The NIC Artist Talk Series invites contemporary Canadian artists to speak about their art and their careers. It is an opportunity to meet artists first-hand and learn how and why they create their artwork.
"The NIC Fine Art Department are honoured to host this line-up of practicing artists,” said Sara Vipond, Sara Vipond, NIC Fine Art faculty member and series co-ordinator. “Contemporary artists analyze and question the current events and ideologies of our time, a visual mode of communication that can open new ways of seeing, thinking, being and belonging.”
Each lecture for the Winter Artist Talk Series is free and open to the public. They take place at the Stan Hagen Theatre on the Comox Valley campus starting at 7 p.m. They last one hour and are followed by an open question-and-answer period.
The first talk features Christine Kirouac, a Winnipeg-based Métis artist/writer whose interdisciplinary projects are a negotiation of (dis)placement and (non)acceptance. She crafts provocative work through a lens of humour, fearlessness, personal intimacy and experience that exposes struggles to translate and transcribe “belonging.”
The following talk, on Feb. 15, features Cole Speck, who was raised on the 'Namgis reserve on the island of Alert Bay on the northern shore of Vancouver Island.
He comes from a very strong cultural and artistic heritage, as his great grandfather was the late Chief John Speck of the Tlowitsis, father of the late Henry Speck Sr. He is also the great grandson of the late Harry Hanuse of Mamalalaka (Village Island).
As an apprentice of the late master carver Beau Dick, Speck continues to promote Kwakwaka'wakw culture through his practice and the knowledge gained from his mentor.
Finally, artist David Maclean will speak on March 7. His career spans 50 years, and his work is described as “figurative expressionism” in the media of painting, drawing and/or printmaking. He is also NIC Professor Emeritus and taught for the Fine Art department for decades.
His newest venture has been creating digital images that combine his older works and/or historical paintings and sculpture.
For more information, http://www.nic.bc.ca/programs/arts-science-and-management/fine-arts/nic-artist-talk-series/.
