[Re]visions installation shot

Currently in the FINA Gallery (running from September 19th to the 30th) is an exhibition entitled [Re]visions by former UBCO BFA graduate Laura Widmer. Always an extremely dedicated artist Laura graduated from the BFA program in 2012 and has since continued her successful studio practice by putting together a printmaking and paper making studio at her home.

Laura has participated in many juried International Printmaking Biennials and exhibitions and has had a number of solo and small group exhibitions throughout Western Canada. Her work has twice been shortlisted for the Open Studio National Printmaking Awards in Toronto (winning first prize in 2010 as a second year BFA student). She has also received the Muskat Award at the Boston Printmakers Biennial in 2011 (the Biennial and awards were juried by famed American artist Jim Dine), as well as the Anna Eglitis Award for Printmaking at the InkMasters Print Exhibition in Cairns, Australia in 2016.

[Re]visions is an exhibition comprised of a series of large scale linocut prints and small, poetry-based paper works. Of the linocut prints Calgary-based writer Gina Freeman suggests that they present “glimpses of a shifting, sensual world. Heads, hands and torsos are cropped, abstracted. Strings of pearls are grasped tightly and held dear, freely offered and willingly accepted, tangled about throats and fingers, and draped lovingly around shoulders. The exact nature of the moment remains enigmatic.” The collection of works alter the ambience of the FINA gallery creating a mood of calm, sensual contemplation.

There will be a closing reception for [Re]visions at 4:00 on Friday, September 30th. The artist will be in attendance.

Laura Widmer, Tide, linocut on handmade paper

Briar Craig, It Will Be Clear Soon, ultra-violet screenprint

Currently, Laura and Briar Craig (Professor of Printmaking in FCCS) have work in an exhibition entitled, Stand Out Prints held at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, Minnesota from September 16 to October 15, 2016. Stand Out Prints is the second international juried print exhibition of 72 prints and objects (by 64 artists across four countries and 27 states) that were selected from more than 800 submissions through an international call. Both Laura and Briar were given awards for their work in the exhibition, Laura received the Juror Award, and Briar received the Stand out Prize.

What: Lecture, Miltonic Sovereignty Now
Who: Dr. Feisal Mohamed
Where: FIP 204, UBCO Okanagan Campus
When: Monday, Sept. 26th, 3:30pm

The Department of Critical Studies in FCCS is pleased to host a lecture by Dr. Feisal Mohamed, Full Professor at The Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.

Dr. Feisal Mohamed is the author of several books and numerous publications on sovereignty, terrorism, and human rights from the early modern period to the present day, including Milton and the Post-Secular Present: Ethics, Politics, Terrorism (2011).

The lecture, entitled Miltonic Sovereignty Now, will focus on how ideas about popular sovereignty that were developed in the early modern period can inform how political power is conceptualized now, especially in light of the recent re-emergence of right-wing nationalism.

John Milton, seventeenth-century poet and political theorist, is an early advocate of a modern idea of popular sovereignty, even as he is not the least bit democratic in our usual sense of that term. At a moment when several polities in the world have taken a hard turn to right-wing nationalism, it is thus especially opportune to re-examine the set of political ideas that we find in Milton, and the ways in which they anticipate later thought on sovereignty and political theology, especially that of Carl Schmitt.

All are welcome to attend. For more information, contact margaret.reeves@ubc.ca.

Cultural Studies student Lauren Richardson and History student Samantha Steenwyk encourage people to share their “sightings” of Ogopogo toys, sculptures, and other images they see in the Kelowna community. Their Ogopogo display was at the Okanagan Heritage Museum during the summer of 2015

The Cultural Studies program at UBC’s Okanagan campus is excited to announce a new course that focusses on community engagement. Students enrolled in the course will have the opportunity to work in collaborative teams to complete projects that support the work of community partners.

Mentored by the course Instructor, faculty mentors, and mentors from the community organization, students will complete innovative projects for community organizations. Further, the course will provide a valuable opportunity to critically reflect on the relation between theory and practice and to critically assess the relative merits of university experiential learning initiatives.

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.

“This kind of work and teaching is about building mutually beneficial relationships between the university and organizations in the community, and valuing the significance of humanities research and knowledge.” Says David Jefferess, Associate Professor in Cultural Studies.

This course achieves a longstanding ambition of the cultural studies program to provide its students with a standalone course that engages with community partners and thus better prepares undergraduate students with life-work experiences where their theoretical and practical communications skills are honed.

In previous years, students have taken a version of this course as a directed studies, last year, Lauren Richardson (Cultural Studies) and Samantha Steenwyk (History) researched how the creation of the Ogopogo as a mascot for the community appropriated and displaced N’ha-a-itk, the spirit of the lake. Read more about the project.

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 a letter of interest. For more information, please contact the course instructor, David Jefferess. david.jefferess@ubc.ca.

The Department of Creative Studies is pleased to announce the line-up of visiting artists for this fall. Liz Magor, Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes and Carol Sawyer will offer lectures to students and the public sharing insight into their studio practice.

All talks start at 12:00pm, Room UNC 106, 3272 University Way, Kelowna, UBC’s Okanagan Campus

Monday, October 3, 2016 | 12:00pm, Room UNC 106

Liz Magor

Liz Magor is one of Canada’s most important contemporary sculptors. Her technical virtuosity allows her to create an almost unparalleled level of verisimilitude, raising questions and unease about the difference between real and fake. . Magor was born in Winnipeg in 1948; soon after, her family moved to Vancouver. She studied at the University of British Columbia, Parsons School of Design and the Vancouver School of Art. In the early 1980s, Magor moved to Toronto, and by 1988 she had exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney, the Venice Biennale and Documenta. Magor is winner of the Audain Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the 2014 Gershon Iskowitz Prize and has exhibited nationally and internationally. (Canadian Art)

Monday, October 17, 2016 | 12:00pm, Room UNC 106

Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes

Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes (b. 1977, Seattle) is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and designer who explores the resonance of genetic cultural memory through the mystical and the mundane. The child of two prolific creators, he developed his practice under the tutelage of his parents, Curtis R. Barnes and Royal Alley-Barnes. He is part of the Black Constellation, a collective that also includes Shabazz Palaces, THEESatisfaction, and Nep Sidhu. Alley-Barnes has exhibited sculpture and films in numerous traditional and new-media-based settings. He has been, and continues to be, instrumental in the creation of seminal cultural spaces in Seattle, including the influential mixed-use space pun(c)tuation, among others. Alley-Barnes lives and works in Seattle.

Monday, November 14, 2016 | 12:00pm, Room UNC 106

Carol Sawyer

Carol Sawyer is a visual artist and singer who works with photography, installation, video, performance, and improvised music. Since the early 1990’s her visual art work has been concerned with the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. She graduated with Honours in photography from Emily Carr College of Art (now Emily Carr University), and completed a Masters degree in interdisciplinary art practices at Simon Fraser University, both in Vancouver BC.

Over 130 poems from all over the world were submitted to the Pollinator Poetry contest this summer. After much deliberation, a jury comprised of poets, artists and bee experts selected ten winning poems to be published in the Pollinator Poetry Post, a public art project of UBC’s Public Art Pollinator Pasture Project. The chosen ten will appear in Kelowna this fall and winter and then the Post will move to Richmond BC in 2017. The first “Posting” will be at the Kelowna Art Gallery until October 2nd and then it will move to the BC Orchard Industry Museum at the Laurel Packinghouse (1304 Ellis Street).

The international collection of award-winning poems is as follows:
Paint Brush, Yvonne Blomer, Victoria, BC
Birds & Bees, Meri Culp, Tallahassee, Florida
Summer House, Morgan Downie, Perth, Scotland
Bees in Late Autumn, Tami Haaland, Billings, Montana
The Answering Machine, Lisa Huffaker, Dallas, Texas
We collide, Guillaume Loslier-Pinard, Montreal, Quebec
February Bumblebees, Christine Lowther, Tofino, BC
Wild Bees, Rhona McAdam, Victoria, BC
Inside the Garden: Bees, Wendy Morton, Victoria, BC
The Garden and the Gardener, Phoebe Reeves, Cincinnati, Ohio

Poetry Posts or “poetry boxes” are “little free libraries” that contain poems instead of books. Passersby are encouraged to read “The Poem of the Week” and take copies or leave new poems in return.

The public is invited to participate in Pollinator Poetry on Saturday October 1, 2016 at the Kelowna Art Gallery in conjunction with Culture Days Events. The Poetry Post will be there at the gallery and there will be an open-mic for one hour starting at 1:30 PM. Local poets, writers and bee-lovers are invited to come and share their pollinator poetry and take part in the Culture Days project at the Gallery: building an Insect Hotel for the Kelowna Pollinator Pasture.

The original poetry came from contributors throughout Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Poets responded with passion, beauty, humour and sadness to the topic of pollinators, our relationship to wild pollinators as well as honey bees and the plight of pollinators in the world. The winners received $50 each as well as copies of a “pad” of their poem. More about the Public Art Pollinator Pasture Project and its umbrella project, Border Free Bees, can be found on the website borderfreebees.com

For more information contact Nancy Holmes at nancy.holmes@ubc.ca

UBCO Visiting Author Series Presents poet/writer Michael V. Smith and poet/author Hannah Calder at the Okanagan Library – Kelowna Branch through the Bodies of Knowledge Summer Writing Intensive

Date: 14 July, 2016
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Kelowna Branch of the Okanagan Regional Library, 1380 Ellis St., V1Y 2A2

Everyone is welcome to this exciting Visiting Authors reading series event, presented by the UBCO Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, in conjunction with the Bodies of Knowledge Summer Writing Intensive.

Hannah Calder is the author of two novels, More House (2009) and Piranesi’s Figures (2016), both published by New Star Books. Her poetry and fiction have also appeared in various journals, including West Coast Line and The Capilano Review. She lives in Vernon, B.C., where she teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Okanagan College.

Michael V. Smith is a multi-talented force of nature: a novelist, poet, improv comic, filmmaker, drag queen, performance artist, and occasional clown, teaching in creative writing in the interdisciplinary program of the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan. His latest book, My Body Is Yours (2015 Arsenal Pulp) is a memoir about breaking out of gender norms and breaking free of a hurtful past.
Also reading this evening are the students of UBC Okanagan’s creative writing summer intensive course, Bodies of Knowledge.

The Bodies of Knowledge contemporary disability studies and literary criticism research intensive runs for two weeks at in July at UBCO is chaired by Assistant Professor and author/poet Matt Rader, creative writing faculty at UBCO and is important as it features visiting artists and academics from a wide range of research/artistic practices.

This is a free event. Doors open at 5:30 pm. Reading commences at 6:00 pm.

For more information about this event, please contact:

Clayton McCann, Research Assistant, UBCO FCCS, bwgreview@gmail.com

Peter Morin and Ayumi Goto guideing participants through a performative introduction to bodies in spaces

After a highly successful first week, the O k’inādās Residency and Summer Indigenous Intensive are in full swing.

The Indigenous Summer Intensive, coordinated by the Creative Studies Department, in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, features a core group of senior artists who will be developing new work addressing issues related to the ongoing complex responses to reconciliation, and art-making practices as a radical methodology for decolonization and Indigenizing contemporary theoretical discourse and art praxis.

Everyone is invited to attend discussions, events, and openings! We have compiled a short list of some of what’s coming up next week so that anyone who is interested and able to attend can plan ahead.

Tuesday, July 12

Eyes Closed Blind Field Shuttle
Carmen Papalia, Social Practice artist based in Vancouver, will be leading ‘Eyes Closed Blind Field Shuttle’ through downtown Kelowna. Participants are asked to meet at 9am at the Rotary Centre for the Arts.

Wednesday, July 13

Round table discussion, UNC Theatre (UBCO Campus) at noon.
Guests Adrian Stimson, David Khang, Lori Blondeau, Carmen Papalia, and Michelle Jacques will be joining us for the second of the weekly Round Table discussion series.

Last week’s highly successful talk grew out of a consideration of the notion of The Body, a body, or bodies (ours, collective, national, personal) in relation to artists’ creative practice and as a site of resistance and resiliency.

Building on last week’s panel discussion we thought we would continue the theme this week by asking our current panel to discuss how The Body might be seen as an expression of Territory and Sovereignty?”

Thursday, July 14

Aboriginal and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Keeper Richard Armstrong will lead us in welcome and in discussion of the Okanagan-Similkameen – unceded territory of the Syilx people. Please join us at noon by the Stone Circle by the pond, on campus, near Platypus House.

Friday, July 15

Double opening at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art. 7-9pm
Farheen Haq: Being Home and Shannon Lester: Of Goddesses and Mothers

Kelowna Art Gallery, 7pm Opening – Deborah Koenker: Grapes and Tortillas (solo show on Mexican seasonal agricultural workers in the Okanagan).

We hope you can join us at some (or all) of the above events. It looks to be an exciting second week of the the O k’inādās Residency and Summer Indigenous Art Intensive Program.

Click HERE for a list of other upcoming disucssions or for more information visit www.rmooc.ca

The Indigenous Summer Intensive, coordinated by the Creative Studies Department, in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, is being held on campus from July 4th until August 15th. The program features a core group of senior artists: Rebecca Belmore, Lori Blondeau, David Garneau, and Adrian Stimson, and includes upward of 20 visiting studio artists in residence. These artists will be developing new work addressing issues related to the ongoing complex responses to reconciliation, and art-making practices as a radical methodology for decolonization and Indigenizing contemporary theoretical discourse and art praxis.

Alongside the intensive residency, FCCS is offering numerous courses in visual art, creative writing, and performance. All of these courses will run in conjunction with the Indigenous Summer Intensive with varying degrees of crossover between them.

During the Summer Indigenous Intensive, a series of exciting discussions with writers, artists, curators and performers taking part in the O k’inādās Complicated Reconciliations Art Residency, will be held each Wednesday, starting July 6th and continuing to August 10.

WHAT: O k’inādās Round Table Discussions
WHEN: 12 noon – 2 PM every Wednesday from July 6-August 10
WHERE: The University Theatre (ADM026), 3333 University Way, Kelowna
FREE: Open to all community and university members

Wed. July 6:
Rodrigo Hernandez-Gomez, David Garneau, Rebecca Belmore, Jordan Scott, Cecily Nicholson

Wed. July 13:
David Khang, Adrian Stimson, Lori Blondeau, Carmen Papalia, Michelle Jacques

Wed. July 20:
Kevin Ei-ichi deForest , Mark Igloliorte, Mimi Gellman, Haruko Okano, Osvaldo Yero, Raymond Boisjoly

Wed. July 27:
Olivia Whetung, Tania Williard, Tannis Nielson, Cathy Mattes, Charles Campbell, Elizabeth LaPensée

Wed. August 3:
Srimoyee Mitra, Michelle LaValle, Evan Lee, Jackson 2bears, Aaron Franks , Leah Decter,

Wed. August 10:
Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Millie Chen, Julie Okot Bitek, Warren Cariou, Annie Ross, Camille Turner

This project is supported by a Canada Council reconciliation grant, the McConnell Foundation, and the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus.