The Learning Zone

Since January, Mondays at the Learning Zone have been all about the moolah. Bones, clams, dough, cash; whatever you call it, it’s money, and that’s what Money Mondays are all about!

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Love it or hate it, we all need money to live (barring some extreme cases!). Money management and financial planning are especially important when you don’t rely on a steady income — a situation sadly familiar to many artists. There’s no time like the present to learn about money because the longer you wait, the more of a mess you can get yourself into.

At this point, we’re already seven steps into the ten-step program, but don’t let that get in your way! You can still register for the last two sessions:

1 April — Step 8: Protect Yourself and Your Money
8 April — Steps 9 & 10: Get Help & Stay Financially Fit

For more information, visit the Financial Matters: Info Sessions page on the OCADU website.

Actually, it’d be a good idea to check out that web page anyway because Start Your Professional Practice Now! 2013 is coming up at the end of the month. With two days of presentations from artists, designers, and educators — like Budgeting for Artists & Designers (so you can catch up on what you missed at Money Mondays!), and Alumni Panel: From Classroom to Career — this is a great opportunity to learn from those who’ve been there. So take a well-earned break from studying, and study up on your future!

Last month’s Materials Trading Post was a blast and this month’s will be, too! Drop by the Learning Zone between 11:30am and 1:30pm this Tuesday, March 12 for a first-hand look. This is a really great opportunity to find out about new tools and supplies; you can try them out, experiment, collaborate, and learn from each other! Bring along any leftover or unused materials of your own and, who knows, maybe you’ll find somebody who wants them, and maybe you’ll find something you want, too. Waste not, want not — and reduce waste, right?

The Materials Trading Post is a free event hosted in collaboration by the Learning Zone, the First Generation/Student Success Programs, and the Aboriginal Visual Culture Program. Contact Melissa General for more information!

I’m going to assume you already know that it’s Reading Week here at OCADU, but do you also know that next week it’s Freedom to Read Week in Canada?

Freedom to Read Week is organized by the Book and Periodical Council‘s Freedom of Expression Committee. All across Canada, book stores, libraries, schools, and community centers will join in to host events and celebrate our fundamental right to intellectual freedom.

While not as flashy as the right to education or clean drinking water, intellectual freedom is ridiculously important. As human beings, we all have pretty well-developed faculties of judgement and reason, but these faculties don’t work in a vacuum, and no individual can come up with all the answers themselves. What does this mean? It means we need as many ideas around us as possible — as many memes, worldviews, facts, opinions, statistics, dreams — or else we can’t make the right decisions. Intellectual freedom is about supporting human cognition; it’s about developing and maintaining democracy itself!

So, what will you do to celebrate and (re)dedicate yourself to the principle of free and public expression? Read a challenged book, like The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (call# PS3537 A44 C2), The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (PS8523 A7 D4), The Wars by Timothy Findley (PS8511 I5 W2), or Black Eye: Graphic Transmissions to Cause Ocular Hypertension (PN6726 B52 2011) — all of which are available at OCADU’s Dorothy H. Hoover Library!

If that’s a bit too solitary for your liking, check out the upcoming local events. On right now is CENSORED, a display of challenged books at Type Books on Queen West (right across from Trinity Bellwoods), but there’s lots more going on next week — check out the list of Ontario events for details!

If you haven’t checked out External Space yet, the video exhibition space we host in cooperation with XPACE Cultural Centre, now’s a good time because last week a new piece was installed: o i’m lisa, by Lisa Folkerson. Here’s what XPACE has to say about it:

o i’m lisa is a conjoined video about “Lisa”. It features the artist’s best friend and sister styled as the artist’s avatar in an attempt to embody and present an accurate portrait of the artist. o i’m lisa reflects on the value of self or existing as a person in the experience of other people. The video is rendered through the essential memories and details of the artist’s intimate relationships.

O i’m lisa is the fourth video we’ve had in External Space, and the third in a series curated by Jennifer Simaitis, OCADU grad. About the series, Simaitis writes that in celebration of emerging Canadian artists, she has gathered together a collection of “unassuming, documentary-type videos” in which the artists “embrace and execute trivial or absurd tasks through repetition and humour.” In o i’m lisa, two similarly-costumed women portray the same person although, in fact, neither are the person being portrayed. The effect is ambiguous, “comically self-deprecating,” and at once “relatable but abstract.”

Come in for the full story, or just stand back and enjoy: O i’m lisa will be on-screen in the Learning Zone until February 12th!

A new video, By nature or by arf (Dog Portraits), by Montreal-based artist Rickie Lea Owens is currently screening at the Learning Zone until January 2013.

Owens uses video diptych, consisting of dog portraits juxtaposed with images of herself imitating the dog’s expression. The video is humourous and engaging interaction that enables the viewer to re-evaluate the role of human dominion over animals.

Come! Sit! Stay! at the LZ to view this second video installment from the documentary series curated by OCAD U Graduate Student, Art Criticism and Curatorial Practice, Jennifer Simaitis.