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Miriam Libicki

Instructor

Availability:

Education:

BFA
MFA

Bio

Miriam Libicki is an Eisner-nominated and Inkpot-awarded cartoonist with a BFA in Visual Art from ECU and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her graphic nonfiction is published by Fantagraphics, the Journal of Jewish Identities, and Abrams Books. Her work received the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature, and she was the 2017 Writer in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library. Miriam exhibits and lectures internationally at galleries, comicons and academic symposia.

Research Interests

Miriam works in the intersection of sequential art and literary nonfiction. She makes media theory comics, criticism comics, journalism comics and memoir comics. She uses the diaspora Jewish experience to explore colonialism, race, hierarchies, conditional and unstable identities, and the potentials and limits of empathy. Her visual art practice showcases both exaggerated cartoon figuration and photorealism, in pencils, ink, paint and digital media. Her use of photo reference with traditional tools creates art that looks handmade, full of human error and personal judgment. The medium of drawing foregrounds the subjectivity of the creator-narrator, encouraging both identification and skepticism.

Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Foundation Studio Courses FNDT 112 27/SP

Description

This course explores the fundamentals of drawing such as line, shape, tone, texture, volume, proportion, shadow, space, composition, scale, mark-making tools, and media. Exercises and projects work on perceptual and expressive drawing and hand-eye coordination. In-class projects and homework assignments will encompass various aspects of drawing while visual presentations and class discussion will introduce students to contemporary and historical ideas of art and design.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Humanities HUMN 312 27/SP

Description

This course analyzes narrative and storytelling with a particular focus on serial, time-based, and interactive texts. Students will investigate a variety of dynamic storytelling approaches through the principles of narratology - the study of structures, conventions, and functions of narrative. Students will consider how established approaches to narration, character, world-building, and temporality evolve and shift in the context of serial and dynamic media. Case studies can include fiction and non-fiction serial narratives in print and electronic forms; sound-based and moving-image works; interactive texts; and gaming environments. The relationship between image, text, and sound will be explored across different formats, and the changing role of the reader/viewer/player will be considered. Readings and case studies will trace the evolution, diversification, and innovation in dynamic storytelling, with the goal of giving students a deeper understanding of the compositional choices in their own storytelling practices.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Professional Practices PROF 311 27/SP

Description

This professional practice course prepares students for further professional and educational opportunities. Students gain practical and critical, conceptual, and theoretical skills. Topics include project management, business formations, the fundamentals of proposals and contracts, intellectual property and the complexities of authorship, budgets and financial administration, the market planning process within the private and public sectors, and the social role of the artist or designer. Larger societal constructs are examined as well as assumptions about the nature of professional practice research and discourse. The goal is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to enter the cultural or design sectors with assurance, awareness and integrity. Through faculty and guest presentations, individual and group research projects, students learn to identify the ways in which the artists and designers respond to their cultural, social, and economic contexts.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Humanities HUMN 308 26/FA

Description

This course is concerned with questions posed by pictorial practices in relation to contemporary social and cultural discourses. Students examine ideological, institutional and cultural investments that are reflected, explicitly and implicitly, in both mass-media illustration and representational work within contemporary art. Lectures, selected readings and assignments will highlight critical, political, and theoretical positions pertinent to representational art and the larger issues it generates. Woven throughout the course is an examination of artists' responsibility irrespective of the means of publication, exhibition and/or distribution of their images. Students will develop a discourse that helps to frame their own practice, producing various iterations in written form, from thorough cultural contextualization to concise statements of intent.

https://www.connect.ecuad.ca/programs/specialto pics

Priority is given to ILUS students in Years 3 and 4. Students outside of the registration priority group may register/waitlist for this course as of the registration rule release date.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Praxis PRAX 300 26/FA

Description

This third year course offers the opportunity for students to develop their practice within the discourse of contemporary and historical art discourse. Students will acquire a critical vocabulary for understanding their own trajectories in dialogue with the context and history of art, through group critiques, discussions of pertinent writings, and individual and group presentations of research on a variety of subjects related to their area of practice. A Dialogues course is an investigation of artistic practice premised on a student's own interest to situate their work in a broader discourse and professional realm. They will learn skills related to completing projects, making presentations, speaking in public, leading discussions, writing, and integrating research and knowledge within their creative practice. Weekly meetings will allow for critiques of self-directed studio projects, discussion of assigned readings, and presentations of research projects.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.