The OISE Art Exhibit showcases artwork of the OISE community: students, faculty and staff.
Below please see a gallery of previous exhibits.

The 4th annual
OISE Art Exhibit
April 6 - 13, 2009

Creative Transformations: Living and Learning through Art

Jamie Haiden

I paint and sculpt as a personal outlet. I like to see the combination of colours and shapes and the way their formal properties can influence one another. When I set out to make a piece of art, I start with inspiration that can come from anywhere but usually leads me somewhere I did not expect. As with this piece, I have been experimenting with integrating sculpture and plant life into my paintings for a while now, but I never expected the intense colour palette that I created here. The artwork was a learning process.

I hope that my artistic life can have this kind of influence on my students, that they will view their own education as a life-long process. As a teacher I feel it is my job to be a source of inspiration for my students. Like creating art, it is not always clear where education will lead, but the experience is a worthwhile end in itself.

Jamie Haiden is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate.         

Celia Correa

Maria Makiling

Mt. Makiling (which borders my hometown Los Banos on one side and Lake Laguna de Bay on the other) is one of the few remaining biodiversity areas in the Philippines. In the 90s it was declared a protected area under the jurisdiction of the University of the Phillippines at Los Banos. It is home to mossy forests, hot springs and many rare plants and birds. It is also said to be home to Maria Makiling, the most well known goddess in Philippine mythology. It is often said that Mt. Makiling resembles the profile of a woman, said to be Maria herself. This phenomenon is described as true from several different perspectives.

The image of Maria Makiling is one of the oldest and most popularized symbol of forest conservation in schools and communities in the Philippines. Her legend as a  guardian of the mountain and a benefactor of the townspeople has been the subject of stories told, paintings, books, comics and films.

Celia Correa works in the OISE Registrar’s Office.

Aliza Denomme

Reflection #54

The formal study of surface qualities is a principal theme in my work. Originally, I began experimenting by drawing representations of reflective surfaces. I have since widened my investigation to include a variety of surfaces with varying degrees of reflectivity. This includes those that may exist outside the notice of human perception. I feel all surfaces carry some fraction of reflective potential. Through my investigations, what could be potentially seen as a plain surface is transformed into a chaos of line, texture and tone.

This turmoil is harnessed within irregular grid patterns that impose control over the chaos. The loose geometric formation often goes unnoticed during the works developmental process, and is not recognized until after its completion. Thus, within each work is an inherent struggle between order and chaos. Such a resistance may transpire from my attempt to envision the obscure qualities of the modestly reflective surfaces.

These images that are simultaneously frenzied and calm are all labeled “Reflection #” and therefore enlighten the viewer to their subject matter. These titles are the extent of clarification offered to the viewer. The idea of psychological reflection is also one of interest to me and my work compels viewers to come to their own visual interpretations through their own self reflection. 

I employ graphite, chalk pastel, charcoal, and eraser in my work. I attempt to limit the amount of colour in my images. Colour is complicating and working with monochromatic tones allows me to better understand the reflective qualities I am attempting to distinguish and comprehend. My work is meant to awaken the viewer’s own observation of the inherent reflective properties of all surfaces.

Aliza Denomme is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate.        

Reneta Racheva

Just Offered

Despite their awesome powers, the Greek gods and goddesses were much like people. Transformation—the acts of changing from one form into another—is a common theme in Greek mythology.

Kirke, Greek Goddess of Transformation of the Soul.

The Queen bee helps to pollinate the apple trees and symbolizes the soul as well. ....Bee keeping has been documented as far back as 2600 B.C. in Egypt, as a symbol of the transformations undergone by our own souls.

 Dreams…miracles…reality

Has the big success of your dreams become a reality in your life? ...

How to change your thinking patterns, your cognitive system, and how to ignore limitations and transform your dreams into reality. The secret to all personal transformation is intent. The good news is that you can speed it up, and improve even your most basic cognitive abilities at any age. Dreams, goal, intention, law of attraction, manifest, miracles, perception…

Renata Racheva is an Internationally Educated Teacher – Visual Arts. She graduated from the University of Fine Art and Design, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. She studied in the class of famous Bulgarian masters: Professor N. Hadzitanev, Associate Professor Christo Zazinoff and N. Gelov.

Recently Racheva completed Models of Teaching, and AQ Dramatic Arts at OISE , University of Toronto. Using a variety of media - acrylic, oil or watercolor, Reneta takes a realistic approach to her paintings and endeavors to include even the smallest details. Her work can be found in galleries and private collections through Canada, as well as galleries in Greece, Bulgaria, Switzerland and the USA.

Suzanne Miller

The Art Studio

I was very fortunate to be part of an artists' collective called The Village Studio for several years under the mentorship of Jurek Denis, which was an incredibly rich and transformative experience for me and  the other artists. Here is a double portrait I painted in the studio where we worked of Anna, another artist, painting a portrait of Jurek, which is the more realistic and direct of the two portraits. This  painting was my way of keeping Jurek and those wonderful memories alive.

Suzanne Miller is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education.

Heather Richards

These paintings are an exploration of the collective creative process in contemporary dance.

They were completed after a stay at Hameau de la Brousse, an artist commune in the Bordeaux region of France. I am continually amazed and intrigued by the processes that performance artists and musicians use to create their work. The experience of working together to create a piece of art that is the product of multiple viewpoints is not something that I have been able to engage in as a solitary painter. These paintings represent my ongoing scrutiny of this process, where I remain an inquisitive spectator, but am unable to see the bigger picture of a community creative process.

 Heather Richards is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate.        

Melanie Cheskes

The relationship between teacher and student is not unlike that of painter and canvas. As one works the other, the other affects the one. The two parties cannot help but transform each other. In the end it does not matter whose hand held the brush.

 Melanie Cheskes is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate.   

Janet Markus

Spring

This painting is called "Spring." It is a metaphor for a few things that have to do with anticipation. I have tried to paint the feeling we get when we think we can almost see...something. I chose to paint a dog jumping in front of a window to capture that sensation (and excitement) of thinking we can see something just beyond where we are. I have attached 3 small canvases to the upper half of the larger painting: each small canvas is an idea, a sense of movement, and a moment in time.

Janet Markus is an art instructor in the OISE Initial Teacher Education program.

Miranda Blazey

detail Observer/Observed

Observer/Observed

The human eye distinguishes light, shape, and movement but it is our consciousness that determines out perception of people. What happens when you remove the superficial aspects of someone’s exterior and you are confronted with their eyes? Observer and Observed confronts the relationship between seeing and being seen.

 Alumni 2007

Michael Brown

My work is inspired by memories – memories of my past, and the emotions that these memories create in my mind when confronted with them in the present.  That being said, for some reason I have never created artwork that was inspired by my educational history.  I have created work that has focused on childhood and the loss of innocence but I have never really connected those ideas to my educational upbringing.  Looking back now at my elementary school life I remember always feeling overwhelmed and isolated.  These feelings continued up until my second year of University when I had the chance to focus my entire education on Visual Arts.  It was only when I was able to do this that I finally felt comfortable within the education system.  After four years I was finished University and finished school for good.   Little did I know that in 6 years time I would be back in school training to be a teacher.   The first week into teachers college I immediately remembered all the pressure and isolation that I used to feel way back in elementary school.  As week one melted into week 4, I began to feel more and more comfortable.  I began to understand that what I experienced in elementary school shouldn’t have happened and I was learning the many ways to reach every student.

This work not only represents myself as a student but also all the other students who were also neglected in their education.  I chose to use acrylic on bare canvas to create a dream like atmosphere that would allow all viewers to fall back into their own memories of childhood education.  The bare canvas also plays on the idea of Carte Blanche and the detrimental effects applying this blank page theory can have on a student.   I wanted the figure represented in the work to be close to full scale so I needed a large canvas.  I wanted the figure full scale so the viewer would feel as though they are in the classroom with the student.

As I reach the end of my teachers college experience, I truly understand the impact teachers can have on a student’s life, from the positive to the negative.  I created this work as a constant reminder of the troubles I had as a student and how important my actions as a teacher are to the students I will teach.

Michael Brown is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate with visual arts as his teachable.

Emily Drinkwater

 detail Underneath (Homage to Jennifer Angus)

Underneath highlights the beauty of living things. Insects are often viewed with disdain and repulsion and thus are rarely appreciated for their true splendor. In presenting the selected species of insects in an unconventional manner, these often misrepresented creatures are transformed into aspects of attraction and beauty. In Addition, the drawing reinforces the notion of creative exploration in which curiosity and a pursuit of knowledge become a journey for lifelong learning.

As a child, insects always fascinated me; that fascination grew into a passion and desire to understand these tiny creatures.  Each species on this drawing represents an insect that I have held in my hands and examined. The outdoors quickly became my first science classroom with a constant search for insects. This work is therefore also situated distinctly in an Ontario context.

Art is reflective of personal experiences, beliefs, and thoughts yet often simultaneously challenges viewers’ values and understanding.  Art is, therefore, inherently intertwined with learning. With this piece, viewers are challenged to change their preconceptions. This kaleidoscopic array of insects transforms the misunderstood into the celebrated.

Emily Drinkwater is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate. Crosstown Option

Spencer J. Harrison

These four pieces (details of two shown here) are the beginning research for my Doctorate in the Centre for Arts-Informed Research, in Adult Education and Community Development, here at OISE.  My research questions how gay men born in rural Ontario in the early 1960s could established a strong, positive sense of self with little, if any, images, narratives or artifacts from the gay and lesbian community to consider.  Living invisible lives and often having to create alternative narratives from those which were real, members from this population maintained two lives, the one they were living and the one they fabricated which allowed them to navigate the world safely.  These pieces explore living with multiple identities while trying to search for one’s truth.  Drawn and erased they explore the erasurism of my community’s history, while allowing me to consider the childhood narratives documented in the photographic artifacts from which they were made.  They will be the opening panels in the exhibition which will be my dissertation.

I began exhibiting my work while in the second year of my undergraduate degree in Fine Arts at Queen’s University.  I have now been exhibiting my work across Canada for over 20 years.  Painting, drawing and installation work are the mediums I most often use and my subject matter is always an aspect of the human condition.  The pinnacle of my career as an artist thus far was having my work discussed on the floor of the Canadian House of Commons as primary source information during debates around issues of equality for lesbians and gay men in Canada.

Jessica diPoce

Memories of Learning

In Memories of Learning I have taken into consideration my more prominent thoughts throughout my year in Teacher’s College.  I decided to keep a journal at the beginning of the year where I could record ideas, quotes I came across, or other thoughts which passed through my mind.  I knew that these entries would be used somehow in my culminating artwork for my Visual Arts course.

The portrait shape of the canvas used is representative of a self-portrait.  The colours and collaged elements of the piece symbolize my thoughts and feeling on this past year.  The painting is expressive and chaotic.  The dynamism in the piece shows action and movement.  The colours are thoughtful and optimistic.  The growth I felt myself making throughout the year was constant and consistent, and is further expressed through the hanging pieces of text.

In fact, this very text holds personal significance.  Every entry made in my journal was copied onto bits of recycled paper from the Ontario College of Art and Design’s printmaking shop, a place which formed the basis for my formal education.  The manner in which I have built my journal entries are representative of how my memories have been built.  All the information I have processed, and everything that I have learned has been so deliberately, yet tenderly stored in my mind as memory.  The tangled nature of the threaded pieces of text depicts how all of our memories become tangled, or interwoven with the realities of our lives.

Memories of Learning invites the viewer to touch the piece and explore its components.  This tactile piece contains various materials and found objects.  My artwork consistently relies on using items that would otherwise end up in a landfill.  My attitude and committed drive towards Ecological Literacy was also a source for this particular artwork, and this is a topic which I personally intend to explore further.

The overall appearance of the piece is suggestive of a dream-catcher, and the links I have made to my memories are obviously a reason for this characteristic.  Just as in our dreams, our memories collide with current thoughts, Memories of Learning, involves the viewer in perceiving my memories through their own belief system.  These two ideas collide to make a new, and unpredictable, idea.

In this culminating artwork, Memories of Learning, I have literally collected my thoughts and creatively constructed a symbolic memory of my learning and education.  Just as the text leaves us hanging and is left dangling, we are unaware of the future.  We are left with some sense of flow that somehow makes sense.  We are left hoping and working for a sense of place. 

Jessica DiPoce completed her BEd in 2008.

Robert Durocher

Araignée

Robert Durocher is an artist and teacher teaching Grade 5 in a downtown school.  He is currently finishing writing his thesis Masked: An arts-informed perspective into gay teacher identity at OISE.  He also makes work in drawing and printmaking.

Joanne Lynes

We Cherish the Tradition - Series

1. Green - Vert
2. Air Miles
3. Dollar Store

Words found on discarded bags express values that thrive and persist, reflecting the demands of the millenium. The activities of scavanging, saving, stretching and making do form the basis of many traditions and have given rise to many artforms including quiltmaking. I utilize messages found on bags and explore the values that have survived the millenium which persist in defining my experience.

Garbage Day

Garbage Day was created through a process of gathering, sorting, cutting and assembling my own discarded papers, using a sewing machine. Quilts are essentially transformational and have the potential of melding lived experience with art. By crafting material that would ordinarily go to a landfill site I am exploring and learning from my own consumer experience.

Joanne Lynes works in the OISE Library.

Jenny Polo

--in collaboration with a group of teenagers at Sick Kids on Diabetes Day

The Medicine Cabinet

“In my artwork I explore themes that deal with the duality of my experience. While I may present a calm exterior to those around me, I may in fact experience myself as anxious, fearful or out of control. With this in mind, I started to wonder about how children with diabetes experience life with a chronic and often debilitating condition. As there are not necessarily signs that identify a person as having diabetes, the condition is largely invisible. Yet, I wondered about the inner experience of a child with diabetes. What do these children feel and experience from the inside? How do children with diabetes cope with the daily regimen of insulin injections and dietary monitoring that must be maintained to control their blood sugar levels. These questions led me to think about a medicine cabinet as symbolic of the conflict between what may be felt internally and revealed externally.

As a medicine cabinet is a place to safely store and conceal medication, it facilitated the investigation of ideas concerned with the control and management of diabetes, while it helped us examine and play with the idea of the conflict between internal and external experience. In this way, we explored ideas about outward appearance and inner feelings related to the experience of diabetes. For example, when the viewer looks into the mirror of the medicine cabinet, they see themselves as they wish to be seen. However, when they look into the cabinet they are confronted with the paraphernalia of a life affected by diabetes and the many complexities that are part of this realm.

The open cabinet reveals some of the things that people with diabetes use as part of their on-going care; syringes, vials of insulin, pill bottles, and junk food line the inner walls of the cabinet. The children’s pictures and statements about their diabetes also cover the inner space. When the viewer opens the medicine cabinet they become directly engaged with the artwork, responding to the objects and statements written by the children: "diabetes is ok" and "diabetes makes you a stronger person."  Despite the difficulties that this condition presents, it seems that there is also a positive side to living with adversity.

The Medicine Cabinet was a wonderful vehicle for the children to explore many of their issues and feelings about living with diabetes. Together we went through a process of identifying their feelings and experiences, creating an artwork which could visually represent how a person with diabetes might feel. The Medicine Cabinet is the result of our exploration, telling the stories of the children who participated in this dynamic and affirming process” -- Jenny Polo, artist.

Kathleen Downie is an artist, educator and arts-in-health consultant who has worked with the Diabetes Team at the Hospital for Sick Children for over 10 years, implementing dynamic children's arts programs in collaboration with other artists for the Hospital's annual Diabetes Day.  

Wendy Prezament

The making of art is a continual learning experience.  The earthenware ceramics I create are one-of-a-kind hand-built pieces.  When I set out to glaze a piece I am trying to find a way to complement the form as well as comment on my concept of the form I am about to decorate.  This entails striving to come up with new glaze combinations and decoration ideas.  These 3 ceramic pieces are made to be functional and also to add beauty to everyday life.

Wendy Prezament works in the Registrar's Office.

Rebecca McDonald

Untitled (Milk Weed Pod)

Rather than view my varied artistic interests and experiences as branches spreading from a connected vine, I like the the possibilities of a seed pod.  The seeds, though part of the plant, are not connected physically.  I find this parallels the connection of my art experiences-- from visual arts, crafts, drama, music and other performing arts.  Although I do not often consider myself an artist, art has been important to me from childhood.  I still have a report from my kindergarten teacher commenting on my enthusiasm and attention to the art station.  Art has remained a key figure in my interests and education.

Stamped on the seeds are words which relate to my artistic experiences and understanding.  My enjoyment and love of the creative act is expressed as “PLAY”.  “GROW” is for my interest since youth and also for the way my exploration through art has grown me.  Art forces me to pause in my racing schedule and consider life.  It encourages self-reflection, something I too often fail to do: “REFLECT” is the word I chose.  Through my involvement in a Christian performing arts group, art became for me a mode of expression, and a tool for connecting with a deeper reality: FEEL, PRAY, EXPRESS.  

The milkweed seed pod has been a reoccurring theme in my work for the past year.  In this project, what surfaced in my mind most was the life-bearing and dissemination possibilities of seeds. In life, and especially as a teacher, I want to make art be for others what it has been for me.  As seeds spread, they offer opportunities for new growth and renewal.  They are so full of potential!!  That excites me! 

The unfinished nature of the wooden element is like me: a work in progress!  Although I am uncertain what my future my hold, I know art, in some form or another, will be a valued part.

Rebecca McDonald is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate. 

Joanne Elvy

Nuria, 2001

Nuria, 2008

Notes from a Cuban Diary:  We Believe in Our History

My doctoral research involves the study of Cuban women who, in 1961, were volunteer 'teachers' in the renowned Literacy Campaign unfolding in the early years of the Cuban Revolution.  This Campaign is not only recognized as a critical turning point in the transformation of Cuba as a nation post-1959; but, noteworthy as well in how the lives of these women, as young teenagers in 1961, would completely transform over time, as a result of their participation in this massive event.

As an outsider to the Cuban experience, I was invited inside the lives of these women.  The process of photographing became a way for us to explore stories from the past in present terms; the photograph itself, a token of memory.  I shared with 'Nuria' this past year the image I had made some eight years previous, as part of a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Literacy Campaign in 2001.  The photograph itself had transformed from a selection of small test prints she had once seen, to one of monumental size; and the printed canvas, resilient over time, became a trigger of remembrance.  A few incidental snapshots to record the event reveal how Nuria's engagement with the enlarged portrait became yet another transformative moment, as a celebration and acknowledgment of her personal contribution to her nation's history.

The large image:  "Nuria, 2001"

The two small images, as a pair:  "Nuria, 2008"

Sandra Monteith

Winter reflection, David Balfour Park

For me, the practice of photography is an age-long process of learning to see and not just to look. In educating my eye, I am constantly transforming myself. My past studies in history of art and environmental studies exert a subtle influence on my present photographic vision, in both choice of subject matter and my composition of images, but equally if not more influential is my understanding of impermanence and change. When photographing nature, I try to catch fleeting moments of beauty in classically composed images. I took "Winter Reflections" on a cold and sunny afternoon when the light had transformed a city nature trail into a magic place. The image is a memory of the layered vision of that moment.

 PhD (OISE/UT 1993).

Mary MacDonell

Street Scene

Mesh

Express Yourself

Things compose and un-compose  themselves before the lens; things are constantly in change.

Emma Brown

Self-portrait in Smoke

In this series I experimented with creating a self portrait in smoke.

The inspiration for this piece came from a story written by Richard Van Camp that he read years ago to my Indigenous literature class. In the story, a character had escaped a jail cell by turning into smoke. The image of someone turning into smoke was very powerful for me, and it stayed with me until now, inspiring me to see self portraits in a different way.

The image of myself in smoke is also significant because it is a way for me to take into consideration the members of my family who have died from smoking related diseases. The images make me think about how people who smoke can be defined and judged for their addiction.

Emma Brown is an Initial Teacher Education candidate.  Her teachables are Family Studies and Art.

David Pascos

When teaching students it’s not always easy to visualize their lives outside the classroom walls. While most might appear to be leading innocent and protected lives, it is our continual awareness of the ones in need of extra support that will allow us to do more than just provide a better education. In the end, this compassion can allow us to save lives. Through the arts, students can find themselves immersed in a community of safety and openness. Music, Visual art, and Drama ask students to free themselves – to open up and express their own personalities. In such a social setting, a student in need can feel comfortable in their role at school, and success might slowly seem a less grappling task. The collective and tactile nature of the arts is ever more important in connecting with those students who might otherwise feel overwhelmed by the academia of learning. Eventually however, using the skills learned through the arts, those same students might find themselves improving in areas more academic.

 In this work one can visualize the alternative; a sampling of lives which could have been prevented, lives in which no one intervened. The four images explore the very moment when each youth has become simultaneously aware of and feels powerless against the world in which they find themselves; a world of drugs, violence, poverty, and prostitution. One might see these vignettes as an example of extreme circumstances, but nevertheless, they are the real, possible alternatives to our contribution of even the smallest amount of support for students in need.

David Pascos is an Initial Teacher Education Candidate.   
 

Miranda Blazey

Ethnicity as the Defining Attribute of Identity

 My work is about individual experiences made universal predicated upon the viewers’ own interpretation of the pieces. I am interested in human experiences and the factors that define the identity of an individual. By incorporating various individuals from diverse social, racial, and economic backgrounds, I am attempting to encourage the viewer to experience aspects of individuals they may never meet. I believe that art is able to transcend barriers and transform how individuals learn about others.

Empty Bowls

Empty Bowls
a Luncheon Fundraiser

 Tuesday, April 14,
12pm – 2pm

 Buy your lunch,
keep your bowl,
and help fill the bowls
of women and children
living in poverty
in our community.

 Brought to you by the Inner
City Option and TDSB students

Gallery Scene

Gallery Scene

Creative Transformations Poster

Thank you to all of our artists!

Please see below for works from previous years' exhibits.

OISE Art Exhibit

Power of Place: Exploring Sites of Learning

April 14 - April 18, 2008

Jackie Caleb  

 
The Scorpion

Crow Pose

There is no place more powerful than the present moment.

It hasn't been since I've been able to live in the here and now that I've been able to feel peace.  I strongly feel that when we took God out of our public schools we unnecessarily removed spirituality from our learning environment.  Many of us know the feeling received when walking into a spiritual place.  An alternative healing shop, a temple, a spa, one's grandmother's home.  We feel relaxed, taken care of, soothed. 

The most important lessons I've learned have happened within the walls of a yoga studio rather than a classroom.  Yoga teaches traits that seemingly successful people require in order to help themselves help others and thus become truly successful.  Yoga teaches humility and power (both physically and mentally).  Yoga teaches that we have strengths and weaknesses.  We learn to push the boundaries where we are strong while respecting our weaknesses.  Outdated teaching practices teach us to overcome what's weak which in turn creates stress on ourselves and on society as a whole.  Weakness humbles the spirit, opening our hearts to the empathy that the streets of Toronto occasionally lack.  Acceptance, empathy and respect are among the lessons learned when one is able to breathe through stressful positions in life.  Keeping with and focusing on the breath, no matter how uncomfortable, helps us learn to live with life rather than against it.  We teach problem solving within the current curriculum. Sometimes the best solution to a problem is learning to live with it rather than trying to avoid it.  It's only a problem if you want to solve it.  With the development of contemporary teaching practices we look for holistic practices that help students truly understand.  I strongly believe that there is no better classroom than the body, no better student than the mind and no better teacher than the present moment.

Jackie Caleb is a teacher, a student, a painter, yogi and lover of all animals.  She has lived many lives, however, she's decided to use this present life to work on some much needed Karma Cleansing. Namaste.

Celia Correa      

                                     

PARA KAY JOCELYN (For Jocelyn)

The notion of place as I understand it does not really refer to a physical place. It could be one's status, level of awareness, or a group's common condition, etc. My artworks are of Filipino immigrant women, a position that puts them in the same place as any woman of colour living in Canada, but with differences also because of who we are. And these differences define how we learn how to live and work in Canada.Approximately 200 of the Filipino community in Toronto gathered last October 14, 2007 inside St. Simon Anglican Church to remember Jocelyn Dulnuan, a 27 year old Filipina who came to Toronto as a Filipino Overseas Worker (OFW), and was murdered in the home of her employer in Mississauga October 1st. The community was  still reeling from the news but have also mobilized. Like myself many do not know her personally but we came. Many were members of Filipino-Canadian organizations and alliances who came to show solidarity and express their support in seeking justice for Jocelyn, and to advocate for reforms to the Live-In Caregiver program of Canada.  The images on these canvases were inspired by the Filipino women who were there.            

The increasing literature about Filipino migrant workers looks at their condition from different perspectives and levels. Among the most compelling are those from the migrant workers themselves. An example is From Saudi with Love: 100 Poems by OFWs  by Odine de Guzman of the University of the Philippines. It is a collection of poems about vulnerability, difficulties, anxieties, alienation, and loneliness. They also speak about their love of family, nationalism, humor, learning and new discoveries."

Celia Correa is a staff member in the Graduate Admissions Unit, Registrar's Office and has lived in Canada as an immigrant from the Philippines for almost 20 years.  

Ruth Daniel    

 This painting represents the distractions students experience while completing their homework. Today's students are constantly using the computer to type their papers, projects, or to search the internet for reference material. This work is painted with water soluble oil paint on canvas, and depicts a computer keyboard as seen through a glass of water. I paint realistic scenes of things and objects that interest me. I often involve water, glass, or metal in my work, as I enjoy the challenge of painting reflections. I create work with pencil crayon and markers, but I love to use water soluble oil colour. This ensures that my artwork stays environmentally safe from thinners and solvents, unlike traditional oil paints and led pencils.

Ruth Daniel has an Honors Bachelor in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto and is currently finishing her Bachelor of Education at OISE. Through her OISE classes, she has learned how to integrate aspects of art into every curriculum area. Ruth is excited to begin her teaching career.

 
Janet Markus 
      

In what way does the flower represent learning and the formation of layers of ideas, which (eventually) evolve into a full blown concept?

What is the relationship between the flower (learning in stages) and the background? What is the background for learning?What do the systematic striped sequences of colour represent in the context of learning? Why are they striped, and why do they appear not as straight lines, but as curved and curving shapes?

Janet Markus is the Coordinator of the Teacher Education Program (Secondary Panel), and the visual art instructor at OISE  in the concurrent teacher education program in the intermediate/senior division.

Eimear O’Neill             
             

The River runs through me                    

This “inscape” places images from the women/mothers/daughters in my personal and imagined history along the banks of the Boyne River. The curve of the river hugs the mound at Knowth, a sacred site of birth, death and renewal. Each winter solstice, the light of the rising sun fills the inner chambers of the mounds. This river valley is also the place where my ancestors’ bones form the soil. The deep-rooted connection with the matrix of the Earth, this particular place and the more-than-human world of mother-lines is raised by the images embedded in the landscape. There is a chimpanzee mother and child, my childhood image with the monkey that held me, the 14th century woman of the Picts whose flower-grown body defends her lands and photos of my grandmother, mother, and my daughter, now eight months pregnant. The river runs through me and on.  Eimear O'Neill, PhD, Associate Transformative Learning Centre and CAIR, OISE 2005.

Eimear is a psychotherapist, educator and consultant in transformative processes at multiple levels. Encaustic art, made with beeswax fused by heat in layers, is an old art form that lends itself to contemporary knowledge. More about Eimear’s work including her dissertation “Holding Flames; women illuminating knowledge of s/Self transformation” can be found on her website www.eimearoneill.com In May 2008 Eimear is coordinating a journey of 25 indigenous educators from Turtle Island, Africa and Ireland to Rekindle Indigenous Spirit to Ireland’s Valley of the Boyne River. 

Afsaneh Shafai
                           

 A Place for Self-Reverence                    

The creative process helps to deal more harmoniously with internal and external issues and problems in life. The result is a strengthened sense of self, accomplishment and a personal contentment – all of which is conducive to learning.

 A Place of Illumination           

The learning environment is a space where one has a sense of connection, belonging and an opportunity to learn and develop. On a functional level I find that the process of directing the creative, imaginative level of mind helps in personal growth, transformation, improved way of seeing myself and relating to the world around me.

Afsaneh Shafai is a registered art therapist. I facilitate creativity with my clients in order for them to heal. As an artist I strongly feel that creativity has elements of healing power. I have been involved in some form of art all my life, including dance, drama, sculpting and painting.

Janessa Friesen                           

 

The three prints share the theme of how bonds are shown around the world through love/connection rituals. These prints show traditional ceremonies from China, Europe, and Thailand. This series ties to the show’s theme in that it gives the viewer a chance to learn about thebeautiful relationships that differ from typical North American ideals.

 Deirdre DeCarion                                  

The Power of Play(ce)
Play is ageless.
So is learning.
Where we play can be
deliberate or serendipitous.
Learning is a consequence of this experience
whether we know it
or not.

Deirdre received her PhD from OISE in 1999. She continues to write and pursue her artistic interests in photography and painting. She also creates one of a kind handcrafted walking staffs.

Mary MacDonell                    

Portrait Gallery

Cook

Army Surplus Store


Man Lighting

Siegfried’s       

Undertaking a project for my photography class to photograph people in their work environments I asked several people in the Parliament/Queen Street E/King Street E area if I could take their photo. When you get an image down on paper you are laying a foundation, creating a space, playing with line and form in the same way an architect would in building a building. A photograph is a laying out of space, a somewhere which, once created, can be seen to be an arrival, a conclusion, a place.

Mary MacDonell works in Student Services.

Laura Perrin   

   

My sense of place has always been through my body.  I have learned most of what is important to me through the movements that I have made as an athlete.  I find that physical activity is one of the greatest avenues through which one can learn.  Using performance as a vehicle I have therefore transformed my own power of place into what I consider “body language”. 

These photographs document what was a live performance exhibiting endurance and stamina through my body.  They are regenerations of what was a large, painting-like projection of simple movements, using the hands, feet and legs.  Holding static positions as long as possible I attempted to test my own strength and physical fitness, and in essence, my self.  I have, in turn, tested my ability to learn and to remember. The self, therefore, or in my case, the body, has been made its own site of learning.   

Laura Perrin is in the Initial Teacher Education program for Visual Arts at the Junior/Intermediate level.

 Peter Vietgen  



           

Never Again

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Documentary Photo Collage (2007).

Memorial sites – places where the history of humankind have occurred – serve as powerful sites of learning to the point where one can walk directly in the footsteps where past events had once taken place.  These photographs taken at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Dachau, Germany, the prototype of all other concentration camps built during WWII, serve as a reminder that hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and pray that such atrocities never happen again.  Regrettably, we have not learned.  As we move into the 21st century and look at the track record of the human race, history repeats itself.

Peter Vietgen is an OISE graduate, having received a BEd in 1988 and MEd in 1999. He currently resides in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Rebecca Delfen           

       

                 

Travelling south on Bathurst St on the morning of Wednesday, February 20 I was redirected to Dundas St by billows of smoke and policemen. Late Friday afternoon I was able to view the horrible catastrophe on Queen St W, see the heaping pile of burnt belongings and quietly mourn with my city.

Consolation, by Michael Redhill, is the book I was reading at the time of the fire. It helped me think deeply about the history of this street, to contemplate the lives of the many people who lived there, and to wonder if the city will restore the site or just build big-box stores and buildings cheaply made and weak of design.

My artwork takes the form of a book to acknowledge the influence of Redhill’s book regarding the importance and fragility of the histories of the streets of Toronto.

Archival paper, book cover canvas. Vintage wallpaper, photocopied images from Toronto Reference Library’s photo collection. National Post’s front page: Wednesday February 20, 2008, Toronto Archives online collection. Quotes from Consolation by Michael RedhillRebecca Delfen is a visual artist with an Honours B.F.A. York University 1992.

I have worked with collage, photography, drawing and oil painting. Currently I’m producing a variety of hand-made art books that explore my relationship with Toronto.

Robert Durocher                      

 

These spider drawings reference my mémé's flower garden where I played as a child.  I learned by being within nature on the farm and by self-discovery.  It is thus that I bring into my classroom the idea of experiential learning - especially through the arts.

Robert Durocher is an exhibiting artist and teacher working in inner-city Toronto.  He is currently working on an MA thesis at OISE/UT in CTL. 

Joanne Lynes                              

Love Connections         

While this quilt was created in the spirit of trying to understand family connections, I look at it now and see these children who have long since grown up - their identities having emerged from their first learning place - the family. The limitations and opportunities available to them are unique and have been defined by environmental, economic and health concerns.

I have used a layering technique of photos and paper bags along with found messages to create this piece.

                               Joanne Lynes works in Circulation Services in the OISE Library.  

Jessica DiPoce                           

Look, But Don’t Touch            

 Everyone has heard the expression look, but don’t touch. This saying often refers to objects displayed in a shadow box, or similar type storage/display units.  What are these objects we choose to display in this manner and why are they so important to us? Or are they?  I chose to make the shadow box, as well as its contents, an object of delicacy, something to look at, but not touch.  I have stressed the not touching with the pointed metal objects protruding through the inside of the shadow box, to the outside of the shadow box.  The emphasis of the cherished objects on the shelves is suggested by the stuffed blue silk pillows on the bottom of each shelf.

The letters and notes carefully placed in the shelves are a reminder of what we think important.  These are authentic private documents from my past; elementary and high school notes, which I would prefer others not to read.   Most of the notes come from high school and are filled with mindless gossip.  In the same way I have assembled the notes in the shadow box, gossip is waiting to burst out. 

Although I am not proud of much of the material in the notes, I am proud of surviving a time of words carelessly spoken, used to hurt others.  I cherish these notes because of the memories and people associated with them.  I chose to make the shadow box reduced in size to add to the intimacy and delicacy of the subjects involved.  My choice of wood was cedar which is a soft wood.  This made it difficult to work at such a scale, but the desired result of lightness and fragility was achieved.   Existing in a place such as a high school environment, learning life’s lessons is essential.  We encounter many social situations that will determine how we will interact in the real world.  Participating in the social culture of high school, learning what one does not want to be and what one wants to be is important.  In my experience of the gossip culture I have realized that I would rather  not participate in such slander.  This decision has evolved out of silly actions such as note passing in school.  As I enter the teaching profession this is something to keep in mind when interacting with colleagues in and out of the staff room. 

Jessica Di Poce lives in Caledon where she contemplates truth and explores the beauty that nature has to offer. She has a Fine Arts Degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design and is currently completing her Bachelor of Education at OISE.

Wendy Prezament     

These ceramic pieces are made from white and red earthenware clay and decorated with colourful glazes.  In making ceramics I enjoy alternating between colourfully painted functional pieces such as bowls and whimsical pieces that border on the sculptural.  My inspiration comes from ceramic objects ranging from the ancient to the contemporary and from different cultures around the world.  I feel lucky to have access to this kind of diversity in the permanent collections and feature exhibitions available at Toronto museums where I frequently go to view and learn from these ceramic objects.

Wendy works in the Registrar's Office at OISE.

 Erica Bailey       

                                       

Paddling in Place         

My submission draws viewers into the phenomenon of experiencing learning about place on canoe trips.  Projected onto my canvas, my grandfather’s wanigan from his trips in the 1950s and 1960s, are images of my learnings of Place.  The wanigan contains artefacts of canoe trips and invites viewers to gently engage with the work, unpacking Place.  As each item, each layer is removed, so the recorded sounds and voices contained within the wanigan will grow stronger and the shape of the canvas shifted.  Experiences of place are not fixed rather they are multi-dimensional and enter the mind, body and heart through waters imbibed, dirt under nails, smells pressed into memories and images inextricably linked to imagination.  Yet the telling and re-telling of experiences of place are shaped with each new experience and moulded by situation, emotion and audience.  Reflecting, through the meditative act of paddling, brings me (in)to Place.  I paddle in Place, a liminal space opened up by this contemplative activity, by physical and/or emotional engagement/discomfort and by quiet wondering / wanderment.

Erika Bailey’s research focuses on adult experiential learning on canoe trips which she is exploring through narrative and the use of artifact as a way of understanding what and how adults learn in and about this Place.  She is finishing her second year in the part-time M.A. program in OISE's Adult Education.

Susan Aaron

               

Opening the Light of our Niches

This slide installation presentation was created for the Greening of OISE first anniversary forum. The Greening is a group of faculty, staff and students, as well as interested individuals, who have come together to input sustainable suggestions to OISE as a physical maintained environ and academic hub. It is less a representation of what nature is than a revelation of how an engagement with an environment, a sense of place, can be active, of us. This is learning as a revelation, entry into a question as a design. As pictures taken in the environs of OISE, it plays with the light to reveal what an environment is as created by a technology. Coming from the outdoors of traffic, from offices and computers, it offers an experiential revelation both of what we as humans deal with daily as technologies, and a  telling and acting out of the opening out of shared niches, until we can play from this basis of the earth as a function of our actions. What is the earth, what is it that we form as we move as embodied in our niches, with their discourses and actions?  The accompanying music is a saxophone featured piece from a CD entitled The Coniferous Revenge composed by Michael Herring and played by his group Vertigo. We are all fragile entities when tied in to fixed environmental engagements, such as nature as named. Our technologies will not aid us if the actions of our most sustaining requirements of air and the earth are destroyed by us in our engagement with them. This is what OISE can do, to play with our human design as these moving rhythms, to reactivate our lives.

Susan Aaron is a first year PhD student in Curriculum Teaching and Learning. She developed notions of creative inquiry doing a Masters of Education in Adult Education. As well, she has a Masters degree in Drama from the University of Toronto, and a BA honors in dance and theatre from York University. For her creative inquiry she focused on notions of space as created and revealed by the artist researcher,drawing on an acquired critical background in media and culture.

Sarah Switzer, Carly Stasko and Christine Jackson

Les Pensées D’Escalier: Shifting Margins to Centre/From Centre to Margins

Audio Collage                

This interactive installation invites students, faculty and community members to question dominant sites and modes of learning by creating discursive spaces for the “unsaid”.  In shifting the margins to centre, this exhibit seeks to give voice to the inner workings of our minds as we travel to and from work, class, or home. We argue that it is the liminal, in-between spaces such as stairwells and elevators where much meaning-making occurs regarding our lived experiences.  Furthermore, it is through interrupting our day-to-day routines as both students and educators, that we can begin to examine the way in which hegemonic discourses invade our collective consciousness, consequently neglecting, excluding, or reinterpreting our thoughts on the periphery. By making the unheard heard, we honour the complex, multi-faceted, differential and often contradictory ways in which these thoughts become known. If we de-centre learning from the classroom, and art from the gallery, what are the possibilities for re-interpreting knowledge-making and education?  Art and art-making?  What are the implications of Les Pensees D’Escalier for sites of learning “out there” … and, “in here”? This audio soundtrack was assembled with the help of OISE students’ voices, and thoughts.

Sarah Switzer is a local arts-educator and activist in Toronto, with  an empahsis on arts-based HIV/AIDS programming, popular education, social justice education and youth engagement. Her research centres on critically exploring arts-informed HIV/AIDS Prevention and Education curriculum for youth.Carly Stasko is a grassroots media literacy educator and founder of the Youth Media Literacy Project.

Carly leads workshops in high schools, universities and community centers in Toronto and abroad about media, art and social change.   She is also an artist, activist and self titled "Imagitator" (someone who agitates imagination).  Her recent chapter "(r)Evolutionary Healing: Jamming the Culture and Shifting the Power" is published by Routledge in New Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism, edited by Anita Harris.  To view her Madvertisement collages or learn more about upcoming workshops and events visit www.intrinsik.net

Christine Jackson is the Program Coordinator of the Arts with the Toronto District School Board.  Her arts advocacy has extended  beyond the TDSB through her multiple roles as  speaker, workshop presenter, curriculum developer, and OISE instructor. Her doctoral studies and research focus on the arts as critical multiliteracies, anti-oppression education, and teacher development.

 

A hearty thanks to all artists!

****************************************************************

 

OISE Art Exhibit

April 4 - April 13, 2007

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Photos of artworks by Mary MacDonell

JACKIE CALEB

Poet                                                                           

Most of the brutal storms in life tear the sky right apart. They darken everything beneath, suffocating those trapped on the ground. Not long ago, life drowned me completely in its turbulent waters. I sank, but there I found the calm under the storm, and his name was Jeff. This is for you.

Kite Flyer                                                                 

I used to spend recess digging large grave-like pockets in the snow that fell. I would lie inside these frozen holes, still as could be, looking up at the perfectly silent, grey skies. I could hear other children playing in the yard but their voices, and innocence, were far away from my lite white bed.

Jackie Caleb completed her BEd in 2003.

 

JANET MARKUS

This painting is called "And yet." The top half of the painting is filled with patterns   played out in what seems a chaotic and frenetic flurry of shapes, shadows and movement. It represents the over-busyness of our lifestyles, constant changes in culture, perceptions of what is going on around us, the information of our collective and individual past and present, and the constant movement inherent in trying to find our way in the world. The lower half of the painting is the point in life where everything becomes still, where our perceptions have moved into slow motion because the individual has found a way to make order, the point at which the patterns, worries, and activities of the upper part of the painting are seen now as frantic busyness. This is the same feeling one has when something really important happens ( a death, a crisis, a way of thinking that makes everything else make sense), and we feel that time has slowed down and what is happening has an elemental, clear focus.

This painting is called " X= ." It is based on the idea that X is used by teachers as a mark indicating student error - a student's misunderstanding of concepts on an assignment. X is also used in math and science as the beginning of an equation. In that context, X can mean anything, it includes all possibilities. If X is seen as a way to assign value to student work, the teacher informs the student about their learning (or absence of it!), in the assignment/knowledge/required skill. Seen in a math or science context, the X is a possibility; the X is a recognized symbol representing collective knowledge that could be applied to new environments, new experiments, and new applications. The X in an equation is the beginning of a sequence of ideas.

My name is Janet Markus. I am currently teaching the Teacher Education Seminar: SP8 Arts Cohort, and visual art for I/S teacher candidates at OISE/UT.

CHRISTINE BOYER

The Village

I love the process of painting - choosing and mixing the colours, the feel of the brush in the paint, layering the paint on the canvas, the sound of the bristles as they expose my ideas. I am self-taught and have been drawing and painting since I was a child. I choose subject matter from snapshots of images or moments that I believe to be striking. I enjoy capturing what would otherwise pass unnoticed; the charming, the magical, the curious. I work in acrylic as it dries quickly, and allows me to uncover my idea before it vanishes or changes in the process of painting it. I usually like to start and finish a painting in one sitting. The Village was inspired by a series of paintings that reminded me of visiting Denmark as a child. When I was eight years old I was enrolled in the village school, which I walked to each day with my mother. The path through the village has stuck with me to this day. Often the concept of formal learning is linked to institution or structure; at that time in my life, it was the experience of learning that affected me the most. You can see both concepts in the composition of this painting.   

A self-taught artist, Christine Boyer was born in Ottawa and traveled most of Canada and Denmark as a child. When she was 11 years old, her family settled in Windsor , Ontario , where she completed her public and post-secondary education. As one of the credits to complete her Geography degree, she took her first formal training as an artist in a scene painting course where she learned techniques and skills that piqued her interest to produce large-scale work. After graduating, she moved to Toronto where she now resides with her fiancé and two Maine Coon cats. Christine continues to paint for an expanding client base from her home studio. You can visit more of her work at www.christineboyerart.com.

CELIA CORREA

'Nanay' (Mom) and 'Kasama' (Comrade) are about elemental relationships - of caring and solidarity. They are about instances of day to day existence between ourselves and the people around us - that provide us a clue of how much our past and future matter.

My education in the arts occurred outside formal classrooms.   As a university student and member of the Nagkakaisang Progresibong Artista-Arkitekto (United Progressive Artists-Architects) during a time in the Philippines referred to politically as the 'First Quarter Storm,' I was involved in the making of the streamers, murals and posters used in mass actions held by farmers, workers and student organizations. It was also a time of learning about the larger things such as ideologies and power structure. My fellow artists and I were engaged in creating works that were anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-bureaucrat capitalist Now as an immigrant in Canada , I am involved in slightly different struggles. The images I chose for my work still reflect my ideas of what is significant - but on a different level.

Celia Barile Correa is a staff member, Graduate Admissions Unit, Registrar's Office, OISE . Former doctoral student in Adult Education, all but dissertation

NOMI DRORY

Places

My current paintings bring the question whether one can have the experience, and have a sense of a place, without actually being in that particular place. This question is essential to my academic studies of architecture, to my attempt to adapt to the contemporary simulated new media, and to my experience as an immigrant. Having been born in Bolivia and raised in Israel , and having moved to Canada and lived for periods in Europe and Australia , I have accumulated attachments to a variety of places. The map of my experience is a map of extremes of natural conditions, built environment and culture. In the paintings I have sought to reconcile these extremes. In each of my paintings, I have brought together images from two very different places. In doing so, I have also attempted to freshly capture the experience of seeing and inhabiting a newly imagined place. An experience that, for me, is akin to gazing into a vast distance, a distance of space as well as of time, evoking a dreamlike sense of memory, and a sense of a place without it being a particular place. My choice of materials and artistic process also reflects the notion of reconciliation through the use of new and old media. In the design of my paintings, I used photographs, manipulating them on the computer using Photoshop. I then reinterpreted the photographic images in oil paints on canvas. In terms of my paintings' composition and design, I have been drawn to horizontal formats in order to recreate an expanse of space seeing from one eye level and point of view. I have also placed the two different images on each side of the canvas, setting the vanishing point for each somewhere in the middle. To evoke the fact that an elapse of time between the image, I have depicted each of them from a different eye level and point of view.

Nomi Drory currently teaches visual art in the Art Centre of Central Technical High School in Toronto .

ROSETTE SUND

Often I find myself sharing stories of my parents' and grandparents' past with friends who also inherited memories of an era before their time. We trade these romantic, adventurous tales as if they are our own. Yet by growing up with these memories as bedtime stories, in a way, we have adapted them as part of our personal experiences of growing up and shaping our identities. This past that is so foreign to us still feeds our present and affects our vision for the future.   The images within the layers of each canvas are appropriated from old family photographs.   These records are precious to forming our identities. They reinforce our past, feed who we are today, and allow us to leave behind proof of our existence in the future. I see these images as linking past notions of family, romance and adventure with my current experiences and/or expectations of them.   

Rosette Sund is currently a student at OISE/UT in the Bachelors of Education program.   Previous to this, Rosette received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from Ontario College of Art and Design and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History from McGill University .   

SUZANNE MILLER

The Lesson       

Conversation in an Arcade     

The two oil paintings shown in this exhibit, Conversation in an Arcade and Lesson on a Bench illustrate her philosophy that learning happens in informal as well as formal settings, which was relevant in the past, is relevant in the present, and will continue to be relevant in the future. s.miller@utoronto.ca                                                            

Suzanne Miller is a Ph.D. Candidate in Higher Education, and also a visual artist. Formerly a secondary school Visual Art and English teacher, she has drawn and painted all her life, exhibiting and selling her work.  

MICHELLE JENKINS

This art work is composed of my past, present and future. This window is a small invite to allow others to explore my world. "Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -Eleanor Roosevelt. This is why I not only believe in myself but I believe in you now and forever . One half Canadian and one half Bajan (short for Barbados ), outgoing, positive, loves traveling loves all sports. I have just returned form teaching English for two years in Italy , my first year proved to be very changeling and reward as it was during my second year that I had fallen in love with the country, lifestyle and a wonderful Italian man. Born in London , Ontario in the same house on same street, I grew up with two older brothers and my parents who were a great and positive influence in my life. After high school I graduated from Franshawe College and obtained my Developmental Services Worker, Educational Assistant and Deaf Major. Working with the hearing impaired at London 's Robarts School for the Deaf had taught me life lessons and skills in which I will never forget. Shortly after I became an Educational Assistant which had given me the push to return to school as I had wanted my own classroom. The University of Windsor is where I did my undergrad in Multi-cultural Studies-Italian as my Major and Visual Art as my minor.

                                                    Detail

Michelle Jenkins is currently a BEd student in the Junior/Intermediate Program.

 

DENISE WILSON

This painting is a map of Georgian Bay from the bottom.

Denise is a BEd student at OISE in the Intermediate/Senior division.

JAMIE DOYLEJamie Doyle is currently completing her BEd.

JENNY KASTNER

Shadow Casting

In this work I explore our interactions with our environments and landscapes through shadows. I wanted to express the way that we leave memories of our presence in our environments, and the way that our environments leave memories of their presence on and in us. The figure in the painting is casting its shadow on the fragmented and connected landscapes, while the mobile casts its shadow on the figure. The mobile is composed of findings from the shore of the lake I live on. The feathers were taken from beneath a vulture's nest by the shore; I watched those young birds grow and learn to fly.

My name is Jenny Kastner and I am currently completing my BEd at OISE in the School, Community and Global Connections cohort.

MICHELLE SIMIANA

Michelle Simiana is currently completing her BEd.

AFSANEH SHAFAI

Escape

My art is not only my reality but also my interpretation of some aspects of my environment and life as an immigrant woman. The intention is that through the expression of creativity and metaphor to rise above the experience of oppressive past and bring forth the strife for freedom as not only an individual truth but also collective spirit. From the age of two Afsaneh worked through her difficulties by working first with dough then in later years, with clay, pastel, ink and more. Who knew then these small pieces of dough would nurture her creativity! For over twelve years she had been extensively involved with helping children, youth and families (primarily refugee families) who have difficulties coping with changes and challenging life circumstances in school, shelter, detention, hospital and mental health agency settings.

Dancing Queen

Afsaneh Shafai was born in Maragheh , Azerbaijan , Iran . She moved to Canada in 1976 and graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba . She continued her post graduate studies in Art Therapy at the Toronto Art Therapy Institute, believing that "Art is Healing." This sentiment was nurtured by her grandmother who always offered her a piece of dough to calm her down when she was unhappy.

ROGER FERREIRA

Roger Ferreira is currently completing his BEd.

MICHAEL COULIS

Eleven Geologic lessons in Love

" Unless human nature suffers an inconceivable change, the chief intellectual and aesthetic value of our ideas will always come from the creative action of the imagination." 1 Imagination reciprocates how we are exposed not only to environment, but to all conceptualizations the organism learns to be and becomes defined by. The very continuum of a time line, from time- past , toward time- present into future -time is no arbitrary construct in the development of learning and scholarship: rather it is a limit upon the organisms' inter-actions with the phenomenon of 'body's-worth in space.'   What if the continuum of time upon which we plot the meaning of life was removed from the equation? What if meaning-making remained reliant upon a seamless amalgam of experience inured into the human organism as it lives its uninterrupted state of 'now,' and not abstracted from the timeless space of nature? What would become of existence and identity if the organism drew forth meaning and understanding from deeper primordial rhythmic combinations experienced in the flux of the life-world? My artwork re/presents a body's empathic engagement and projection into the layered and circular motioning(s) toward expanded awareness: It hints at the multidimensional topology of how the body is to language as language is to a landscape. This body moves in gestures evolving into utterances that symbolize the landscape that the earth becomes: words are from the expressive media of the body which lives a synchronistic and dynamic connection with a larger more encompassing whole. I use the geometry of the hermeneutic circle (and circles within circles) as a metaphor to challenge not only assumptions of dissimilarity between who we are from within time perspectives of past, present and future, but also to challenge those academic perceptions that disinherit 'landscape' from vital learning processes which equally stand outside any neat linear continuum of time. Eleven Geologic Lessons in Love expresses my hope that pedagogical research develops an aesthetic attitude toward the learning process that underscores the radical simplicity of how the human organism evolves into ever higher learning complexes by first becoming a "body pleasurably connected with earth, air, and sea." 2 And how a sense of connection to these phenomena of the world not only become symbolized into a balanced and intelligent discourse for ethical/ecological relationships to all that is human and beyond human, but further enhances the prospect of an embodied spirituality that learns in unison with the physical and timeless energy called world.

1. Quoting George Santayana from the text George Santayana by Willard E Arnett
2. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought.

   Michael is an M.A. candidate in Adult Education at OISE/UT. After a ten-thousand kilometer solo bicycle ride across Canada Michael translated his kinetic learning experience into an Atlas of Personal Cartography which is a reflexive analysis upon the visceral and physical nature of learning and emotional development. Presently Michael works as a counselor with Federal inmates and is interested in further exploring the connections between male patterns of grieving, violence and primary metaphors as a means of varying gestalt perceptions.

  KATHY MANTAS
SOLVEIGA MIEZITIS

From the Depths

This collage is part of a series of images co-created between 2000 and 2003, initially as part of Kathy Mantas' doctoral dissertation on creativity and learning. The images reflect the creative learning process that occurred in a relationship through art making and conversation. This co-creative process enriched both individual and collective learning and meaning making. The images that emerged "from the depths" during the shared experience allowed us to reflect on our lives, relationships, and the creative process of teaching and learning.

Kathy Mantas completed her PhD in the Department of Adult Education & Counselling Psychology in 2004.

Solveiga Miezitis is a professor emeritus in the Department of Adult Education & Counselling Psychology.

ROGER FERREIRA

Roger Ferreira is currently completing his BEd.

JOHN E. LEE

Eemo's (Aunts's) Rooftop 2005

John's practice explores the relationship between place and identity and the eroding nature of their boundaries through cinematic means. His work also includes drawings combined with photographic images that elaborate upon the interconnectivity within this discourse. Eemo's (Aunt's) Rooftop is one such example that seeks to connect a sense of familiarity with the alien surroundings of his Aunt's home in Seoul, Korea.

In the fall of 2005, John completed his MFA in the UK and returned to Canada to continue his endeavours in art and teaching.He is currently studying at OISE.

ASIA VELASCO

Discovery

My work is an effort to capture the lifelong process of discovery that begins with a child's curiosity. It is in part an autobiographical image; the young girl is loosely based on my childhood portrait. It represents my development and learning throughout my life. The transformation of the caterpillar in the cocoon into a butterfly parallels the learning experiences one begins to have from the earliest stages of their growth.

Asia is currently an ITE student in the Intermediate/Senior program.

EIMEAR O'NEILL

Living Underground

This piece connects poetry, image and meaning, and parallels my own years of dissociation as someone with a history of trauma doing doctorate research from a creative ecological perspective with the wisdom of the soil held in the bodies of worms. The top drawing is of the ancient burial mound of Knowth in Ireland 's Valley of the Boyne River . The poem below it is framed by a drawing of the rooted landscape of consciousness, historically community and land-based. As above, so below is one of the understandings from Irish indigenous knowledge flint-carved into the stones of the mound over five thousand years ago. The roots attached to both drawings are from my garden in Fergus Ontario where I presently live. Being able to successfully complete artful doctoral research that draws on thousands of years of indigenous knowledge was not just a personal accomplishment but speaks to how far the University of Toronto has come in diversity in its first 100 years. Being able to become truly a University with a universe and Earth centred rather than a Eurocentric approach to education will be its exciting task for its next 100 years.

Eimear O'Neill PhD, Associate Transformative Learning Centre and CAIR. Graduated from OISE/UT in Adult Education in 2005. Eimear is a psychotherapist, educator and consultant in transformative processes at multiple levels. Encaustic art, made with beeswax fused by heat in layers, is an old art form that lends itself to contemporary knowledge. More about Eimear's work including her dissertation "Holding Flames; women illuminating knowledge of s/Self transformation" can be found on her website www.eimearoneill.com

MARY MACDONELL

Hands

The man, as the woman, in this image is lovely. He steps into the frame to be photographed and in reaching out to touch the water pitcher enters further into the realm of the fictional. All art is about making.

Two by two

The female figures in this image advertise a hair salon at Ossington and College. The bent legs and forward-looking gaze of the figures guide our eyes across the frame from the present, the past, and onwards.

Mary MacDonell works in Student Services

Marianne Magus

Flare to Flood

The photographs in this series were taken during a study term in Italy in 2003.   Examining how we built our cities and civilizations without thought for foundations and the nature of the earth we live on is never more evident than in Venice , Italy .   We now see the beauty of Venice being lost daily during tidal floods and rains.   Odds are that Venice 's splendor will be lost completely by the time the next generation is ready to experience it.   This current experience of manmade beauty being reclaimed by the natural world will hopefully 'inform our collective learning' of how we construct our lives and civilizations on this borrowed earth.

Marianne Magus is a Teacher Candidate with the Intermediate/Senior Division of OISE.   She spent her childhood and adolescence in India , Kuwait and Canada .   She holds two degrees from the University of Waterloo in Architecture and is an Intern Architect with the Ontario Association of Architects.  

SUSAN AARON

Meshing Motion

The section in the snow was an event that played with senses forming together and apart using the World Health Organization designation of health, as mental, physical, and social and was presented at a December 6 vigil 2005. The photograph is taken from a video by a York University student - Maggie Hucheson. Re-moving Light

The second section is about technology, and how digital technologies' light moves in parallel actions of syncopation to the restorative rhythms. Rebounding Edges

This seeks out where "nature" forms in the imagination, as a function of light as an idea shaped and then carried in the camera. I have just completed a Masters of Education in Adult Education and have a masters in drama from the University of Toronto , and have done observation and presentation around the somatic and around digital arts. My focus at OISE was arts based. These photographs are taken from a synthesis of events around a watershed area that was my final project, "The Rhythms of Now, Somatic Syncopation of the Imagination." Each aspect of the project considers the rhythms of the imagination creating a world of our shared kinetic rhythm unique to people, that can remain restorative to the essential rhythms of all ongoing life, as the sensual rhythms of now. Event was chosen as the concept of the imagination revealed, and event is about looking forward and looking back actually, the somatic as of the human axis, the range of the restorative actions of each.  

JOANNE LYNES         

The Irish Chain Quilt pattern provides the structure for these works made from ordinary plastic shopping bags. Historical quilts were often made from worn cloth , - re-invented for utilitarian purposes. Plastic bags were invented mainly to be used once and discarded...   Working with throw away material as a quilting medium has allowed me to compare material values of the past and present leading me into the future.

Joanne Lynes works in Circulation Services in the OISE Library.

Gallery Scene

LYNETTE PLETT

Mennonite / Grecian Vase

Mennonite / Grecian Vase is based on a Grecian vase (550 - 530 B.C.) that depicts women working in pairs, spinning, weaving, and folding the finished cloth. The artist who painted these images honoured the importance of women's everyday work by documenting it in such a way that the evidence remains thousands of years later. In place of painted images of Grecian women working with cloth, I machine embroidered an image of Mennonite women hanging clothes to dry. I based the image on one of the bronze panels on a memorial to Mennonite pioneer women in Canada . The memorial is located at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach , Manitoba .

Liberated Territories

Quilt in a Light Box Liberated Territories acknowledges that there are spaces in our organizations (literacy, labour, academia, etc.) where a diversity of knowers and their knowledges (critical, innovative, and creative, etc.) are visible, welcomed, and given voice. Liberated Territories reminds me to look for those spaces, recognize and celebrate them, take root in them, erode the edges, and expand them to include and even greater diversity of knowers and their knowledges.

Lynette Sarah Plett is a third generation quilter who uses quilts and quilting to recover, recreate, and represent women's experiences of the everyday. She completed her doctorate in the History of Education program at OISE/UT in 2006. Her thesis is entitled: Thinking Back Through Our Mothers: A Sampler Quilt of Kleine Gemeinde Mennonite Women and Country Homemakers.

Gallery Scene

KAMLESH SHARMA

Sequined

Looking back at the summer of 1966 in Panjab ( India ) a newly married bride learns the art of embroidery from her mother in law.     A sweet memory of my past; nothing but nostalgia.

Kamlesh Sharma is Supervisor, Circulation Services, OISE Library  

ROBERT DUROCHER   

Mémé m'a dit I (2007)

I am working with the idea of linking past, present with the future through the image of the spider (an aboriginal symbol for grandmother as a link of the past, present and future).  This theme emerges from stories of growing up on the farm and learning from nature from my grandmother. In my research at OISE , I am working with ideas of past and present teacher narratives to inform the future.

 

Mémé m'a dit II (2007)

Robert teaches Grade 5 in Toronto as well as making and exhibiting drawings.  He is currently a MA candidate.

  ROBERT COMELLA

Robert Comella is currently completing his BEd.

ADAM PASSARELLO

Currently I am exploring the artist's method of communicating information through object making using a process I like to call by word of hand, which is parallel to the story-teller's verbal process of word of mouth. This tradition is a cycle; a repetition of event and process where each cycle is slightly altered to reflect the unique identity and contribution of each generation of object maker. I examine this cycle through the use of single simple forms that are repeated in systematical ways to create new and more complex patterns. I am currently experimenting with methods in which I can translate this process to become more three dimensional and more interactive with its surrounding space.

Adam is currently a BEd student in the Intermediate/Senior Program.

WENDY PREZAMENT

These small figurines were inspired by my interest in ancient animal effigy art, especially figures in which the animal is combined with human features.   Our relationship to animals can be life affirming and can evoke different feelings and responses.   When hand-building and decorating these small sculptures humour was amongst the emotions I experienced.   The ancients used animals as symbols in their art and religion. We live in a world that is alarmingly out of balance with nature and perhaps we have lost a connection to our natural and spiritual environment that ancient cultures seemed to have experienced.

Wendy Prezament works in the Registrar's Office at OISE .

MAURA MCINTYRE
ARDRA COLE

Portraits of Patience(8-minute audioscape) We created Portraits of Patience from audio recorded data gathered in a SSHRC funded cross Canada research project about Alzheimer's disease and family caregiving. Focused on the emotional complexities of caregiving Portraits of Patience tells the tale of how 'ordinary' Canadians respond to the extraordinary demands of caregiving and Alzheimer's disease. It reveals the various ways in which caregiving and Alzheimer's disease challenges the human capacity for patience and explores how patience is learned and expressed in relationship. Portraits of Patience suggests that patience is a fluid quality that shifts shape in the ongoing process of relational, experiential learning. Portraits of Patience is a tribute to caregivers everywhere who find (and perhaps lose) patience daily.

Maura McIntyre conducts research in the Department of Adult Education.

Ardra Cole is a faculty member in the Department of Adult Education and is Co-director of the Centre for Arts-Informed Research.

*********************************************

OISE/UT Art Exhibit

March 23, 24, 25 & 31, 2006

Photographs of artworks are by Irene Kicak.

J. Gary Knowles

 red fish

This is one image from the series "fish stories" which revolve around issues of the east coast fishing industry and the small fishing community in which Gary 's family home is situated. Each sailcloth canvas depicts three fish important in the fisher's quotas and explores in some dimension elements which contribute to the demise of the fisheries. Each fish depicted was caught by Gary 's fisher neighbours. more information about some of Gary 's work can be found at jgaryknowles.com J. Gary Knowles is co-director of the Centre for Arts Informed Research and a faculty member in the department of AECP.

Helen Ziral

TAPeHISToRY: Integrated Fragments of Spirit Injury 

This work in progress is the co-creation of 12 women who participated in my doctoral research on the Resilient Black Iris - Women of the African Diaspora: Spirit Healing and Ethnic Recovery. As metaphor, the quilt is the product of three generations (focus groups) of women. The first generation began the piece, passed it to the next generation, who passed it to the third and was then integrated by a final generation (participant). In my role as researcher, I am pulling the work together by sewing the pinned pieces.

Helen Pearman Ziral is a fourth year doctoral student in Adult Education and the Collaborative Program in Women and Gender Studies at OISE/UT.  

Neil Gislason

Work/place: An Arts-Informed Study of a Public Secondary School (2005)

This work explores my experience as a secondary school teacher. It is an exercise in ambiquity.I aim to entangle the viewer/reader in my own probing of school space, while avoiding a set theoretical or ideological position. The work hopes only to offer a series of entrance-ways into a particular public space as it existed at a certain time. I expect that each viewer/reader will occupy that space in their own fashion. Neil Gislason is a PhD student in the department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology.

Chien-Ming Huang   

Chien-Ming Huang is deeply intrigued by the power relationship between the opposites, such as home and the world; individuals and corporations; the disfranchised and the privileged.  Huang's work examines a wide range of issues, whether that of race, identity, colonialism and post-colonialism, globalization, cultural stereotype, global politics, and popular culture.   Huang received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Queen's University and a Master degree in Visual Arts from Vermont College .  He is now attending the OISE program at University of Toronto .

Robert Tonks        

Three Untitled Photographs The images included in this exhibition are from his Urban Landscapes portfolio; a series of over one hundred photographs of the vernacular architecture of old Toronto . Bob has a particular interest in dawn light and has been working with this particular colour palette for more than a decade. These images are captured on film then optimized and printed digitally on archival photographic paper.

Bob is an OISE/UT student, a Teacher Candidate in the Central Option of the Primary/Junior division.

Lynette Sarah Plett

Subjugating Knowledges  © 2003

This two-layered quilt symbolizes the theme of under-funding in post-secondary education at two levels.   The raw seams with frayed edges and the untrimmed threads of the quilted building signify the eventual effects that lack of funding has on universities-the deterioration of physical university structures.   The exposed layers of the quilt hint at the dangers of exposing students, faculty and staff to health and safety hazards when buildings are not properly maintained due to lack of funding and understaffing.  

Under-funding postsecondary education also threatens to curtail and suppress the critical, innovative and creative knowledges within universities.   The bright colours seen through the building's windows-passionate reds for creativity and fresh greens for innovation-signify a diversity of knowledges.   In the current political climate, diverse voices, especially those of the disenfranchised in our society, are at great risk of being suppressed.   I encourage the viewer of Subjugating Knowledges to draw aside the quilted building and take notice of the quilt beneath which is hand-pieced in the traditional Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern.   The 146 hand-pieced hexagons signify the knowledges of the disenfranchised in our society's past, present and future.   By drawing aside the quilted building, thereby shining light on the hexagons, you are interrupting the ongoing subjugation of diverse knowledges.   These knowledges, although threatened by obscurity, will not be so easily destroyed.

Lynette Sarah Plett is a PhD student in the department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education, History of Education program.

Lynette Sarah Plett

Uncovering ordinary women / everyday knowledges © 2006

This quilt portrays the subjects of my doctoral thesis: Country Homemakers who wrote letters to a woman's page edited by Francis Marion Beynon from 1912 to 1917 and signed their letters with pseudonyms and Kleine Gemeinde Mennonite women like my sister, my mother and her sister, my grandmothers and my great grandmothers who all grew up in farming communities. I make visible my Mennonite foremothers, emulating Francis Marion Beynon who provided a space for hundreds of prairie women to give voice to their everyday concerns. Our images, transferred onto chiffon fabric, bookend the two sides of the quilt.

Note :       All images are from the quilter's personal collection except that of Francis Marion Lynette Sarah Plett

Hands on faith © May 2000

Hands on faith expresses my faith that the many women who have journeyed through life before me - my mother, my grandmother and the ancient women before them - although on different paths than mine, will nevertheless guide my journey.

Drawing on their strength and wisdom will alleviate my anxieties about leaving behind an established life in Manitoba to begin, in my late thirties, an unknown journey as a female doctoral student in Toronto.

Shruti Talwar       

Man in White Kurta (2005)

Gordon Chambers is one of R&B's most prolific songwriters, writing songs for Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston and has recently released his debut album. An erstwhile stranger, but I found him in the pages of a magazine, one that my alma-mater sends out monthly to its alumni.  

Shruti Talwar is in her final year in the M. A. Child Study and Education progam at the Institute of Child Study . She grew up in India , went to college in the United States and Hungary and has recently made Toronto her home.

Chien-Ming Huang   

In this exhibition, Huang attempts to portray the lives of those who encounter a certain identity crisis while searching for a 'safe' space between opposite cultural/racial memberships.  The work is both fictional and real in a way that it reflects the collective story of a group of individuals who experience similar struggles in their daily routines.

Huang received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Queen's University and a Master degree in Visual Arts from Vermont College .  He is now attending the OISE program at University of Toronto .

Celia Correa        

Kaibigan  
Kaibigan 2 'Kaibigan' is Pilipino for   friend. My 5-year old nephew in the Philippines , has friends only he can 'see'. He talks, laughs and plays with them. We were worried at first but came to know that having invisible friends is common among children. The identity of those friends also changes in time. Some say these 'creations' are 'entertaining and comforting friends that help kids make sense of the world where they have little power.

Celia is part of the graduate admissions team in the Registrar's Office of OISE/UT. She was in doctoral student in the Department of Adult Education several years ago, having completed all the degree requirements except for the writing and defense of her thesis.

Wendy Prezament    

For the last 5 years I have been pursuing my interest in ceramics.   I have been taking regular classes at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art where I have developed a keen interest for making very colourfully painted and decorative handbuilt pieces.   I have also taken pottery classes at George Brown College , Haliburton School of Fine Arts summer program and the Artperience summer program at Canadore College in North Bay .   Last summer I attended a 2 weeks handbuilding class at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina where I made the small porcelain dish in this exhibit.   The other two dishes are made of low-fire earthenware and are hand painted with colourful glazes.  

Wendy has been an employee at OISE since the late 1980's. She started working in the OISE Library and in 1996 when OISE became OISE/UT changed jobs and am now working in the Registrar's Office as the Transcripts and Records Officer.  

Shruti Talwar    

Mahila  (2006)

Inspired by a photograph in The Times of India, the painting is of an  elderly lady, demonstrating with the National Indian Women's Federation. The lines in her face are as deep as her resolve. She is flanked by colleagues and they stand together as strong symbols of femininity, commitment and power.There are thousands of Mahilas in India . Both in rural and urban settings, women of little means, no education and few freedoms are  determined to among other necessities, secure potable water for all, sustain primary education initiatives for girls and raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. Vanilla Ice-cream (2005) Eye to Eye: Women is a collection of poetry and photographs about women in Africa, Asia and Latin America . This painting is from a photograph in the collection and is of three Algerian girls  enjoying ice-cream. Their annonymity lends itself to the familiar experience of cooling down on a hot summer day.

Shruti Talwar is in her final year in the M. A. Child Study and Education progam at the Institute of Child Study . She grew up in India , went to college in the United States and Hungary and has recently made Toronto her home.

Jane Nguyen

Bold and Confident

An attempt at Cubism after a class lesson in high school on the same topic, I did a portrait of myself using tempera paint.   The colours used were only black (for the background) and blue (for the portrait).   The shapes in the image are made of different shades and tones of blue.   I utilized the tones, shades to show depth, texture to the image and create a 3-D effect.   I wanted to use this cool colour to depict a feeling of darkness but with calmness.   The hues for the hair strands are almost a mirror image of each other on opposite sides of the face.   To add a little humour and contradiction to cubism, I lightly added in curly eyelashes.   The black background permits the image to leap out to give a bold statement and draw attention.   The smooth, solid texture of the primary colour and the boldness of the background was a way for me to represent confidence and determination. As an engineer, I worked for the automotive industry for about three years.   Then I decided to pursue a career in teaching.   Teaching was a career that I had my heart on since high school.   Now I am currently a student at the Ontario Institute for Study in Education (OISE)/ University of Toronto .   I have a love for the Visual Arts since I was young.   Although I am planning to specialize in teaching Mathematics and Science, Visual Arts would be an extra curricular activity that I would like to bring into the school community.    

Kerri Friesen

My Big Head Drawings

When I was living in Japan my mind was a mess of language and translation, my heart a rollercoaster of passion, and the culture shock was overwhelming. To process the feelings I was experiencing I started sketching my Big Head figures.   I couldn't clear my head enough to draw a magnificent piece, but could sketch simple figures. With these figures I could encapsulate a single day's feeling or event.This process gave me a sense of gratitude and resolution about all the experiences, difficult or wonderful, that Japan offered me. The Big Head figure looks slightly alien. This references my own feelings of oddness and inability to fit in, within rural Gunma Prefecture. As I was as also studying Japanese at that time, I started to write the words on my pictures, merely as a way to remember new vocabulary. I have also included the English version in pencil. The Big Heads helped me look at life one day at a time. It is my hope that they will do the same for you.

Kerri is currently enrolled in the TESL Certificate Program at Woodsworth College, University of Toronto .

Robert Durocher

Masked 1                                          Masked 2

To perform my role as 'teacher' in an elementary school, I feel the need to mask parts of my life and identity.   As a self-identified gay male, an identification not traditionally accepted with elementary teachers due to heterosexist and homophobic notions of perversion and sickness, I find myself masking that part of my life as a means of protecting myself from the possibility of homophobic harm.   Through the use of visual representations and narrative, I am currently interested in researching and making work that reflects the ways and degrees to which gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual/gendered teachers mask parts of their identity.

Robert is a graduate of the Bachelor of Education program of OISE/UT at the Junior/Intermediate level in Visual Arts. He is currently working towards a Master of Education degree in Curriculum at OISE/UT where he is interested in using the visual arts to showcase gay-teacher identity, and how graffiti art can be used as a tool for social justice education.

Sara Promislow       

Four Borderland Collages
Borderlands    
Methodology
Reconciling Worlds
Revisiting Borderlands                                             

I was close to completing meetings with research participants for my doctoral research, A Collage of Borderlands: Arts-informed Life Histories of Childhood Immigrants and Refugees Who Maintain Their Mother Tongue, Promislow 2005). My research had taken on a life of its own. Words were no longer sufficient to work through what I was learning, what I was trying to understand: Contradictions, "messy" knowledge that did not conform to my preconceived notions and biases, complexities that refused linguistic articulation and defied linear interpretation. Open to the fluid and emergent nature of arts-informed research, I sought new ways of looking at the knowledge generated in my research. It was at an AERA workshop [1] that serendipity arrived at my doorstep in the shape of the art form collage. Learning about and working with the art form collage for the first time opened a field of possibilities that set me free. Intuitively drawn to the art form, I discovered collage as a powerful tool of analysis and representation, exceptionally suited to my research.   

Sara Promislow is a lecturer at the University of Toronto and an independent scholar affiliated with the Centre for Arts-Informed Research at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.[1] Butler-Kisber, L., Bodone, F., Hussey, C., Meyer, M. & Stewart, M.(2003). Artful analysis and representation in qualitative inquiry using poetry, theatre, and collage, AERA Pre-conference Workshop, Chicago, IL, 2003

Joanne Lynes    

Shop the World

Social traditions have given us art-forms that have their own history and development. I combine historical moments in my life with activities that define my ongoing participation in culture. The quilt offers a rich medium for exploration and a blanket of meaning, buffering the exquisitely difficult experiences - the painful realities that can not only destroy but give momentum to expression.   I aim to capture these nuances in the process and gain access to understanding.

Joanne works in the OISE/UT Library.

Sarah Peterson

In my practice I consider the histories of mechanization of representation and the framing and ordering of landscapes. The blurring of the image acts as an erasure of the brush-marks of the hand, thus providing a further method of mediation and distance between the area of landscape and the observer.   The borders framing the painted views also create a sense of order, recalling the need to maintain control over the landscape, by delineating the expanse of landscape in each view.

While addressing an interiorized view of an exterior landscape - I am interested in drawing connections to the "garrison mentality" concept of the landscape. I see this as an important theme resurfacing in Canadian cultural production, in cinema and literature, and painting provides a space where these concepts can be reconsidered.

Sarah Peterson is currently completing the Bachelor of Education program   at OISE/UT as an art specialist in the Junior/Intermediate division. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Western Ontario and a   Bachelor of Fine Art from the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Theresa Griffin and J. Gary Knowles

collaborating for children at risk  This is a representation of concepts, possibilities and challenges associated with providing integrated services for children who are at risk and their families. for the last four years Theresa has worked intensely with agencies who are endeavouring to improve the delivery of services that will enable enhanced services and quality of learning and life for these children. This work in part depicts elements of Theresa's doctoral thesis research.

Theresa Griffin is a PhD student in the Department of AECP.

J. Gary Knowles is co-director of the Centre for Arts Informed Research and is a faculty member in the Department of AECP.  

Allan Revich       

He Stands Alone

All Art is PoliticalI have always been interested in the conceptual basis for art. What is art? What is its purpose? Should art have a purpose? Does art have to be beautiful? Does it have to be meaningful, and if so to whom? In my work I try to explore these and other issues around visual representation. My work draws on a variety of influences, ranging from the concept drawings of Leonardo da Vinci to the visual explorations of artists like Marcel Duchamp, Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson, Cindy Sherman, Yoko Ono, and Pablo Picasso. I have been involved in the Fluxus ( Intermedia   or neo-dada) movement for several years and my work also draws on this experience. My work is also influenced by social, political, and theoretical discourse from the world at large.

Allan Revich has been on staff at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education since 1998. He graduated from OISE/UT in 2005 with a Masters Degree in Education (M.Ed.) from the department of Adult Education, Community Development, and Counselling Psychology with a specialist letter in work and career.

Pam Patterson     

a story told in 4 panels

I practice my art, as my life, from the location of woman -- white, almost middle-class, middle-aged, single mother with a disability.   I use the specific experiences of this location to inform, disrupt or challenge not only the accepted or "normalized" image of Western white woman, but the traditional formal concerns of art.   In doing so, I hope to embrace a more inclusive process for living and art making. The forms I choose to use in my work are suited to this process.   My performances, mixed media installations and videos, while they are at first glance clean, sometimes minimal and formally structured, do, in fact, contain many personal and specific images or texts.   My intention is to discuss how women have been/are being formed and to reveal our attempts to negotiate or resist this formation.   The tension in the work is between the personal/subjective and the formal/objective, which raises questions for me as the nature of feminist research practices, feminist art practices, and women's evolving roles as parents, workers and partners in a Western technological society.

Pam Patterson (PhD) has, for 25 years, been active in both the art and academic communities. She is currently Visiting Scholar for the Centre for Women's Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and teaches at the Toronto School of Art and Art Gallery of Ontario.

Ilona Kolcze  

Steichen Remixed- 2006

As an artist I am greatly influenced and inspired by found materials especially unconventional objects and tools. I enjoy playing and experimenting with new configurations, patterns and modes of expression. This piece was created after studying some of the "master photographers"   including Edward Steichen. I wanted to recreate the vertical, monumental feeling of "Flatiron" (1905) using strips of watercolour paper, canvas and wood stain.    

Ilona is currently in the OISE Bachelor of Education program (specializing in Visual Art, Junior/Intermediate division). She strives to incorporate the arts (visual, musical and dramatic) throughout all areas of the curriculum encouraging students to think creatively and express themselves.  

Deirdre Decarion

One - of - a - Kind - Handcrafted - Walking - Staffs

These hiking and/or walking implements are called'staffs' because they are taller than canes. Their height is particularly functional in rugged or hilly terrain. Historically they have been viewed as symbols of power and authority. To me they are also a symbol of the strength and beauty that surrounds us.  The staffs are 'culls' and chosen for their differences rather than similarities. Each staff is unique and is at least a day's labor. The process begins with a leisurely hike 'eyeing' the culls and making mental notes of their locations. Armed with a saw I return and the cull is transported to the workshop where the crafting begins. After the branches are trimmed {and saved for other projects), the staff is stripped of its bark with a knife. In this bare version the staff assumes its anthropomorphic quality. The texture, design, color, and shape begin to emerge as I sand the staff and finish with 3 coats of tung oil. The final touch includes a leather wrist strap. Some can be embellished with totems such as wampum or a stray feather from woodland or beach.

Deirdre DeCarion earned her Ph.D. at OISE while a student in the Curriculum Department and Center for Teacher Development. As a staff member Deirdre was coordinator of the OISE/UT - Hong Kong Insitute of Education Doctoral Program.

She is presently co-coordinator of NICS (Narrative Inquiry Community Seminar) and conducts workshops for teachers.

Anna Faraone    

Dazzled by Dandelions

A 3-year-old plays with and learns about fragile flowers as she gathers a bunch to offer to her Mommy.

On Golden Pond   /   Journey's End   /   The Flower Whisperer

A 3-year-old discovers nature at her cottage as she examines the water, land and sky. 

Anna Faraone is a seconded instructor in the Initial Teacher Education Program -- FSL and International Languages Coordinator for the secondary panel since 1999. She is also a doctoral candidate in CTL. Her love of photography developed after the birth of her first daughter in 2002.
 

Mary MacDonell      

Skates

The light and warmth of this interior scene caught my eye. I came upon it at the end of a disconsolate film shoot. The scene spoke to me and some satisfying way seemed self-mirroring.                                                                                               

Bridal Gown

I was attracted to the folds of the fabric. I love this image, as well, for the way in which the (implied) woman in the wedding gown is exposed to and interacting with the city.                                                                                                                                         

Shake a Tail

I went to Christie and Bloor to shoot the Korean Tiger. There were some kids there on their own shoot. I set up my tripod and seemed to catch a moment of mystery.

Mary MacDonell works in Student Services.

Joanne C. Elvy

Notes from a Cuban Diary:  Forty Women on Forty Years

In 1961, 271,000 Cubans volunteered as literacy teachers to partake in a massive battle against illiteracy. More than half who volunteered were women. As artist-researcher I have been collecting testimonials form Cuban women as a tribute to their civic participation at a critacal moment in their country's history.This litearcy campaign was such a gesture of humanity. It seems to me it simply could not have happened without the participation of women. Those of us who were part of it proved that together we could overcome obstacles despite all the challenges we would surely face, socially or economically. Yes, women ARE capable of taking on such taks!
- Zeida, Pinar del Rio

Joanne C. Elvy is a PhD candidate in the department of Adult Education.

Saad Chahine      

Ready for work

Transportation in the city, that once existed prior to automotive transportation. This now serves as a method for people to take a romantic tour of the old city.

Quebecois - Toronto

Docks of Montréal are still serving the same purpose. These tankers caring everything and are often seen docked in the ports of this old city.

Future in the near distance

View of the city, taken from behind a tree in Vieux-Montréal. The soft backdrop of Montréal buildings opposing the crisp tree branches is an attempt to show the future at a close distance. We have a general idea of what is will look like just not the details. The three photographs presented are of Vieux-Montréal taken in late winter 2005. Montréal was originally founded (1642) on the banks of the St. Lawrence by a group of French settlers. The old port at one point severed as the main city and has since become more of a tourist attraction, with many restaurants, galleries and events year round. Traveling through this old city, you cannot help enjoy the beauty it has to offer and wonder what it could have looked like in the 16,17,18, and early 19 hundreds.

Saad is in the final stages of an M.Ed. degree in Educational Administration in the Theory and Policy Studies Department. He is an amateur/beginner photographer & enjoys experimenting with photography.

Teresa C. Luciani & Sharon L. Sbrocchi

Our Community Garden, Part 2

Re-Assembling A Collaborative Learning Process The work is a two-part multi-media installation that aims to explore and make visible our collaborative learning process as students and multi-media artists. Three years ago, as part of a larger exhibition, we co-created an installation called "Our Community Garden" (Part 1) which was our response to drastic cuts in post-secondary education. We gathered everyday objects from friends and colleagues and put them together in the form of an installation as a way to honour and make visible the importance of community in turbulent times. For this exhibit we have re-assembled and built upon "Our Community Garden". We took two images (Milkweed & Tomato) from "Our Community Garden" and, along with our artist statements, created another installation that conceptually follows from our sense making process gained and gathered through our collaboration on "Our Community Garden".

Teresa C. Luciani, also known as Tracy , is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto . Her work explores the role of food in the lives of girls and women, writing as inquiry and visual representation.  

Sharon L. Sbrocchi is a PhD graduate from the Department of Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto . Her research and teaching interests include sense of place and self in community contexts, visual inquiry and the development of an ecological identity.
 

Susan Aaron

Where Nature Forms
Kinetic Camera

These pictures were taken at a wetland site north of the university and they speak to the presence of nature as captured in culture here referenced as photographs.

Susan Aaron is finishing her Masters in Education in Adult Education, focusing on arts informed research. She has a masters in Drama from the UofT, and a fine arts honors degree from York University in dance and theatre. Prior to coming to OISE she dealt with culture and media, and she is a many year volunteer steward with the City of Toronto Task Force to Bring back the Don.

Overview of exhibit