Contact
Stacy Kelly, Manager, Alumni Relationsskelly@ocadu.ca
416-977-6000 Ext 459
Alumni Panel: Start Your Professional Practice
Presented by OCAD U Alumni Relations
Please join us for moderated discussion with a panel of OCAD U alumni from various disciplines and sectors around the theme of starting a professonal practice. Panelists will first speak on their career path since graduating, and then participate in the moderated discussion. There will be an open floor Q+A session, followed by a reception for panelists and participants to mingle and network. There is no fee to attend this event but registration is required. Please RSVP below.
Note: This event is open to OCAD U students and alumni only. Light refreshments served.
About the Moderator
Stacy Kelly is the Manager, Alumni Relations at OCAD University. He has more than 11 years experience in higher education administration, with specific expertise in institutional advancement, recruitment and admissions, and program management. Committed to non-profit service, Kelly was a director of Science'44 Cooperative, Campus Cooperative Development Corporation, and Drop-In Centre Kingston. He was the founding artistic director of Aylmer Youth Theatre in Quebec and Arts Adventure Camp in Kingston. Kelly earned his BA (Hons) from Queen's University in 1996 and is currently working toward his Master of Education.
About the Alumni Panel
Xenia Benivolski (BFA, 2007) is an independent artist and curator living and working in Toronto. She is the founder of the Whitehouse studio project, a multipurpose art and studio space currently run by a volunteer board, and a member of the board of directors of the artist run centre Mercer Union. Recent projects include "Gift Shop Gift Shop" at the AGO, "Mistica Canadiese", at the Museo de Ciudad, Quertaro, Mexico, and "The Legend is Black", a complimentary program to "Paradise Now" at the MOCCA (2011). Currently she is working on the critical project Rearviews, the first publication of which, "Beginning no End", launched in Montreal early this month and will be available in Art Metropole, Toronto, and Printed Matter, NY.
Nicholas Di Genova (AOCAD, 2005) is a Toronto painter who draws on the influence of anime, comic books, Otaku culture, and animal compendiums. His work features an encyclopedic range of constructed creatures ranging from soft and nurturing to calculating and military. A vast and intense fabricated history acts as a backdrop to the hundreds of interconnected species, families and rival clans that find themselves projecting their habits, relations and environments to their viewers. Working with ink and animation paints, Di Genova's paintings highlight his skill with line and his ability to manipulate colour. His work brings together knowledge of art and design and samples from both fields, resulting in incredible visual and technical impact and an astonishing strong conceptual core which receives respect from both camps, a dichotomy often severely split.
Patrick Kyle (BDES, Illustration, 2009) is an artist and illustrator from Toronto. Since graduating from OCAD U in 2009, Patrick has exhibited work in Europe, Australia, The United States and Canada. His Illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The Walrus, Globe and Mail and many other publications. Patrick is the co-founder and editor of the contemporary comic book anthology Wowee Zonk published by Koyama Press.
Jennie Suddick (BFA, 2006) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto. She earned an MFA at York University in 2009. Suddick creates work in print, photography and sculpture, which deals with issues of Canadian identity, cryptozoology, museological display, and hyper reality. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, U.S., Germany, and Italy. She is currently a sessional faculty member at OCAD University where she is also the Coordinator, First Generation/Student Success Programs. She is also an Open Studio Board Member, where she is chair of the membership committee.
Stanzie Tooth (BFA, 2007) is a painter and curator based in Toronto. Tooth's work is indelibly marked by her rural upbringing and her interests in art history and consciousness. Tooth maintains a concurrent practice in painting and curation, and she uses landscape as an entry point to create her work. Tooth finds inspiration in the art historical dialogue surrounding the sublime landscape – landscape as psychological signifier. Many of her compositions feature figures in a landscape that seem to be absorbed by or made of their natural surroundings. Through these compositions the landscape becomes and emotional extension of the form.
