Fine Arts at Algoma University

Department Fine Arts and Music

Overview

Visual art has been forever linked to our human need for meaning, for reconciling the worlds of the body, the mind, and the spirit. It is animated by the principle of unity achieved through diversity and is a reflection of the integrity of nature and a metaphor for harmony and balance. The arts are at the very core of what it means to be alive in the world.

Passion and enthusiasm, a questing mind, and an ability to do things differently are part and parcel of a creative life. In a world of increasing uniformity art provides opportunities to examine contemporary reality from multiple points of view, to acknowledge that strength emerges from risk taking and difference rather than from safety and predictability.

Visual art is full of irony and contradiction: the release of freedom and spontaneity and demand for structure and organisation. Artists delight in physical media but also acknowledge that the technical is only a vehicle for affairs of the heart and mind.

Our faculty and students live and work in an animated, spirited and humorous culture in which art-making is acknowledged as a process of constant and perpetual transformation and aspiration toward higher degrees of insight. The programme strikes a fine balance between traditional and experimental practices and between refined object making and personal development. Ultimately, regardless of the value of the art objects, the final product of creative endeavour is the artist/creator and her role within the larger community.