Graduate projects

Dustin Garnet: Constructing New Histories: Central Tech and Art Education in Canada

"Untitled" 2010 - Ulf Bein (CTS)

"CTS Art Classroom" Courtesy of the CTS Art Department Records

PhD Candidate Dustin Garnet is investigating the historical significance of the 121-year-old Central Technical School (CTS) art program in downtown Toronto. Dustin's thesis provides a comprehensive, multi-dimensional new histories account of this institution linking the socio-cultural contributions of this school to the wider field of art education in Canada. This study of the art program at CTS adds to understanding the broader forces of political, economic, and cultural factors, artistic pedagogical practices that chart the evolution of art education through this case study.

See Dustin's artwork and the CTS art program.

Recent Publications

Garnet, D. (2012). Art Education Theory and Practical Experience: My Journey as an Art Educator and Amateur Theorist. Teaching Artist Journal,10(4), 222-228.

Garnet, D. (2012). Conductive Transmission. Visual Arts Research, 38(2), 69-71.

Garnet, D. (2012). [Review of the book Matter Matters: Art Education and Material Culture Studies]. Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art, 1(3) 242-244.

Garnet, D. (2012). Unknown and Hidden: The Toronto District School Board Education Archive. The Canadian Review of Art Education. 39, 41-56.

Danut Zbarcea - MetaIconology

PhD Student in Art Education Danut Zbarcea's research interests include art practice and communication across hypermedia, communication interfaces and media ethics, the rhetorical and violent language of hypermedia, the complex effects of hypermedia language on viewer (as indirect participant of the process of construction of knowledge in hypermedia), educational strategies of awareness and reflection practices related to the language of hypermedia. During his artistic and educational career he has published, presented and exhibited work across these diverse areas and continues to pursue a multi-disciplinary perspective in his linked practices.

Danut Zbarcea current project is called MetaIconology.

Everything is labelled today with an advertisement of fear. The guns, the wars on terror became obsessive and gain the status of cult. The learning process seems to sustain this economy death. More than ever we have to face an invisible enemy: the fear that media and other public or private voices sold us every moment of life. Our assumed fear becomes a way of life. We become violent. Violence (as an indefinite mask) sustains the culture of fear in various forms: fashionable, enjoyable, desensitized and saleable. Because of us and through us violence creates others ways of violent living. Fear influences our identity, our context of life and destroys our chance to live in harmony.

By creating this type of visual of the human attitude my intention was to open an interrogation on the destiny of today's education. The new aspect of this evolution is represented by hypermedia as an ecstatic place, marked by the inalterable and repetitive human attitudes of fear, violence, infantilism, and intolerance.

Laurel Hart: Teaching photography to teens for cross-cultural understanding

laurel-hart-art-education-concordia-photography-cross-cultural-understanding

Laurel Hart's Master's thesis is an action research investigation entitled Life as they know it: Teaching photography to teens for cross-cultural understanding and identity development within community art education.

Hart's research investigates how art can be used to aid in community building, individual development and further contribute to social justice - this often leads to interdisciplinary and non-traditional applications of art. Her artwork and teaching includes photography (both digital and darkroom), community-based interventions, relational artwork, new media and web-based art and installations which involve sound, projection and photographs manipulated and printed on paper and fabric.

Night Lights, Hart's most recent work as an artist, invites members of the community to contribute lessons they have learned in their life. These quotes are then made into LED lit installations around Montreal.

Jessica Aylsworth - Memory Forest: A Self-Portrait

MA in Art Education student

Memory Forest: A Self-Portrait represents Jessica Aylsworth's inquiry into memory as a territory of the mindscape, and how memories contribute to our sense of self. Memories reveal and speak towards what is important to an individual and one's values, nature and experiences. With this work, Alysworth wanted not only to reveal some of her own memories, but also to comment on the nature of memories themselves. She created an installation where the viewer can walk amongst her personal memories, while also contemplating the nature of memories in general.

Antoinette Koranteng - Recycled Head

Master's in Art Education student Antoinette Koranteng uses recyclable materials such as magazines, cardboard, pop and beer cans, wire and rubber bicycle tubes to create art, as evidenced in her Recycled Head project.

Koranteng's research objective is to give new life to materials that are normally thrown out and treated as waste.

Griffintown Tour: A Self-Guided Urban History Walk by G. Scott MacLeod

MA in Art Education student Scott Macleod's project documents 21 of the key residential and industrial buildings and historical sites remaining in Griffintown, an historic Montreal neighbourhood that birthed the Industrial Revolution in Canada and was once home to a large immigrant community. His project was designed to expose the public to an important historic region of Montreal and to celebrate the memories of the people, the industry and the history of Griffintown.

Building off the approach of his previous projects, Macleod began to research this project by photographing a selection of key buildings and sites of interest within the commonly accepted borders of Griffintown: the Lachine Canal to the south and Notre-Dame, McGill and Guy Streets to the north, east and west, respectively.

Photography, drawing and animation have been used to create a visual record of these sites. Combined with brief histories and a Google map, Macleod plans to make images and animations will be freely available online for those wishing to take a self-guided tour at www.griffintowntour.com

Geneviève Balcer: Memorial pieces honour her uncle

Geneviève Balcer's creations are memorial pieces that deal celebrate the life of her beloved uncle and godfather, who passed away in 2008 from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and Lyme disease.

The works are acrylic/medium acetate prints on found wood panels and paper, and are based on several photographs of him smiling.

Balcer wrote her accompanying artist statement using medical information regarding the symptomatic similarities between Lyme disease and ALS, in hopes that anyone affected with a tick bite leading to Lyme disease will be aware of the potential developments and will seek out appropriate treatment.

María Ezcurra - Re-contextualizing fabric and fashion

María Ezcurra is a student in the PhD program in Art Education. Her research re-contextualize garments, transforming them to create reconfigurations and experiences. She converts clothes into structures that contain the body's absence, reverting the principle of sculpture when placing the meaning in the mold. Recently here work was exhibit at the New City Gas in Griffintown, for the Nuit Blanche 2011 in Montreal. Maria states:

With my work, I often un-make, re-contextualize or I re-group garments, transforming them to create new reconfigurations and experiences. I convert clothes into structures that contain the body's absence, reverting the principle of sculpture when placing the meaning in the mold. Making my pieces is like carrying out an autopsy in which I let see the interior - physical or symbolic- like an external skin, starting from its negative to remit to the body.

To see more of Maria's work, visit the artist's website.

Department of Art Education