��̳

Meet our 2024 Valedictorian, Page Cowell

Andy Murdoch — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:21:12 +0000

Page Cowell, who will graduate this year with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Interdisciplinary Arts, has been chosen by the 2024 graduating class as their valedictorian. She is also a finalist for the 2024 Student Art Award.��

Page was born and raised in Tillsonburg, Ontario on the territory of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee and Attawandaron peoples. Page is proud to come from a long line of working-class family who have been a model of diligence and an inspiration to her work. She is interested in making art that is accessible and relatable to those who don’t often get the chance to engage with it. She uses a variety of media, from kitchen equipment and drills to coloured pencils and mylar, to make sculptures, drawings, and animations which honour the proletariat.

Page received her foundation year arts certificate from the Yukon School of Visual Arts in 2021, where she participated in Yukon Riverside Arts Fest, Dawson City International Film Fest, and the Something Shows Artist Residency. She went on to continue her studies at ��̳. Here, she has participated in exchanges, group shows at the Anna Leonowen’s Gallery, and had her first solo show, Construct. She has an interest in community arts, volunteering and working in her hometown arts centre, teaching youth art camps. After graduating, Page plans to make her way closer to home and find ways to rope others into art and acts of creation.

What was one lesson you learned at ��̳?

Paper doesn’t carry well in the wind…

In all seriousness, it is hard to pinpoint a specific lesson when the most important things I learned were rather gradual. I can say that the degree is not the most important thing I am walking away from ��̳ with.

Do you have any advice for current students?

Don’t take for granted the many like-minded, talented people that are around you at ��̳. It is easy to keep your nose to the grindstone, but it is more likely that you will find the time to make work again in your life than it is to be surrounded by these many artists and fellow over-thinkers ever again. Ask questions. Initiate conversations. I have gotten some of the best advice in regards to art as well as life from my peers and mentors at ��̳.

Could you speak to your approach to making art that is accessible and relatable through topic and materials and why that is so essential to your practice?

In my practice, I pay homage to the everyday. I don’t think art has to be in a gallery, purchased by a collector, or nominated for awards. I think people make things everyday, whether that is furniture, or decks, or spreadsheets, or lesson plans, or roofs, or car parts, or food. I don’t think art is any better than all of these things that we get to access everyday. Art adds so much more value to our lives if we can access it as easily as some of these things.

Your work is very interdisciplinary – how do you decide what medium works best for each project and where is it leading you nowadays?

The medium plays a big part of the message in my work. The best way to start a project is having something to say. It can take a lot of exploring before I land on the best vessel to carry my point. This typically involves research into the history and current associations with the topic I am working with.

Being able to have a community and audience at ��̳ has certainly elevated this process in being able to see how others engage and interpret the use of certain materials.

What’s your next big goal?

I am very lucky to have been able to attend art school. Not everyone is afforded the privilege to explore their passions or further their education. I feel that this opportunity comes with a certain amount of responsibility. A responsibility to myself to continue to find ways to make art, and a responsibility to others

to make space for their creativity and share what I have learned at ��̳. My next big goal is to remain committed to these responsibilities while also staying fed, keeping the lights on, and laughing often.

You can follow Page Cowell at or on Instagram at .��

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Professor Jacqueline Warwick appointed new Dean, Academic

Andy Murdoch — Tue, 07 May 2024 18:20:59 +0000

We are pleased to announce the appointment of�� Professor  Jacqueline Warwick as NSCAD University’s new Dean, Academic. This is a full-time appointment for a 5-year term effective May 1, 2024. ��

Dr. Warwick has been in the position of Interim Dean, Academic since August 2023. She is a Canadian musicologist (PhD UCLA, 2002) who came to Halifax for a position at Dalhousie in 2003. She served in leadership roles for more than half of her years at Dal, in the interdisciplinary Gender & Women’s Studies program, the MA program in Musicology, and as the inaugural Director of the Fountain School of Performing Arts. In this last position, she oversaw the merging of Dal’s departments of Music and Theatre, the development of new curriculum, and fundraising for the Strug Concert Hall and Costume Studies suite in the recently opened Arts Centre expansion. She continues to be an active researcher and writer and is currently working on a book about child prodigies in music for Oxford University Press.��

“My year as ��䴡��’s interim dean has been highly rewarding, and I feel positive about the challenges and opportunities ahead,” says Warwick. “��̳ has been a beacon in art education through my whole life, and it’s exciting to join this vibrant, creative, and brilliant community.”��

“Jacqueline has been invaluable in her role as interim dean over the last year and I am so pleased that she will be joining us in this permanent role. She will be an essential member of our senior leadership team. It is a time of much anticipated institutional growth as we move toward a consolidated campus at the Halifax Seaport over the next 6 years,” says Dr. Peggy Shannon.��

��Jana Macalik to continue as Interim Vice President Academic and Research and Provost��

We are also pleased to announce that Jana Macalik will serve another year as Interim Vice President Academic and Research and Provost.��

Jana has been covering this important role since July 1, 2023, and has contributed to creating an open and collaborative work environment.��

“Jana has enhanced many processes to help advance the Academic division and ��̳’s organizational structure. We have seen positive change under Jana’s leadership, and we look forward to continuing this momentum into next year,” says President Shannon.��

Human Resources is in the process of engaging an external Executive Search Firm to start the search for the permanent hire. ��̳ will provide a future update when the search is underway.

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Artist talk: Laurie Anderson

Sarah Poko — Wed, 01 May 2024 12:47:03 +0000

Monday, May 13, 2024
4 – 5 p.m.
Paul O’Regan Hall – Halifax Central Library��
5440 Spring Garden Rd

Due to popular demand, Laurie Anderson’s artist talk has been moved to the Halifax Central Library.��

This event is open to the public and space is limited so reserve your��free��tickets below.

��̳ Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson is NSCAD University’s 2024 Honorary Degree recipient. On May 14, Anderson will deliver a convocation address to graduating ��̳ students at the Light House Arts Centre.

Anderson is a writer, director, composer, visual artist, musician and vocalist whose works span the worlds of art, theater, experimental music, and technology. Her recording career was launched by��O Superman��in 1981.��

Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to expansive multimedia stage performances such as the eight-hour��United States��(1982),��Empty Places��(1990),��Songs and Stories from Moby Dick (1999), and��Delusion��(2010). In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon.��

Anderson had created numerous audio-visual installations as well as films- the feature film Home of the Brave (1986),��Carmen��(1992), and��Hidden Inside Mountains��(2005).�� Her film ��Heart of a Dog (2015) was chosen as an official selection of the 2015 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.��

��In the same year, her exhibition Habeas Corpus opened at the Park Avenue Armory to wide critical acclaim and in 2016 she was the recipient of Yoko Ono’s Courage Award for the Arts for that project.��

As a performer and musician, she has collaborated with many people including Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, William S. Burroughs, Peter Gabriel, Robert Wilson, Christian McBride and Philip Glass.��

Her works for quartets and orchestras,��Songs for Amelia��(2001), has been played in festivals and concert halls around the world and she has invented a series of instruments and electronic sculptures.��

Anderson has published ten books and been nominated for five Grammys throughout her recording career with Warner Records and Nonesuch. She released��Landfall, a collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, which received a Grammy award in 2018.��

As a composer, Anderson has contributed music to films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme, dance pieces by Bill T. Jones, Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, and scores for theater productions including plays by Robert LePage. She has created pieces for National Public Radio, France Culture and the BBC. She has curated several large festivals including the Vivid Festival in Sydney (2010) and the Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall in London (1997).��

Her visual work has been featured in many galleries and museums including in 2003, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon in France produced a touring retrospective of her work entitled��The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson.�� In 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in São Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janeiro. Anderson’s largest solo exhibition at The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., titled The Weather (2021-2022),��showcased the artist’s storytelling process through her work in video, performance, installation, painting, and other media.��

Her visual work is on long term display at MASS MoCA and her three virtual reality works,��Chalkroom,��Aloft,��and��To The Moon, collaborations with the artist Hsin-Chien Huang, won several awards including��Best VR Experience��at the 74th Venice International Film Festival in 2017 and were featured in the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.��

A retrospective of her work opened in 2023 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.��

She has received numerous honorary doctorates, prizes and awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship, Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the Wolf Prize. In 2024 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy.��

In 2021 she served as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University and delivered the Norton lectures as video, now available online. She has worked on numerous projects in AI with the Machine Learning Institute in Adelaide, Australia where she was artist in residence in 2020. Anderson continues to tour her evolving performance The Art of Falling��and is working on an opera,��ARK, commissioned by the Manchester International Festival, premiering in 2024.��

Her life partner as well as her collaborator was Lou Reed from 1992 onward. They married in 2008 and worked on numerous projects together until his death in 2013. Anderson lives in New York City.��

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Artist for a Day 2024

Sarah Poko — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 12:46:50 +0000

Artist��for��a��Day��is back!

Coinciding with , Artist for a Day is a full, fun day of hands-on art making for people of all ages. This free event is suitable for artists at every level. At Artist for a Day, you can try your hand at printing, embroidery, wax casting, sculpture and so much more! Everything is hands on, and everything is free.

Event Details:

When:��Saturday, May 11, 2024
Time: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: NSCAD University, Port Campus, 1107 Marginal Road.

No registration required — just show up!

Artist for a Day workshop and events:

Additive Mini-Sculpture

Darlene Morrison (Alumni) – Build a mini-sculpture of mostly found materials. See how everyday waste materials can be reutilized in a fun hands-on process of creating something new. Recycled plastics, wire, rubber, wood, metal, etc. are combined with new and found objects to create sculptures without glue or nails. Drop in and explore this clean, fun process! You’ll go out the door with a hand-held piece of art that didn’t exist thirty minutes ago.

Architectural Embroidery

A transformative site-specific project, visitors will use embroidery techniques on the railings of the first floor. With yarn participants will explore textiles as a more free flowing process, learning you don’t need many tools to create art.

Cardboard City

Rami Geraci (Student) – Repurposing cardboard waste, visitors of all ages can construct and decorate their own building for our small-scale city. What will the future look like?

Fashion Show Gallery

Miss the ��̳ Fashion Show? Get a glimpse into the future of fashion with this display and meet the designers who created them.

Make Your Mark

Sketch your dream ring with NSCAD University’s new grad ring designed by student Erin Flemming. ��A one-of-a-kind ring which contains a trace of the mark students made at ��̳. At the core of art is mark making, visitors can sketch out on the newest incarnation of our alumni ring.

Monoprint Making

Rachel Reeves (Alumni) – Monoprints and direct nature prints with plants. Printed on paper, card, fabric using water-based printing inks. During this process each print is unique, no two images are the same.

Performative Arts Communication

Jay Davison (Student) – a group of six students will engage in conversation about their artistic experiences within and outside of the art institute. This project, being based around the communicative power of conversation, is meant to engage with the public and help develop community and communicative skills.

Shrinkies

��̳ Extended studies – Creating keychains with shrink paper and drawing materials, using a toaster oven. We’ll need a table for the toaster oven and demo materials, and two tables with chairs for people to draw/colour their shrinkies.

Student Art Award Gallery

NSCAD University is proud to present the annual ��̳ Student Art Award. This celebration of achievement is a recognition of our students’ outstanding work. The Student Art Award provides young artists across ten disciplines at the university with vital visibility as they embark on their careers. See works by: Chris Sampson, Daria Herashchenko, a. laurel Lawrence, Kate Dong, Kalani Chen-Hayes, Page Cowell, Rayce Min, Sunny Babcock, Yongxuan Zheng and Silas Wamsley.

Wet Felting

Marilyn Holm – Making textile approaches accessible to everyone! Wet felting in a baggie, just add water and friction.

Wax Casting

Sarah Sears (Alumni / Student) – Exploring a metalsmithing process, natural material / alginate mold making. Through this process visitors will create a mold and replicate an item in wax.

Artist for a Day is made possible through the participation of ��̳ alumni, faculty and student volunteers.

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From clay to television: ��̳ alumni Brendan Tang shares his journey in ceramics

Sarah Poko — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 18:30:31 +0000

The Vancouver-based artist and ceramist is a celebrity judge on ��’s The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown.

Vancouver-born ��̳ alumni, (he/they), enjoys working in their home city, but his studies took him to different landscapes like Edwardsville for his MFA at Southern Illinois University, and to NSCAD University for his BFA.

“What drew me to the East Coast was the great studio-based, practice-based program at ��̳,” they say.

Now an instructor at Emily Carr University, Tang works with multiple mediums—including a life-size Ford F150 truck constructed out of watercolour paper—but is best known for his sculptural ceramics. This is part of the reason he ended up as a judge on the inaugural season of executive produced by recreational potter and actor Seth Rogen.

How did you end up in Halifax from all the way across the country?

Most of my education has been looking for a studio-based program. Academia means a lot of reading and philosophy, but I was looking for a program that would meet my technical making needs. When I went to ��̳ to visit, I met Walter Ostrom and immediately, that East Coast welcome was there— he’s such an open, generous man.

I ran into him at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and he said, “Come down to Ceramics [at ��̳] and I’ll get someone to show you around.” That open-door vibe that is so great about the East Coast.

You talk about belonging to “the remix generation,” what does that mean to you and how does it apply to your work?

A lot of my training comes out of that late-90s post-modernism vibe, a deconstruction/reconstruction kind of aesthetic; that really informed my practice. As a young person I was emulating a lot of pop culture—it’s almost like I understood it through a lens of popular culture, hip hop, EDM. I feel in a lot of ways, my work approaches it that way. Reprocesses it and remixes it.

I feel like back in my day, finding trends was a way of defining yourself and finding the communities you wanted to be a part of. When I came out to ��̳ in the late 90s, rave culture was really big and that was such a wonderful experience as part of my education. It was a way of finding your people.

You work with lots of materials but what is it about ceramics that you connect to?

��Working with my hands is a draw. I like the order of a process—I find something delightfully predictable about knowing what you have to do next. It’s a little more sophisticated than a Sudoku puzzle, but there’s joy in completing it.

There’s a flow state about these things that’s satisfying on a mental level, getting into that zone. The process gives you a structure, the space created with the process helps me figure out the world. I’m always in awe of painters—there’s a process but it’s also so amorphous. Ceramics has a timeline.

A lot of ceramicists dive into the alchemy, but I’m so controlling of the process of how I’m carving things and painting things. Where there’s more improvisation is how I do my compositions or modelling things, there’s space to do the free-form jazz sort of thing. So, it’s less ‘gifts from the kiln’ and more ‘that’s exactly what I wanted.’

Competition shows usually have a template—there’s the nice judge, the mean one, the wild card. How did you fit in at The Great Canadian Pottery Throwdown?

��I could just be myself, which is a big ceramic nerd!

We all know these competition shows and the kinds of characters that are part of them. During COVID, The Great Canadian Baking Show was my comfort show, and I knew it wasn’t the backstabbing, teaching through cruelty and shame that a lot of competition shows tend to be.

Essentially the goal was to have the people compete with themselves and be the best they could be. Basically, the rising tide lifts all boats approach. I teach from a place of care and I’m genuinely interested in what these people are doing. They were into that vibe.

Are you getting recognized?

��I haven’t been recognized yet, but I did cut my mullet off so maybe I’m incognito. I miss that beautiful mane.

followers are definitely going up though, which is a hoot, but I don’t know what to do about this. Art school in the 90s did not prepare me for social media management.

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The Dawson Print Shop opens doors to artist Ashes Withyman and his Wandering Calendar project

Sarah Poko — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:14:00 +0000

The Dawson Print Shop continues to be a hub for creativity, learning, and innovative creations in printmaking.

Some of the posters produced from the ‘Wandering Calendar’ project. Credit: Paul Kajander.

If the history of print had a face—a typeface, that is— it would most likely live in the at NSCAD University.

Housing one of Canada’s most extensive collections of functional typographic material, the Dawson Print Shop has myriad historic letterpress printing technologies, with more than 1000 typefaces— each with unique fonts that you won’t find anywhere else today. ��

, an artist and part-time faculty at ��̳, was in the Dawson Print Shop for the first time on April 16, working with artist as part of the , a project co-organized with ��̳ sculpture faculty, HaeAhn Kwon. Kajander was amazed by the depth of resources at the site.

“My jaw dropped to the floor,” he says with a laugh. “I was really grateful to see that there is a facility like this existing at ��̳. There are so many fonts, type sets, and sizes, and I think this kind of collection is really unparalleled. Some of those fonts are wild, unimaginable, and they definitely don’t exist in your standard Microsoft Word program.”

‘It would have been impossible to realize this without the Dawson letterpress’

The Dawson Print Shop is not only a learning space for students, it is also a hub for visiting artists and creatives who want to push the possibilities of printmaking. For Withyman, the Dawson provided the space to teach declining skill sets that would be hard to find in a modern classroom.

“Amongst the ongoing de-skilling of material practices and processes, it’s incredibly important to give students access to these alternative hands-on technologies and empower them to explore slower methods of text and image making,” says Withyman. “This is what makes the Dawson such a unique place. “

Hosted by Kunstverein Toronto, the Wandering Calendar project explores the ways different cultures and communities have historically recorded time. Withyman’s contribution resulted in a series of 13 posters made with typeface and fonts that would have been popular decades ago or even hundreds of years ago, transforming them into a sort of time-travelling message that has inserted itself in a modern space. The vast variety of fonts and type available at the Dawson gave Withyman and Kajander the tools needed to bring the project to fruition.

“It would have been impossible to realize this work without access to the Dawson letterpress,” says Kajander, who facilitated the workshop while Ashes joined remotely. “You can’t just fit something like a letterpress studio into your kitchen or in your basement. Even if you were able to access a small press or an independent letterpress, there’s no way that anyone else has the amount of material for you to work with.

“I don’t think Ashes anticipated that there would be this richness of fonts available for us to try to incorporate into his work. It was really meaningful to see how happy he was with the outcome of the project,” he continues

'It's a great example of print-related research-creation work that can be hosted in the Dawson'

��̳ student, Lee Richard, had the opportunity to work with Withyman and Kajander during the Wandering Calendar project, and says it gave him the opportunity to work with established artists in the field.

“As a printmaking student, it was an exciting first step into working with established artists using print media in their work,” he says. “T�� collection of wood and metal type at the Dawson is incredible, and you can get a sense of the potential the space has for projects like Wandering Calendar. I hope that through future classes and projects like this, the collection can continue to be used and cared for.”

��̳ currently uses the Dawson Print Shop as a teaching space for short modules in classes across various divisions. Interim dean Dr. Jacqueline Warwick says a project like the Wandering Calendar is one of the many reasons the Dawson remains an invaluable resource at the university.

“T�� Wandering calendar is a great example of print-related research-creation work that can be hosted in the Dawson,” says Warwick. “T�� shop will be active in the fall with more research projects, and ��̳ is in the process of designing new course offerings for 2025 that will focus on contemporary approaches to book arts, letter pressing, and post-digital forms of making.”

For Kajander, the Dawson Print Shop is a resource of historical importance that will hopefully continue to provide valuable learning experiences for students and teachers at ��̳.

“I could imagine really exciting possibilities for teaching a course there,” he says. “Even when I was helping Ashes realize his work, I had so many thoughts about works that I would love to make at the Dawson. It’s been really inspiring to be there.”

To learn more about the Dawson Print Shop and upcoming workshops, visit .

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Laurie Anderson to receive an honorary degree from ��̳

Andy Murdoch — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:53:45 +0000

NSCAD University will give groundbreaking artist Laurie Anderson an honorary degree at its May 14 convocation ceremony.��

During her visit to ��̳, Anderson has a busy schedule. On May 13, she will give an artist talk to the ��̳ community, meet with ��̳ Student Art Award Finalists, and attend the Graduate Exhibition closing reception at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. On May 14, Anderson will deliver a convocation address to graduating students on the day.��

“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Laurie Anderson to NSCAD University. The last time she spoke here was in 1977. We are grateful to have this opportunity to formally recognize the incredible achievements of her ground-breaking career. Our students will benefit from her insights and advice,” says President Peggy Shannon.��

Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to expansive multimedia stage performances such as the eight-hour United States (1982), Empty Places (1990), Songs and Stories from Moby Dick (1999), and Delusion (2010). In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon.��

Anderson had created numerous audio-visual installations as well as films- the feature film Home of the Brave (1986), Carmen (1992), and Hidden Inside Mountains (2005).�� Her film  Heart of a Dog (2015) was chosen as an official selection of the 2015 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.��

Her works for quartets and orchestras, Songs for Amelia (2001), has been played in festivals and concert halls around the world and she has invented a series of instruments and electronic sculptures.��

Anderson has published ten books and been nominated for five Grammys throughout her recording career with Warner Records and Nonesuch. She released Landfall, a collaboration with the Kronos Quartet, which received a Grammy award in 2018.��

Her visual work has been featured in many galleries and museums including in 2003, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon in France produced a touring retrospective of her work entitled The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson.�� In 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in São Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janeiro. Anderson’s largest solo exhibition at The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., titled The Weather (2021-2022), showcased the artist’s storytelling process through her work in video, performance, installation, painting, and other media.��

Her visual work is on long term display at MASS MoCA and her three virtual reality works, Chalkroom, Aloft, and To The Moon, collaborations with the artist Hsin-Chien Huang, won several awards including Best VR Experience at the 74th Venice International Film Festival in 2017 and were featured in the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.��

A retrospective of her work opened in 2023 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.��

In 2021 she served as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University and delivered the Norton lectures as video, now available online. She has worked on numerous projects in AI with the Machine Learning Institute in Adelaide, Australia where she was artist in residence in 2020. Anderson continues to tour her evolving performance The Art of Falling and is working on an opera, ARK, commissioned by the Manchester International Festival, premiering in 2024.��

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Make Your Mark: ��䴡��’s new alumni ring is fully customizable to ensure each student graduates with a unique piece

Sarah Poko — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:36:17 +0000

Using ethically sourced materials, the new ��̳ alumni ring is a testament to the academic achievement of the students and the ethical values of the university.

As plans for convocation are underway at NSCAD University, graduating students are excited to make that unmistakable stride of pride across the stage. In addition to having a diploma in hand, there is another significant emblem of academic achievement —an alumni ring.

Designed by ��̳ student, Erin Fleming, the alumni ring is created with students in mind. As a Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing student, Fleming has used all the knowledge she learned at ��̳ to make a piece of customizable art that graduating students can look at with fond memories.

“I wanted something that felt personal for everyone,” she says. “Art school is such an individual experience, and the challenge was making it relatable for everybody in all different departments. So, I came up with the idea of everyone having their own personal mark that would be put on the ring.”

With Fleming’s design, students will be able to fully customize their alumni ring and digitally create their own patterns; this will then be etched onto the rings by the jeweler and sent to students.

The premise of Fleming’s ‘make your mark’ design resonated with the judges during the NSCAD Alumni Ring Redesign competition in 2023. She ultimately won the competition and was awarded a $1,000 prize, plus consideration for a design purchase and production agreement.

“I never really paid that much attention to the alumni ring before that point. So, I found it very difficult in the beginning,” she says. “I made several samples to make sure it was even possible to map a pencil mark onto a ring, and it was all digital, which was pretty far out of my realm of experience, but I had a lot of help along the way.”

MAKING A RING THAT SUIT THE TIMES

Some of that help came from Greg Sims, assistant professor in the division of craft, jewelry and metalsmithing, who saw a��chance to update ��䴡��’s alumni ring design. With the previous ring being phased out of production, Sims put together a design competition for current students.

“I recognized that there was an opportunity to make it more current and make it more reflective of the students that are going through the institution now,” he says. ��

At the same time, Sims was spearheading ��䴡��’s first ever Fairmined Agreement, which allows jewelry design and metalsmithing students access to ethically sourced gold and silver in their program. The same ethically sourced materials will also be used to make the alumni rings.

“When the question came up as to whether or not this ring should be using ethically sourced or responsibly sourced materials, we all said yes,” says Sims. “Because otherwise, it’s a glaring issue that doesn’t really reflect the values of our students or the institution.”

With every ring purchase, students will receive a Fairmined Certificate that will allow them to trace the source of their rings; they will be able to see the supply chain, the record of sales, all the way to the time and location of the mines that the minerals were sourced. Each actor in the supply chain is audited every three years to ensure that the standards of Fairmined are being adhered to.

FAIRMINED EVERY STEP OF THE WAY

��̳ commissioned — who specializes in ethically traded gems and Fairmined metals—to create the rings. Owner John Esposito is excited that institutions like ��̳ are seeing the value in Fairmined and sustainable jewelry.

“T�� biggest reason why I work with Fairmined is I wouldn’t want to put someone through the abhorrent abuses that come with the mining industry; I don’t want my jewelry to be part of that legacy,” he says. “T��re are millions of people that depend on mining to support their families worldwide, and while we can’t completely eradicate mining, we can do it differently. We can make sure people can still support their families and also have an ethical supply chain, which we can source from.”

When Esposito started Malleable in 2017, it was one of the first and only Fairtrade Licensed Goldsmiths in Canada. He wants other jewellers to normalize the use of Fairmined metals, not just to fit the trend of sustainability, but to change the system of jewelry making for the better.

“I feel that a lot of jewelry designers see Fairmined and look at it like a competition in a negative way,” he says. “But really, this is a ‘co-petition’; we can all be in the same industry and working together to create a community of people and create change through business for good.”

DESIGNING YOUR NSCAD ALUMNI RINGS

Fleming will also be graduating this year and is excited to see her work on the hands of her peers.

“I’ve had alumni reach out to me and say, ‘I already bought the old ring, but I really want this ring.’ And that’s the best feedback I could have,” she says. “During the process of going through art school, I never thought I would get such enthusiastic anticipation for something that I created.”

As a former jewelry student himself, Esposito believes the alumni rings are just as important as an engagement ring or wedding ring, because they symbolize an integral part of someone’s life.

“I know how hard it is to go into jewelry arts as an academic venture, and even more so how difficult it is to be a jewelry designer out in the big wide world,” he says. “So, the ring can be grounding and a physical reminder of how far you’ve come.”

Sims has spent the winter developing and testing the software students will use to design their rings. He wants to ensure everyone has a positive experience creating their final piece of art as a ��̳ student.

“We want students to feel confident in their mark making,” he says. “We recognize that there are going to be some people that are maybe hesitant to commit to a design and we are here to make sure that they come out on the other side with a ring that truly represents them.”

The will begin selling the new alumni rings to graduates at the ceremony on May 14, offering one-on-one design appointments to students and alumni both in-person and online.

“We want to ensure that everyone can bring their ideas to life and honor the design as their own, so it’s really important to us that the ��̳ community feel supported throughout the process from idea to the first time they slide on their new ring,” says the NSCAD Art Store in a statement.

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Artist talk with Matthew Rankin on April 18

Sarah Poko — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 09:00:01 +0000

Thursday, April 18, 2024

7 p.m.

Academy Building (A208)

Matthew Rankin was born in Winnipeg and studied history at McGill and Université Laval.

Working in hybrids of animation, documentary and fiction, Rankin is the director of 30 short films and two features. His work has been presented at Sundance, SXSW, Annecy, TIFF, Berlinale, Cannes Critics Week and on the Criterion Channel. His first feature, The Twentieth Century, was awarded the 2020 FIPRESCI Prize of the International Film Critics at the Berlin Film Festival and the Best Canadian First Feature Prize at TIFF in 2019.

Now living in Montreal, Rankin has been artist in residence at Yaddo, MacDowell, Acme Artist Studios, the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, and was briefly employed as a GT6 Media Officer for the Dominion Parks Branch.

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��̳ President launches I.D.E.A. Fund for Mi’kmaw, African Nova Scotian, and underrepresented students

Sarah Poko — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 14:04:40 +0000

The new funding initiative aims to empower students with the funds needed to pursue their creative ambitions.

NSCAD University’s President, Dr. Peggy Shannon, is launching The I.D.E.A. Fund to financially assist students from Mi’kmaw, African Nova Scotian and underrepresented backgrounds that want to pursue an education in art and design.��

The initiative was launched by Shannon in March 2024, with the mission to cultivate creativity, foster innovation, and nurture talent—which embodies ��䴡��’s values of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism (I.D.E.A.).

Specifically designed to support Mi’kmaw, African Nova Scotians, and youth emerging from foster care, this fund aims to support students with financial need and lighten their educational costs. In the spirit of enriching ��䴡��’s creative community, Shannon has pledged to match every donation up to $25,000 in contributions to the fund.

“T�� I.D.E.A. Fund represents our unwavering commitment to creating a more equitable and inclusive environment within our ��̳ community,” says Shannon. “At ��̳, we firmly believe that diversity is our greatest strength and that by investing in the next generation of creative minds, we are paving the way for a brighter and more inclusive future.”

Jude Gerrard, ��䴡��’s Ombudsperson and Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Consultant, says this fund will go a long way in diversifying the wider creative sector in Nova Scotia.

“Initiatives like the I.D.E.A. Fund not only foster diversity in the creative industry but also serve as pathways to amplify voices that have historically been underrepresented,” he says. “By investing in the education and opportunities of Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian students, as well as students who have been part of the foster care system, we can continue to grow the creative industry and have it truly represent the social and cultural landscape of Nova Scotia. Diverse perspectives, experiences, and talents will help to create a more vibrant and inclusive industry for all.”

The I.D.E.A. Fund will be available as entrance scholarships for eligible students, starting in the Fall Semester of 2024.

Dr. Jacqueline Warwick, Interim Dean at ��̳, says for students, the fund will make a difference between living their dreams or putting them on hold—sometimes, permanently.

“As higher education across Canada strives to be more inclusive, we need to create pathways for students who might not otherwise see themselves in an art university program,” she says. “T�� I.D.E.A. Fund will help ��̳ train students who will go on to share their talents and brilliance professionally. Through these pathways, the fields of art and design will benefit enormously, and the art world will be more vibrant and diverse.”

Donate to The I.D.E.A. Fund today and help students get one step closer to achieving their dreams. Your contribution, no matter the size, will directly support talented individuals at a pivotal moment in their lives.

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