Our featured first year MFA for this week is textiles artists Sarah Brooks!

Sarah Brooks (she/her) is an artist, craftsperson and knowledge seeker. Graduating from NSCAD University in 2019, she received her BFA majoring in Textiles (minor AH). Sarah pursues many different creative making processes such as; weaving, sewing, screen-printing, dye methods, painting, photography and design. Sarah has co-created and participated in various curation collectives and group projects, some including; Siawa’sik (2019) - a group curated display with the Indigenous Exhibition/ Methodologies Class at NSCAD University and shown at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax. Amntu’kati Spirit Place (2019) - a Textiles and Ceramics Installation in collaboration with Cynthia Martin at NSCAD University Port Campus, Treaty Space Gallery in Halifax.  Sarah is from the Mi'kmaw community of Sɨkɨpne'katik, First Nation. Since graduating in 2019, Sarah has been employed through CMM (Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq) and St. Mary’s University, contributing to the project titled T’an Weji-sqalia’tiek: Mi’kmaw Place Names.

If you want to know more about Sarah, check out her instagram and read more about her practise and studio work!

@mytinylanguage  and  @brookstextiles

We visited Sarah in her studio on Fountain Campus in the Textile Department (H220).

What is an important in your studio practice?

Plant identification has been a very prominent aspect in my recent work, as I’ve been focusing greatly on ways of reactivating Indigenous material culture - specifically relating to Mi’kmaw people and being in Mi’kma’ki. I’m walking, mapping, photographing and recording what I see in my immediate urban landscape. I'm also looking to investigate what plants are grown in parks, public spaces, and what plants are organically growing in between these spaces. I’ve been really enjoying going for walks and seeing what’s around me, beginning to learn to identify different trees, plants and foliage that I come across on my walks

I’m thinking more intently about the land I’m on - what stories and histories are here. I want to understand better what’s here now and what was once here. By connecting with the living plants and the identification of these plant species, I hope to learn more of that story. I want to become well-versed in what these histories are, and I also want to share what I find with others.

  Alongside this field work, I’m beginning to do research based around archived materials in the Nova Scotia Museum. The particular archived materials I’m learning about pertains to their collected pieces of Mi’kmaw made objects. Some of these objects include textiles made from plant materials. To begin this research, I’m looking particularly at cordages that were made which naturally resemble the likes of hemp or flax fibres. These cordages were pieced together in a wrapping or twining technique that strike similarities to leno weave structures. I’m looking to delve more into this research to find more evidence of what specific plant fibres were used, where and how they were sourced, and what construction methods were used to make these plant fibre textiles. Some of these archived materials are over several hundreds of years old. It’s very special to work towards uncovering some of that history of lost Mi’kmaw material culture.

Some physical work that I’m doing right now is weaving. I recently set up a linen fibre warp onto my loom and I’m beginning my first attempts at leno weaving. Learning to work with the flax linen fibres is a good starting point for me to relate back to using a more naturally sourced and sustainable material. I’m hoping later to make my own cordages using scavenged and harvested plant matter. My goal eventually is to hand-weave using a similar method to leno, and to incorporate plant fibre cordages that I’ll be making.

Do you have special object in your studio?

This week we are featuring second year interdisciplinary artist Emma Allain. Emma represents the expanded media department at NSCAD and has a studio at Fountain campus in N500. She works conceptually with a range of media, including book arts, sound art, assemblage, and sculpture. Check out her work online: eallain.com

Emma’s thesis show, Not just the distance but what it contains, opens April 8, 2019 at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. See you there!

Photos by Séamus Gallagher

Emma’s Work

I'm working on a number of things right now in advance of my thesis exhibition in April. One is a series of postcards that I'm sending to a false address, the approximate location of some land my grandfather owned and passed down to my dad. The postcards will make it to the post office in my grandparents' small town but will ultimately be returned without ever reaching the land. Another thing I'm doing is learning how to make silicone molds using a method Alex Linfield taught me. I've been casting some pieces of a tree that was chopped down outside of Eyelevel Gallery and artist-run centre on Cornwallis St, using plaster and resin mixed with wood chip from the same tree.

Emma’s Studio

I have this hand-made boat from Newport, Quebec on the Gaspé Coast – near my grandparents’ home town – made by a local artisan named Hector Legresley. I visited last summer for the first time in over 20 years and stopped at the side of the road to buy one of these boats. While I was fumbling with my limited French I realized that the other customer there was my dad's cousin Jean-Marie. We talked about my grandfather, his uncle. The dolphin on the boat’s deck was a birthday gift from the other MFAs last year, he grows in water and gets very slimy so I try to keep him dry.

Our next featured 2nd year MFA of this week is working with Scenic design and Expended media: Zehua Sun!!!!!

Zehua Sun (he/him) is a scenic designer and expended media artist from Zibo, China. He graduated from Shandong University of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in scenic design and film scenery in 2018. His works are based on personal experiences and theatrical forms of expression including experimental film and installation that represent China’s society. He is currently a MFA student at NSCAD University and exploring more possibilities of artistic expression in time and space.

Find out more about Sun and his practice on his Instagram @zenzehuasun

Due to Covid Zehua is currently living and working in China. Here is what he was telling us about his studio practice:

My current studio practice is about the transformation between physical and digital. In the passage of time and modernization, I feel the things around me gradually depleting. The house I lived in with my grandparents will be demolished, and the furniture we used will be abandoned. These places, spaces and things hold many memories of individuals and generations. I am trying to extract them from the passage of time using the media of image, sound, photogrammetry, 3D scanning, image array modeling and 360 degree video. I let them exist in digital form in virtual space.

Do you keep a special object in your studio:

Yes, in one area of my studio I put down a carpet with a tea table and I also set up a simple Buddhist niche. I usually do a meditation to empty my mind before I start the studio work.

We are excited to present our next 2nd year MFA with an art practice in painting: Takashi Hilferink!!!!

As the son of a master carpenter and two dancers with the National Ballet of Canada, I am a beneficiary of creative traditions of exactitude. These demanding artistic inheritances were confounded by an adversarial childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. Watching friends and neighbors uphold the violence and bigotry so central to the economic and political paralysis of Lower Price Hill interested me in ideology, and representation – both in the sense of depicting the observable, and of sincerely accounting for lived realities.

In 2003 I began a BFA with Honours at York University. There I met Catherine Toth, who became my life partner and with whom I collaborated until her death in 2010. In years following I reckoned with this loss, my work tending towards nostalgia and archive. I thereafter centered my work in the aspirational elements of these themes, mindful of their convalescent potential.

At the end of the summer last year, my partner and I moved into a haunted house, and a month later our son Wylee was born! These two events have led me to notice a few things: that every house (or body) is haunted – or, we house ghosts, if not zombies; another way of saying this might be that we each inherit decisions, beliefs and habits that are not necessarily our own. Another thing I’ve been noticing is that becoming a (better) parent makes me a better painter, and visa versa!

If you want to know more about Takashi and his work, check out this blog or his website http://www.takashi-hilferink.com/ and his Instagram @tacklbox

We visited Takashi in his studio at Fountain Campus and ask him to tell us about his art practice.

As a painter I'm curious about realism. In one way, realism is perceptive as it denotes verisimilitude in the portrayal of the appearances of things. However, it is apperceptive in that it hinges on shared and coherent understandings. Contemporary reality is one of appearances and digital integration, seemingly filtered through smartphones and cloud-based computing. Yet these are extensions of earlier media like videotape and film, themselves heirs to the representational traditions of painting and drawing.

What form of realism does technological documentation uphold? I feel this is poignant for an era in which the Internet reconfigures our experiences of images, memory and history. What ‘past’ exists in the continual present tense of the Internet? As shared histories become more contestable, outdated formats present a kind of consensus in hindsight. In other words, generational memory has become codified in visual media. In order to intensify our present subjectivities with the past, I develop paintings from outmoded visual technologies, studying the materiality of film and videotape. Such differences as those between the rich contrast of Kodachrome, the garish fluorescence of VHS or the decay of phosphors in a cathode ray tube have led me to develop unique rendering approaches and colour palettes.

Recalling tangible, hardcopy media and the unhurried, early days online, I seek ways to join the evanescence of the Internet with the haptic sensibilities of painting. The epochal relationship painting has with duration and history is evident in its material presence. Do paintings harness representational concerns in a flat, pictorial space similar to the television or cellphone screen? Can paintings exist as a middle ground to register and collate realisms?

Do you keep a special object in your studio? As a sentimental person who has often lived in the past, the task for me in my second year has been in fact to set aside special objects, of which I have perhaps too many already. I'd like to think that the most special things in my studio are the works I'm creating.

Our next featured 2nd year MFA is interdisciplinary artist: Félix Bernier!!!!

Félix Bernier is an interdisciplinary artist from Montreal now based in Halifax, with a background in software engineering. His work explores the impact of digital technologies to our physical environment and to human interactions. Using photography, installation, sculptural elements and digital technologies, Félix presents the complex inter-relations of the physical and the digital as sources of interrogation. Félix began a career change in 2018 by completing a Visual Arts Certificate at NSCAD and is currently an MFA candidate for 2021. 


If you want to know more about Félix‘s work check out this blog or his website https://www.felixbernier.com/

We visited Felix in his studio at Port Campus in Halifax and asked him about his studio practice.

For most of my work, I am working and interacting with specific sites of interest. Last summer, I discovered an abandoned gold mine in Mooseland, where I am returning often. In these explorations, I gather objects from the place, data from the area, documentation photos and films. Back in my studio I transform what I gathered, from analog to digital and from digital to analog, layering everything together in interactive installations. 


Do you keep a special object in your studio? Plants and coffee. Plants are reminders of the types of environments I like to be in. I used to feed them with my leftover coffee until they got addicted to it. Now I keep those separated.  


Check out our next featured 2nd year MFA photographer and digital artist: Hossein Khodabakhsh!!!!

Hossein is an Iranian photographer and artist who works mostly using digital tools. He is mainly interested in documentary style and counter-monuments to show hidden subjects and feelings including similarities and differences of communities and cultures. His works are regularly about humans without showing them directly. Embodying human vices and looking at humans as animals is a part of his works. Photography with the definition of creating a moment or a period is now fascinating for him. Recently he has been working on 3D creation to bring his photos and ideas to life, for the most part in the virtual world. He has a background in computer science and is trying to create his works in a place between these two worlds.

Find out more about Hossein and his work on our Blog or his website http://hosseinkhodabakhsh.com/ or his Instagram @hosein.khoda

Hossein is currently working in Tehran, Iran. We asked him to tell us about his studio work.

Since last year I’ve worked on creating AR art pieces as counter-monuments. Working on MITACS with NSCAD faculties as RA helped me through this way. I use satellite images and photogrammetry software to create 3D objects from the history of specific locations, mostly crime scenes. I then mix these objects with photos I took from the land.

Do you keep a special object in your studio?

On top of cameras, computers, and equipment related to my medium, I actually hate to have a studio bigger than a backpack, to be able to make anywhere my studio temporarily. I think I can say that in Tehran my motorcycle is my portable studio.

Our next featured 2nd year MFA is expended media artist: Bonita Hatcher!!!

Bonita is an expanded media artist based in Nova Scotia. Her multi-disciplinary practice utilizes audio/video, performance, and other forms of new media. Raised in Newfoundland, and a descendent of a British Home-Child, she has lived across the continent, from St. John’s to Santa Cruz. Her installation-based work is sociopolitical; investigating themes of marginalization, self vs other and the manner in which societies venerate or vilify. Already holding a BSc from Memorial University, Bonita graduated with a BFA from NSCAD in 2008. She received the Gordon Parson's Film and Video award and is a current recipient of the Canadian Institute of Health research scholarship for her work in exploring the relationship between modes of dwelling, systems of control and access to rights and services as a citizen without a fixed address. 

If you want to find out more about Bonita and her work check out this post and her website bonitahatcher.wordpress.com or on her social Media Imon DaRoade on Twitch and @badassbeaglebus on Instagram.

Bonita, tell Us About your studio Practice:

My current work explores the modern nomad or “van-life” movement and the concepts of marginalization, modes of dwelling and how navigate the absurdity of social or public policy and perception. For many months, this has meant my practice has not been a typical or traditional one. I am not carving, painting, drawing or even editing video. My life right now is my practice. 

My campus studio space is currently housing my possessions on live stream as they have a “better” home than I do. But my day-to-day practice, for now, is working on my bus, Babbs, and doing the experiential work of problem solving a mode of living that does not come with presets - if you want electricity you have to learn about how electricity works, determine your output needs and then install options to meet those needs, as opposed to taking for granted the unlimited, even if fee-based, access to electricity by turning on a switch. I also have to find the funds to generate each solution as it appears. I am really interested in this space in between the oppressive problems and the idealized solutions out there, a space where a sort of personal liberty exists. 

Every aspect of life is no longer automatic, I have to engage with my physical reality in ways I never had before. So, my practice is often riddled with seemingly impossible obstacles and worry, with an anxiety over either not knowing or not affording solutions to necessities - but that is the work/research itself in the end. The beautiful thing about it is that despite how ominous a lot of the experience sounds, there is this sense of liberty in it that can only be felt by doing. My challenge will be how to translate that for those who view the resulting work.

Do you keep a special object in your studio: 

A few... like a copy of the infamous photo of Linda Benglis. Her audacity, humour and stark challenge to viewers always reminded me that the right path for me isn’t always acceptable to others.

We are excited to present our next featured MFA working with expended media art: Suzie Cochrane!!!!

Suzie was awarded a BFA degree with Distinction from the University of Lethbridge in 2000 and in 2008, she moved to Nova Scotia where she is now a resident in Greenwich. Her practice focuses mainly on using analog technology to create mostly small, playful, interactive objects to engage people in conversation and stimulate interest in the beauties of science, mathematics and technology.

If you want to know more about Suzies practice and her work check out this Blog or her Instagram @Iaslothmagicallyappears

Due to the pandemic Suzie is working in her studio in Greenwich, Nova Scotia. We asked her to tell us more about her studio practice!

As an autistic person with dyscalculia, I have engaged in a lifelong love/hate relationship with mathematics. An obsession with patterns, either natural or manmade, drives her to explore (sometimes painfully) mathematical systems, despite a profound innumeracy. Ongoing mathematics upgrading is her solution to this issue, and it is going slowly but steadily so far.

One is never too old to conquer or at least attack educational barriers, and this need I have to learn and create throughout life is something I want to help others explore for themselves as well. By using interactive art as a catalyst, I hope to inspire others to seek out their own creativity in an ongoing cycle of (self) discovery and connection.

Do you keep a special object in your studio?

My whole house is my studio at the moment, and there are lots of special objects within it! If pressed, I would say a trio of battery-operated candles provides me with a soft, flicking light that warms my space and offers a forgiving semi-darkness for when I have to attend Teams or Zoom meetings.