Christina VarvisAmanda Nogier’s peers gathered around her as the industrial design student tried to pull a concrete hand out of an alginate mold. She grabbed an exacto knife, cut some chunks out of the pink mold and gave the hand a strong tug. A few fingers broke off.
Making mistakes has always been a pedagogical tenet of art and design programs at the University of Alberta. In 1945, the U of A founded the first Department of Fine Arts in the province, which branched off into three departments in 1965: Art and Design, Music and Drama. 2015 marks 50 years of fostering students’ creative abilities in the Department of Art and Design.
“The instructors and faculty in Art & Design inspire students to consider what kind of life they want to lead,” wrote Dean of Arts Lesley Cormack in an email. “(The Department) has been a kind of creative incubator.”
The department allows students to fashion themselves as artists and designers by granting them liberty to explore their creative motivations through drawing, painting, sculpture, design, and the history of art, among others. Abstract steel sculpture and printmaking are U of A specialties.
“We teach the value of attempting different things,” Art and Design associate professor Rob Lederer said. “It’s about a journey. Students are able to try things here and not be constrained.”
With a range of possibility for exploration, students constantly surprise their instructors.
“We never know what’s going to come up,” Lederer said.
Kelsey Prud’homme, a third-year Industrial Design student, just returned from Vancouver for a job interview to design apps for Microsoft. In the small salmon-coloured Industrial Design Building, students design and fabricate a variety of objects in their program: tables, sushi trays, iPhone amplifiers and even medical equipment such as prosthetics and eyedroppers.
“Anything that isn’t actual architecture, we make,” Prud’homme said, referring to Industrial Design. “We do tiny architecture.”
Recent graduates from the design program have gone on to work for Nike, Lego and Hollywood design companies, while one graduate was a member of the Academy Award-winning “Best Art Direction” team for Alice in Wonderland.
While some students in the department aspire to Hollywood, others look elsewhere. Sky Hoffos is a fourth-year fine arts student, working primarily with wood, leather, animal skin and steel. He said he wasn’t allowed to bring his own forge to class, so he blacksmiths at school with a mini-forge made from a soup can.
“Nobody does what I do,” he said with a chuckle. “But I can do whatever I want. It’s totally up to me.”
Hoffos sells some of his work in rural Alberta and plans on becoming an art teacher and a farrier. He said he prefers art to design because design is, for him, “very pristine.”
“I’m not a pristine worker, I like to get dirty and make a mess because that’s where I do my best work,” Hoffos said. “I make things that make me happy, make my hands happy and make my heart happy.
Despite some differences between art and design, many aspects are similar. They both work from the same fundamental principles, and require a certain amount of work ethic to make it in the real world — two things the department proudly teaches, instructor Royden Mills said.
“(Our students) are not the kind to arrive at a show three hours late, and go ‘Dahling, I’m here,’” Mills said. “They will get down and get busy and get working.
“They’re doers, not merely dreamers.”
