DAWSON CREEK – Two special presentations will be held at the Dawson Creek Campus of Northern Lights College on Thursday, Feb. 3 as part the Dawson Creek Spirit Arts Festival.
The events are a special lecture by nationally-acclaimed artist Eric Cameron and a poetry reading by award-winning poet and Chair of the Department of Writing, University of Victoria, Lorna Crozier.
Cameron’s lecture at NLC is hosted by the Visual and Graphic Communication Arts program. The lecture is supported through a grant from the William and Mary Wanka Art Promotion award, which is administered by the NLC Foundation. NLC’s Visual Arts instructor Jennifer Bowes applied for and was awarded the Wanka award for the purpose of hosting this special lecture.
Cameron is a university art professor who has worked at the University of Calgary for more than two decades. He won the Governor General’s Award in 2004, and is recognized for a body of work titled, The Divine Comedy, including a series of Thick Paintings. He began this series in 1979, where he daily recorded and applied a layer of white gesso to a series of objects. In doing so, he started to question and blur the boundaries between traditional definitions of painting and sculpture.
As part of the Visual Arts program at NLC, an ongoing research project has been introduced, based on Cameron’s work. Painting/sculpture students were responsible for following Cameron’s process, selecting an object of their own. The students have also been keeping a journal of how their object, ideas and responses have evolved throughout the process.
“The objective of the assignment is to expose the students to a range of Art practice and to start talking about their responses and perceptions around artwork they would normally choose to dismiss,” said Bowes. “Tackling difficult ideas will help their course dialogue in Art History, but also prepare them for transfer into a Degree program.”
Cameron’s lecture will be held on Feb. 3 at 7 pm in the lecture hall in the new Health Sciences Building at the Dawson Creek Campus of NLC.
Cameron also will have an exhibit of his work on display at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery as part of the Alberta Foundation of the Arts Traveling exhibit program. The opening for that exhibit is Feb. 4 at 7 pm.
Meanwhile, Crozier will have a classroom reading as part of NLC’s Creative Writing 209 course, with instructor Donna Kane, in the Health Sciences Building, Room 115, on Feb. 3 at 7 pm. There will be videoconference available to other NLC campuses: Fort St. John, Room 2-115; Chetwynd, Room 100; and Fort Nelson, Room TBA (note: Fort Nelson start time, 6 pm PST).
She will be reading from her most recent collection of poetry, The Blue Hour of the Day, Selected Poems, and from her memoir, Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir.
Crozier’s awards include: Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Pat Lowther Award, National Magazine Gold Medal, Canadian Authors’ Association Award, and CBC literary competition winner.
As part of the Festival, Crozier will also be holding a public reading on Feb. 4 at the Alaska Café at 8 pm.
The Visual Arts students also will be part of the Festival’s Progressive Tour, with a ‘shoe project’ on display in the window at Casual Concepts in downtown Dawson Creek. Bowes and approximately 17 students are participating with this project.
As well, on Feb. 24-27, the Flying Colours Artists Association will be presenting a Printmaking Workshop by Victoria Edgarr in the Visual Arts studio at NLC from 10 am to 4 pm.
For more information on the Eric Cameron lecture or the printmaking workshop, contact NLC’s Visual Arts studio at 250-784-7547 or jbowes@nlc.bc.ca. For more information on the Lorna Crozier reading, contact Donna Kane at 250-784-7613, or dkane@nlc.bc.ca.
For a complete list of events and activities during the Festival, go to spiritdc.ca.