< ECU Directory

Sichen Grace Chen

Sessional Faculty

Availability:

Education:

BFA, Illustration
Rhode Island School of Design
MFA
ECU

Bio

Sichen Grace “SG” Chen is a painter/illustrator, artist-researcher, and educator with a practice that spans between commercial illustration, gallery exhibitions, public art and community engagement. Together with students, she offers a holistic curriculum that combines inquiry-based learning, conceptual rigour and skill-building. She is passionate about investigating interpersonal and ecological relationships through saturated colour and layered textures. She is the co-founder and creative director of Atelier Aloera, a research-oriented climate collective and artist group.

Websites:

Research Interests

SG’s research centres on water and its connection to painting, climate change, membranes and embodiment. Using additive and subtractive painting methods, such as glazing, staining and wiping with rags, her paintings possess chromatic depth and luminosity through various thin, translucent layers of paint. This approach influences her illustrated works, which explore memory, psychology, environmental change and everyday life. Beyond the classroom, SG collaborates with fellow artists, scientists, climate activists and community leaders to synthesize interdisciplinary projects supporting urban waterways.

Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Praxis PRAX 300 27/SP

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.

Illustration ILUS 201 27/SP

Description

This course is designed to introduce students to concepts, processes, and techniques of illustration as a means of both creative expression and critical inquiry. Students will learn illustrative methods and approaches through demos, examples, workshops, and lectures. These will be applied to projects within a studio environment. Through undertaking these projects, students will develop a better understanding of the physical and technical aspects of image-making and its specific application to illustration.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Social Science SOCS 201 26/FA

Description

This course guides students through a series of theoretical engagements to promote their abilities to articulate subject positions in support of creative practice. The course draws on a contemporary survey of unique theoretical references to investigate an interrelated set of concerns that includes: language, signification, representation, history, ideology, epistemologies, ontologies, difference, emergence, technology, and new conceptions of ecology. Students are challenged to engage course resources in terms of their own life experiences and to discover ways in which they can theorize their environments as creative practitioners.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Social Science SOCS 201 26/FA

Description

This course guides students through a series of theoretical engagements to promote their abilities to articulate subject positions in support of creative practice. The course draws on a contemporary survey of unique theoretical references to investigate an interrelated set of concerns that includes: language, signification, representation, history, ideology, epistemologies, ontologies, difference, emergence, technology, and new conceptions of ecology. Students are challenged to engage course resources in terms of their own life experiences and to discover ways in which they can theorize their environments as creative practitioners.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.