Pam Vickars has always been passionate about art, but a demanding career and busy family life left little time for her to pursue it in depth.
“I took pottery, a few crafts and interior design in continuing education classes and really enjoyed them. I had this vision that when I retired I would pursue painting, which I foresaw taking more time,” says Pam, a VIU Bachelor of Arts student.
Pam has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria and a Masters of Social Work from McGill University. She worked in health care, post-secondary education and private practice. After semi-retiring, Pam took watercolour painting at the Old School House Arts Centre in Qualicum Beach and silversmithing with a master goldsmith in Parksville. She is now pursuing her love of art through VIU’s Visual Art program.
“It’s allowing me to explore art in a comprehensive way – from drawing, painting and ceramics – through art history and curating,” says Pam, adding that like many programs people study, it begins with your university degree and you carry onward. “Learning is lifelong.”
Pam hopes to work part-time as a curator, as well as a practicing artist. Her interest in curating was piqued when Jesse Birch, Curator of the Nanaimo Art Gallery, attended one of her classes as a guest lecturer.
“Jesse spoke passionately about his journey into curating. He has since shared that while the exhibition is about both the artist’s work and the viewer, the curator will work with a story in mind or perhaps an issue to speak about through the art,” says Pam. “Those aspects really interested me.”
Pam curated the latest exhibit at VIU’s View Gallery – Figuratively Speaking: A Journey Through Movement – which runs until February 12. The exhibition features the work of Chintan Bolliger, Katarina Meglic, Joel Prevost and Kathy Venter. There was also a contemporary dance performance by Maya Campbell as part of the opening reception.
“The theme of figurative work and movement spans movement in the broad sense across physical, psychological and emotional perspectives. It’s really about our movement through life,” says Pam.
She wanted the exhibition to be pertinent to both students and the broader public and says it is particularly relevant to visual arts students, who study figurative work in class.
“I thought this exhibition would demonstrate a variety of creative ways figurative work can be undertaken,” says Pam.
A curator has numerous responsibilities which include: communicating and building relationships with artists; selecting artwork that works well with the evolving theme; displaying the art in a meaningful way; writing a curator’s statement, press release and booklet for the exhibition; and event management.
Pam has been learning more about curating in a directed studies course with Chai Duncan, VIU Visual Art Instructor and View Gallery Curator.
“It’s been an enlightening opportunity to work one-on-one with Chai and learn about his perspective on curating. He provided a nice balance of guidance while giving me the scope to do what I envisioned in setting up the exhibition,” says Pam.
Pam is currently studying Advanced Drawing with Pamela Speight and Contemporary Art with Justin McGrail, both VIU Art and Design Professors, and Art of West Coast First Nations with Rodney Sayers, a VIU Sessional Instructor.
The View Gallery is VIU’s contemporary art gallery. Learn more by visiting the gallery’s website.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
