Alumni news

Created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, the Sobey Art Award is Canada’s preeminent award for contemporary Canadian art. The annual $50,000 prize is given to an artist under 40 who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated.

The 2015 Shortlist, announced June 3, 2015, includes alumnus Raymond Boisjoly ('06), representing the West Coast and the Yukon. Raymond is an Indigenous artist of Haida and Quebecois descent from Chilliwack, BC. He has previously taught at Emily Carr as sessional faculty and we're pleased to announce he will join us August 1 as Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Visual Art and Material Practice, Audain School of Visual Arts.

platFORM has been awarded a Professional Notable from the  2015 Core77 Design Awards for Design Education Initiatives.

platFORM is a collaborative product development class for design and business students from Emily Carr and SFU. The students work in trans-disciplinary teams to develop products, services, and systems that address contemporary social, economic, and environmental issues. The project was developed by Andreas Eiken (MDes '15) and MDes Candidate, Maia Rowan, in collaboration with Lisa Papania and Sarah Lubik from SFU Beedie.

Gabriella Solti’s (’11) artist’s book, The Book of Hours, was awarded the MCBA Prize 2015 Juror's Special Recognition of Merit Award. The book will be exhibited at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts from July 17 to August 3, 2015 alongside with the other honoured works.  

The Book of Hours is a unique, 120 page codex that expresses the artist’s personal values relating to labour. The pages of the books are hand sanded chromium oxide and silicon carbide microfinishing films - surfaces that are extremely hard to erase -, interwoven with hand coloured frosted mylar and meticulously bound into a codex.  

Working in both collage and sculpture, Elizabeth Zvonar’s ('01) work utilizes strategies of aesthetic seduction and sex often found in advertising as a means of teasing out a possible metaphysical or supernatural undercurrent. THE CHALLENGE OF ABSTRACTION draws on advertising imagery found in luxury good magazines from an earlier era and fuses it with that found in contemporary fashion magazines. Zvonar’s positioning and iconization of the subject highlights their ability to act as the sacred.

Burrard Arts Foundation is pleased to present recent works by artist-in-residence Sean Mills ('10). Vancouver based artist Sean Mills’ recent practice has seen him meticulously exploring the materiality of paint to test the boundaries of its objectmaking potential. Having graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art & Design in 2010, Mills has been methodically experimenting with the laborious accumulation and layering of material to create sculptures, three-dimensional paintings and works on unconventional surfaces that examine light, space, and time. Occasionally paralleling the concerns of institutional critique, his laborious work addresses ideas of transparency in both a literal and figurative sense.

The Emily Carr University Alumni Association Board is a group of passionate volunteer leaders and advocates committed to supporting and creating opportunities for alumni. At the 2014 strategic planning meeting, Board members agreed to allocate the funds needed to create the Emily Carr Alumni Association Award in support of lifelong learning for alumni and their children.

Launched in May 2015, the Emily Carr Alumni Association Award is available to alumni wishing to return to Emily Carr and children of Emily Carr and Vancouver School of Art graduates. The successful candidate will receive a one-time award of $500! 

Alumna Janice Kerbel ('94) has been nominated for the 2015 Turner Prize for her nine part operatic performance work, DOUG, originally commissioned by the Common Guild.

The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the preceding year. The 2015 Turner Prize exhibition preview will take place September 30, 2015 at Tramway, Glasgow with a final Award Ceremony held on December 7, 2015.

Created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, the Sobey Art Award is Canada’s preeminent award for contemporary Canadian art. The annual $50,000 prize is given to an artist under 40 who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated.

The 2015 Longlist includes the following Emily Carr alumni:

West Coast
Fiona Ackerman ('02)
Sonny Assu ('02)
Raymond Boisjoly ('06)
Tiziana La Melia ('08)
Jeremy Shaw ('99)

Prairies and the North
Cedric Bomford ('03)
Kara Uzelman ('04)

Surrey Art Gallery is presenting Views from the Southbank II: Moments, Reflections, Intervals, the second of three exhibitions celebrating the Gallery’s 40th anniversary. The exhibit features portraits of people and places in Surrey and the surrounding area by 29 different artists, including:

Vancouver Art Gallery Presents BC's Most Prestigious Visual Arts Prizes on April 16, 2015

Audain Prize: Michael Morris ('65)
VIVA Award: Elizabeth Zvonar ('01)