fires. It also represents the transformation of our environment from forest valley and hills, traditional home to the Indigenous peoples of the region, to lands cleared of their natural habitat to make way for shopping malls and real estate developments with monster homes, which in turn have been partially constructed from the trees that once stood in their place.

Read more about the installation in the Kelowna Caplital News article on Fern Helfand.

Visitors leaving Kelowna can view the photo installation at the departure gate at the airport from now until February of 2019. Form more information, visit the Kelowna Art Gallery web site.

Gerry Garneau interview, Journal from OUC, November 2001

It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of Gerry Garneau, fine arts instructor in our BFA program from 1971 to 1997. Gerry was one of the first instructors to teach fine arts as a diploma program at Okanagan College, and was instrumental in creating the degree program that was offered when the institution became Okanagan University College.

“I first met Gerry in 1972. At that time there were only two instructors in the Fine Arts Department of Okanagan College, Gerry and Toru Fujibiashi.” says colleague and Emeritus Professor, Mary Smith McCulloch.

Gerry taught drawing and painting, and Toru sculpture and drawing. The following year, when the fine arts programme expanded to include second year studies, Mary was hired to teach printmaking.

“Gerry’s most important legacy was that he provided stability. He always insisted that keeping the core programme of the two foundation years in studio practice and art history intact was key to further development. As a result the two year programme gained an excellent reputation especially for those students who wished to transfer to other art schools and universities to further their studies in Fine Arts,” notes Mary.

Even though Gerry retired before we became UBC, the legacy of his creation of the fine arts program lives on in what we offer in our studio courses today. We are forever grateful for his dedication as a teacher of fine arts, and will miss him as part of our arts community.

Read the full article in the OUC Journal –  Gerry Garneau – Fine Arts success.

Dania Tomlinson, author

Dania Tomlinson completed her MFA in 2014 at UBC Okanagan and her book, Our Animal Hearts, was recently published by Penguin Random House Canada. We met with Dania to discuss her book and to get some insight on her writing process.

Tell us about your novel 

Our Animal Hearts book cover

DT: Our Animal Hearts is set in the early 1900s in a fictional orcharding community on the shore of Okanagan Lake. Essentially it’s about a girl growing up in the shadow of a mother who both mystifies and frightens her. As she attempts to understand her place in the world, the faery tales, myths, and cultural stories she inherits, and those she learns from others, begin to manifest, intersect, and blend seamlessly with one another. And figures from these stories materialize in her immediate surroundings, particularly in the forest and in the lake. Although historical fiction, this book is also in the realm of magic realism, meaning that it incorporates magical or mythic elements into an otherwise realistic narrative.

What was your process of researching for the book?

DT: What centred my research was representing the Okanagan in the early 1900s through the landscape, the characters, and the events. But as I delved into the research, the fictional town soon became a microcosm of British Columbian, or even Canadian, history. The short 38 years this book spans cover some really dark events: the theft of indigenous land, the ostracisation of non-white immigrant communities, the internment of Ukrainians during WWI and Japanese during WWII, the Spanish flu epidemic, and the beginning of the horrid residential school system. It was important to give these historic events a local context, and for them to have real consequence in the narrative.

What was your process in writing the book? How long did it take you? Was this your thesis project, and if so, how did it change since you graduated?

DT: It took nearly 10 years for me to complete this novel. Honestly, I am still rewriting it in my head. In many ways I grew up writing this book. I became a university student, an adult, a wife, a mother, an instructor, all while writing this book. But the first time I wrote this story I was in my 2nd year of university and I was in Anne Fleming’s fiction class at UBCO. I wrote a short story about two elderly women in a nursing home and decided I wanted to start at the beginning of their lives and explore how these two women came to be. What moments shaped them? What decisions had lasting impacts? From there the story became two braided narrative strands, one that took place in Chile in the 1940s and the other that took place in the Okanagan in the early 1900s. The childhoods of these women, and the climatic moment when their lives collided, was the gist of my thesis. Since then the story has changed dramatically. The Chilean narrative was stripped which meant the Okanagan narrative had to stand on its own.

Dania’s book launch at Kettle River Brewery in Kelowna

Tell us what it was like to work with an editor?

DT: Our Animal Hearts went through some very tough revisions. I edited it with both with my agent and then later with my editor. But I enjoy the editing process. It’s when you get to make your writing shine. My MFA prepared me for working with editors. It taught me to distance myself from the work enough so I could be craft-focused and less sentimental. It’s important to be open during the editing phase, but also firm on what you value in the story. This can be a difficult balance. In the end, having experts invest themselves in your work is a thrilling experience.

Dania at the Book Warehouse, Vancouver

What have you been doing to promote the book?

DT: Along with a book tour to Vancouver and Victoria, my publicist arranged for me to do several interviews and questionnaires for press such as the CBC Magic 8 Q&A and a feature in the Georgia Straight. I’ve also been on local radio and a podcast called Get Lit. Every new phrase is brand new to me, and the publicity part has been quite an adventure. I never know what to expect. Sometimes I know about things well in advance, other times I have two hours to make it down to the local CBC radio station. Although a little stressful, it has all been very exciting.

Dania with fellow Okanagan writers, Alix Hawley and Adam Schoerder

You have an event coming up at the OK Regional Library on July 19th with an MFA alumni from UBC Vancouver, Shilo Jones. Tell us how this came about, how did you meet Shilo?

DT: Shilo and I have never met, which is weird since we both live in Kelowna and the writing community here (although robust!) is quite intimate. Adding to that, it seems our writing careers run on parallels as our debuts came out within weeks of each other, and we share a literary agency, a publisher, and we both completed our MFAs at UBC campuses. The similarities are odd. I look forward to reading with him on Thursday, and finally getting to meet.

Dania Tomlinson and Shilo Jones will be giving a public reading from their new books on July 19 at the Okangan Regional Library, downtown branch.

Find out more about Dania Tomlinson and her time at UBC Okanagan as an MFA student.

Jeannette Angel is a PhD Candidate whose research is focused on water sustainability in the Okanagan. Her aim is to use creative, experiential methods to engage people from the community to understand and act on water issues.

She worked with UBC professors environmental anthropologist John Wagner and media artist Aleks Dulic to collaborate with community partners on a museum exhibition, The Social Life of Water, the title of which was based on a book edited by John Wagner in 2013.

“Water is life, it is one of the most important elements that brings us together.”

The project came to fruition when environmental activist Christine Mettler, who had already proposed the concept to the Kelowna Museums Society, connected with Angel about designing an exhibition using media technology.

“This was the perfect venue and perfect opportunity to bring together a number of partners including artists, scientists, community members and a large team of students from UBC Okanagan,” said Angel. “This show featured water perspectives in ways that made it publicly accessible.”

The exhibition uses art, audio, visual media and storytelling to explore the diverse meanings that water holds and has held for the many communities, cultures and interest groups in the Okanagan watershed.

“With this exhibition, we are able to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices together into a common space to share knowledge,” says Dulic. “In addition to exploring the past and present, the exhibition examines our relationship with water in the future, inviting participants to imagine how we might have a more responsible relationship with our water.”

Following the showing at the Okanagan Heritage Museum in Kelowna, the exhibition toured several galleries and institutions in the Okanagan watershed.

The Social Life of Water exhibition toured the North Okanagan Valley, at the Allan Brooks Centre Sept to Oct 2017 and the Vernon Museum from March to June 2018, and is currently open to the public at the Penticton Museum, until the end of August 2018.

In the Fall of 2017, Right of Way, the touch screen environment on species-at-risk access to water, from the exhibition, was selected to accompany a travel exhibit at the Lake Country Municipal Hall presented by the Okanagan Conservation Collaborative Program.

Keeping Connectivity in our Future, the evolution of the 3D touch screen environment featuring a build-your-own pollinator garden, was presented at BorderFreeBees events at The Kelowna Regional Library and the Fat Cat Festival in 2018.