Art has to be caught, not taught.

This is my latest presentation for my Drawing to Visual Culture class. I feel very privileged to have interviewed Ted Harrison personally. I am also grateful to my friends and other individuals who helped me.

Ted Harrison

Emergence of Art Education in Canada

This is a presentation I did for my current class on the history and development of art education in Canada- From Drawing to Visual Culture. I was presenting Chapter 5-The Dawn of the Twentieth Century: Art Education in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia from Harold Pearse's 2006 book From Drawing to Visual Culture: A History of Art Education in Canada. I have also added a copy of the paper I wrote in response to the same chapter.

The Emergence of Canadian Art Education

From Drawing to Visual Culture

the eyes deceive

This is a video I made as a project for one of my graduate classes. I used photos taken by a webcam over a two week period. Some of the images are directly from the webcam but others I have collaged using Photoshop. I have addressed some of the concepts in art education that we examined - identity, place and surveillance.

New Work

This is the latest scarf that I have painted. It was a thank you gift for the lady who helped me run art club.
These are photos of my latest art project which also happens to be an assignment for my latest graduate class- Art,Education and Contemporary Culture. The assignment was "to map my “personal geography” and/or “other maps of the imagination” in light of the readings and my thinking as I embark on the study of these issues". Our instructor directed us to look at the book "You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination" by Katherine Harmon and it is a pretty amazing book!

My "map" is a fictional landscape inspired by my love of the fantasy genre of novels and the maps of the worlds within them, satellite imagery from Google Earth/maps & NASA's Earth as Art website and the idea of old battle strategy maps and the models used to represent armies. The map is un-stretched canvas with doweling attached on each end so that it can be rolled up like a scroll for transport. It is meant to lay flat on a table with the models placed on top of it. I used acrylic paint for the map and the models are made of air dry clay (from Crayola!).

It is about the conflict between modernism and post-modernism and how I am coming to better understand and find my place somewhere in these fields of thought. The fact that the "armies" can be moved represents how my place within the ideologies can change and is affected by daily life and the world around me.

Silk painting

I've been painting on silk for close to 2 years now. It seems to agree with me and it is a neat art project to do with older students. Last year I ran an art club with grade 5 and 6 students and their silk paintings were beautiful. This year I have bought squares instead of rounds and we will do silk painting. I'm also hoping to do a chalk pastel project inspired by artist Jennifer Main.

I have found an American supplier that has excellent prices- the Dharma Trading Company for all the supplies for silk painting.

I have had fun painting scarves but I really like painting the smaller rounds and squares.
These are some recent pieces I've done.

More digi art

Just a couple of things I've done lately playing with photos from my cell phone and my photo editing program. These were actually pictures of the same cactus!