#NSCAD printmaking

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Featured MFA: Emily Davidson

Our next featured 2nd year MFA works with printmaking, design and textiles: Emily Davidson!!!

Emily Davidson is a settler artist, activist and graphic designer based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Her artistic practice uses printmaking to investigate the history of leftist political movements, imagine utopian futures, and agitate for social justice causes. Her current research focuses on the entangled relationship of print media in historic and ongoing colonization across Turtle Island, and the formation of settler-colonial states on Indigenous lands. Emily graduated from NSCAD University in 2009 (BFA, Interdisciplinary) and is a current MFA candidate at NSCAD. Emily is teaching Post-Digital Printmaking at NSCAD for the first time this semester, which is a course she designed based on her cross-disciplinary printmaking and graphic design practice. Emily is a recipient of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s Program in Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Find out more about Emily and her practice on this blog or her website https://emilydavidsonart.com and her Instagram  instragam.com/madlyvisioned

We visited Emily in the Dawson Printshop and her studio at Fountain Campus N500. Here is what she told us about her studio work:

My process employs visual articulation of extensive research and analysis. I’m not afraid to be didactic to clearly communicate the intent of my work. This means that my studio practice involves digging through archives (primarily digital archives right now due to COVID-19 restrictions); finding and reading articles to develop analysis; and making lists (so many lists!), spreadsheets and digital maps. Lately, I've been focused on researching the wood type collection in the Dawson Printshop. I've been sorting the collection and working on identification of previously unidentified specimens. One of the most exciting revelations is that one specimen was produced by Page & Co. in Greenville, Connecticut–which dates this type's production to between 1857-1869! In my work on the intertwined history of print and colonization knowing specific dates when wood type was produced is crucial. What messages and ideas has this type disseminated in the last 150 years?

Do you keep a special object in your studio:

I keep a special piece of wood type in my studio. It's a 12-line capital letter R from the Columbian typeface. For a long time, it was the only piece of wood type I owned because I bought it as an (overpriced) orphan from a local antique store.

[halifaxlookbook]

〰 💀: @nverbekeqqq 〰 "another messy selfie // stop by the NSCAD Winter Pop Up Shop this weekend to grab some work by yours truly & other lovely arts students // Friday 4-9pm, Saturday 10am-4pm // #nscad” : : #nscaduniversity #studentwork #artschool #printmaking #supportlocal

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Yorath House Artist Studio Residency: Meet the artists - Andrew Thorne and Anna Wildish

At the end of August, we welcomed a new artist duo to the Yorath House Artist Studio. Andrew Thorne and Anna Wildish, partners and artistic collaborators, have been busy experimenting with sound, textiles, and printmaking.

Andrew Thorne is an early career artist, born in Mi’kma’ki and Wolastoqiyik, or Moncton, New Brunswick, he received an interdisciplinary BFA from NSCAD University in 2020. Thorne moved to Treaty Six territory, Edmonton, in the winter of 2021 with partner and collaborator, Anna Wildish, and their cat, Bubba. Thorne is drawn towards mediums that hold the capacity to share and offer the potential for discovery. These materials have recently involved woodcut, copper etching, and exploration of sound. Recently, Thorne has had work featured in SNAP’s 40th Anniversary portfolio, the Slow Down and Resist portfolio at MAPC, and a sound piece involving many radios with Anna Wildish featured in blur, a Mile Zero Dance salon curated by Stephanie Patsula. Andrew also teaches printmaking and other art classes through the City Arts Centre and SNAP (Society of Northern Alberta Print-artists).

Anna Wildish is a newcomer to Amiskwaciwâskahikan or Edmonton, having moved here in the winter of 2021 after receiving a BA in Art History and Textiles from NSCAD University in Kjipuktuk, also known as Halifax. Since then Wildish has been fortunate enough to learn about the artist community here through her work at the Alberta Craft Council as a Gallery Assistant. Wildish is particularly interested in art as a means of connection, community building and confrontation. You can often find her biking, playing music, talking to her cat or moonlighting at Wee Book Inn.

During their Yorath House Artist Residency, Wildish and Thorne will expand on their collaborative practice of making sounds and noises, while transforming the Yorath House and the surrounding area into a place of discovery. The artists believe in the importance of public spaces; for them, they offer an opportunity for widespread collaboration and collective expression.

Through their print and textiles-based installation, “Symposium of Non-sense", their aim is to evoke a space that invites all members of the community to interact and play. “Buena Vista Park is a very relaxed and friendly place, we want to surprise people, catch them off guard in that relaxed environment and provide the chance to think and to play, if that’s what they’d like to do.”

The artists invite the public to participate by discovering the plinths and pedestals that they have constructed and placed around the grounds of Yorath House. These structures will bring into question what we value or “put on a pedestal”, while encouraging people to ask “what work deserves to be public work ? Who do we build monuments for and for what purpose?”

Wildish and Thorne believe that sound as an experiential medium has the potential to gather people and spark moments of collective joy. As with the plinth and fibre creations, the artists look to sound as another means of impacting and altering an environment, and encouraging community through collaboration. Wildish and Thorne have played music together in the Halifax based group, Tangent, having just completed a tour of the east coast in August. However, the sonic work they are creating during their residency is a far cry from the music they are used to making.

Aside from building plinths, tapestries and woodcut prints, the two have been creating collages of sound, derived from the many sounds of people and plants alike in the River Valley.

Thorne and Wildish have also been documenting their time at Yorath House on Thorne's website. The blog section includes additional photos, observations, and a recording of a xylophone played using the rocks and stones surrounding the shore of the river. Check out their blog here.

At the end of September, Edmontonians are invited to come find the duo at the Yorath House, where they will be performing some of the sound work they have been developing, live in the Buena Vista Park. More details will be shared soon, so keep an eye on the EAC's social media channels and EAC Weekly newsletter.

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Erin Hollingshead (@ehollingsheadart) is a visual artist living on the East Coast of Canada, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She attended NSCAD University, graduating in 2016, and has been working on a series of ocean themed works since then. Her two main artistic mediums are printmaking and painting, each offering its own unique qualities when creating ocean imagery. The ocean is a common theme in her work; gathering inspiration from her adventures as a surfer, swimmer, snorkeler, beach comber and coastal hiker. She is always looking at the ground for treasures, and above and below the water for the beauty and peace the ocean provides. ⁠ See more of Erin's work at https://ift.tt/qNPazvg https://instagr.am/p/CeB2O1oOV3R/

[polleyk94]

We were joking one day and someone said this so I decided to make a print of it #lol #prints #printmaking #dawsonprintshop #art #halifaxartist #notforthefaintofheart (at NSCAD University) https://www.instagram.com/p/BqUsl7IHjIX/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ykwms1ziganm

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TONIGHT 4-9 + SAT 10-4 at ART BAR from @nscadprintclub — It’s that time of year! ❄️ NSCADs annual Holiday Pop-Up sale is fast approaching and we’re busy doing preparation here in the print shop. Save the date for fun holiday shopping in support of our students in fine art, craft and design! The sale this year will be Friday, Dec. 8th from 4pm-9pm & Saturday, Dec. 9th from 10am-4pm @artbarprojects , 1891 Granville st. Happy Holidays ☃️ . . . . . @nscaduniversity @nscad_ceramics @nscadofficial #art #artschool #artstudent #sale #artsale #popupsale #holidaysale #happyholidays #print #printmaking #screenprint #ceramics #jewlery #craft #craftsale #design #drawing #pinting #sculpture #textiles #nscad #nscadstudent #artsudio #halifax @halifaxnoise @nscadjwly http://ift.tt/2A4WivO

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Look who’s featured on the 2016 MAPC conference website! Our very own Jill Graham, NSCAD Technician and Master Printer (image at far left). She will be on the panel: "Collaborative Matters: From Stone Lithography Printing into Film Animation Crossing Series" with long time artist collaborator Endi Poskovic. Professor Ericka Walker will also be presenting at the conference on two separate panels: “Printing is Knowing: Hand‐making in the Digital Age” with Abbey Kleinert, Tzvi Izaksonas and Nathan Meltz and “Of the North” with Bob Erickson, Mark Ritchie and Tracy Templeton. This year’s conference is in Louisville, KY, October 5-8.

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Featured MFA: Carrie Phillips Kieser

Our featured first year MFA of this week utilizes print, drawing and thread as media in her art practise: Carrie Phillips Kieser!

Carrie states about her practice: “My work concerns meditations of delicate and complex ecosystems with imagined or perceived boundaries such as ocean shorelines, wilderness areas and lake edges. I think about how these spaces are penetrated and how humankind has entangled ourselves.”

She has recently moved to Nova Scotia from Calgary Alberta where she was working as the executive director of Alberta Printmakers, a non-profit artist-run center dedicated to promoting print media. Within her personal artistic practice, she is concerned with issues around environment and nature, with healing and nurturing, and is interested in language, poetry, and semiotics. She explores these concepts through the media of print, drawing, and thread. Through pursuing her MFA at NSCAD, she is hoping to expand her artistic community, build on bridging print into public spaces, and find collaborative partnerships. In her spare time, she is exploring the waters by learning to sail with her two boys in a tiny 420 sailboat.

If you want to see more of her work, check out our studio visit or go tho her website www.carriephillipskieser.com or Instagram  @carrie.phillipskieser

We visited Carrie in Fountain Campus, where she is working in  the Printmaking studios and her personal studio in N450!

And like all the others we ask her to tell us about your studio Practice!

Working in the realm of delicate ecosystems, my current work is focused on a particular area in Nova Scotia, the Blue Mountains Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness Area. This area, as with all wilderness areas and nature reserves are important places for their ecological complexity and contributions to the health of the planet. My print practice is a visual expression of the things I am learning from this specific place. Through the development of a series of repeat relief patterns, I am learning the gifts of healing through the native flora that grow here and trying to understand how these images can offer places/ spaces of meditation in other locations.  Within a series of copper plate etchings, I am diving into the rich, resilient world of epiphytes and trying to express this in the materiality of delicate gampi tissues and mulberry papers. Many of the etchings are still in the development stage but I am excited about some new possibilities and expressions that are coming out of them.

Do you keep a special object in your studio?

hmmmmm..many special objects, plants and lichens, small sticks and twigs, dried flowers, objects collected from my travels, art pieces from friends, a tea pot and mug and my books.

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Featured MFA: Emily Davidson

Our featured MFA this week is first year Printmaking and Textiles artist Emily Davidson! 

Emily is an artist, graphic designer, activist, and parent to a toddler. She was born in Calgary, raised in Edmonton, and has been based in Halifax since 2005. She obtained her BFA, Interdisciplinary (Art History Minor), in 2009 from NSCAD. Her artistic practice uses printmaking to investigate the history of leftist political movements, imagine Utopian futures, and agitate for social change. 

Check out her latest work in the group exhibition, Gut Feeling, at Dalhousie Art Gallery January 17th - March 15th 2020. http://artgallery.dal.ca/gut-feeling

What are you working on right now? I've been embroidering images based on LGBT memorabilia from the 1990s that relate to themes of gay anger. I'm working towards a project that will combine printmaking and textile mediums. This project stemmed from my desire to investigate queer intergenerational kinship. From there, I've delved into how the Western AIDS epidemic and resulting activism reshaped our communities and how that history continues to affect queer kinship and queer futures. Whenever my mom makes a quilt she says "there's a little love in every stitch"—in this case I think it's a little anger in every stitch.

How do you relate to your studio? My studio is my office. The majority of my time in the studio is spent on academic work, research, and all the administrative work that goes into art making. When I'm not reading and writing, you can find me in my studio project planning and sketching. Most of the art production happens in the printmaking and textiles studios! 

Is there an object in your studio with significance/a story? Maybe it's just weird?One of my mentors recently gave me an original ACT UP sticker. I've been working mostly from photographs of gay archival material and it's so lovely to get my hands on the real deal!

[polleyk94]

#lino #linocut #printmaking #ocean #seagul #dawsonprintshop #nscadartfactory #nscad (at NSCAD University) https://www.instagram.com/p/BqDRQPHnAAl/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=gsltu2xcmqy8

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Featured MFA: Morgan Melenka

Our featured MFA student this week is second year Morgan Melenka!  Each week we will be sharing studio photos and information to showcase all of our amazing students.

Photos: Maddie Alexander

Morgan Melenka Class of 2019 Studio location: N201 (Fountain Campus)

Department: MFA Interdisciplinary  Focus / Medium: Printmaking and sculpture 

Morgan’s Work This week I’m wrapping up floating column 1.4 (or maybe 2.0?), this iteration made from strips of drywall tape silkscreened with wood laminate texture. Also on the docket are two sets of foam stairs that I’m trying to figure out, one set is being surfaced with laminate samples. These and the growing pile of things in the studio are heading towards the thesis exhibition and are all centred on the question of what happens when space becomes an image, specifically in the case of the invasive digital image. 

Morgan’s Studio Oh my goodness. I made this chair that I love that's really just four pieces of pink insulation foam glued together, about 24"x18" and its really dense and heavy. Its my favourite. I use it while scrubbing grout and messing around with smaller sculptural things. There's something very satisfying about all its qualities. 

Check out more of Morgan’s work on her website!

— Next week we’ll feature Aralia Maxwell.

[halifaxnoise]

TODAY (Sat) From @nscaduniversity — Take a peek in our printmaking studios today 10am to 3 pm. We’re having an open house at #NSCAD Fountain Campus, 5163 Duke st., #halifax #halifaxnoise http://ift.tt/2xRW8dd

[halifaxnoise]

From @nscadprintclub — 💸SALE💸 . . . . . @nscadofficial #nscad #sale #printsale #halifax @halifaxnoise #printshop #print #printmaking #litho #lithography #intaglio #reliefprint #relief #intaglioprint #screenprint #screenprinting #silkscreen #student #artstudent #studentsale #studentwork #halifaxart http://ift.tt/2plOv75

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Welcome back NSCAD printmaking students! Professor Ericka Walker’s Intermediate Screen/Litho students are diving right into their first big assignment of the year.

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Congratulations to Printmaking Student Jordan Blackburn! Winner of the BMO First Art Award ($5,000) which includes his inclusion in the final exhibition and competition to win an additional $10,000.

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NSCAD printmaking area’s 2016 summer Visiting Artist Joscelyn Gardner in residence for 5 weeks to work with technician and Master Printer Jill Graham on a large stone lithograph.