Grace Hickey, a third-year St. Thomas University student, used the symbolism of the labyrinth to create an opportunity for reflection and self-awareness surrounding the ecological crisis. (Submitted: Madeline Harquail)
Grace Hickey, a third-year St. Thomas University student, put out a call to the Fredericton arts community for environmental pieces for an installation.
Hickey is organizing the installation as a part of her fine arts course at STU and her work with the Canadian Wilderness Stewardship Program.
The project is inspired by Hickey’s former studies on labyrinths. She said a labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness, combining the imagery of the circle and a spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. Hickey said she’s using the labyrinth as a medium of how the installation will be displayed made of painter’s tape to take the viewer on a journey of reflection.
“The labyrinth represents a journey to our own center, and back again out into the world,” said Hickey.
The installation will be presented from April 6 to 10 in room 203 in Margaret McCain Hall with specific viewing times to be announced. The art submission deadline is at the end of March. Hickey said that she hopes the project will bring a new level of awareness and reflection to its viewers.
Grace Hickey, a third-year St. Thomas University student, put out a call to the Fredericton arts community for environmental pieces for an installation. (Submitted: Grace Hickey)
Hickey planned on using this symbolism of the labyrinth to create an opportunity for reflection and self-awareness surrounding the ecological crisis.
“[The artwork is] going to be purposely placed throughout the space and the labyrinth to allow the public participants to come and walk the labyrinth and have a contemplated moment with each piece,” said Hickey.
Because of the request for environmental art, Hickey said that she has received an “overwhelming” amount of support from the community. She said she has collected a variety of pieces in a number of mediums including paintings, sculptures and poetry.
Hickey said her intention behind using multiple mediums is that she wants to hear stories about individual experiences and the environmental crisis.
“My hope is that people will have time to reflect on their own personal stories and experiences and be able to take this forward as part of our collective solution,” said Hickey.
Grace Hickey said her intention behind using multiple mediums is that she wants to hear stories about individual experiences and the environmental crisis. (Submitted: Lila Gorey-McSorley)
The cause is important to Hickey as an environmental studies major. Though she explained that while she had always been passionate about social justice issues, she hadn’t even been aware that environmental studies was an offered program at STU.
Hickey said that her introduction to environmental studies course in first-year was a “profound experience” and the more she learned, the more she wanted to dig deeper.
“I don’t think I’ve fully comprehended the fact that we were currently in an ecological crisis and a climate crisis and what that meant,” said Hickey.
“I felt that it was important for me to absorb all this knowledge so that I could best effect change in whatever way I can, whether that be creating an art installation, or whether that be later on in my career.”
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.
