Here, there, and everywhere! Emily Carr U: 1925-2015

First Class - Four Graduates from the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts, 1929

Available at the Vancouver Art Gallery in print and online, this book follows Lilias Farley, Irene Hoffar Reid, Beatrice Lennie, and Vera Weatherbie as four of the school's first graduates. The excerpt below is drawn from the Vancouver Art Gallery's online and commemorative publications.

Their first year classes were routine as they learned basic drawing and modelling from antique and life forms. While in Europe, Charles Scott had bought teaching models in anticipation of the School's opening. However, the first year was also transitional. Classrooms had to be set up and equipment such as easels and sculpture tools purchased. By mid year, it became obvious that students needed ready access to art supplies and Scott hired a capable student, Vito Cianci, to organize a store on VSDAA premises. More instructors had to be hired. Even the student population did not stabilize. From a total of eighty-one day and night time students who started in 1925, only eleven graduated with a diploma . Some left for financial reasons and some, like Cianci, who had a teaching certificate from the Normal School, stayed on but acquired jobs before graduation." However by the end of the first school year the students had created structures which were the basis of student activities for future years. They had formed an association, held regular meetings, organized socials and sketch trips and planned the first Paintbox, the student annual. The originalPaintbox and others which followed published student work, including poems and short stories, information about classes and reviews of art exhibitions. Instructors invariably wrote columns and there was a "Who's Who" describing the activities of outstanding students The first year concluded with an obvious "esprit de corps."

The next year was the beginning of an intense period of work and excitement for the students. Two new instructors, Frederick H Varley from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, and J. W. C. (Jock) Macdonald from the School of Art, Lincoln, England, were hired to teach drawing/painting and design/crafts respectively. Initially, Varley appeared to have the greatest impact on the VSDAA programme and on the students. He insisted on nude models for his drawing and painting classes. Not only was his teaching style different, but to the students he appeared to be the first "real artist" that they had experienced. His intensity, enthusiasm and energy for his work were transmitted to his students. For Varley, art was a total commitment. He did not separate his work from teaching or from social activities. He took students on sketching trips, encouraged them to rent studios which he visited and he spent evenings discussing art with them. Varley was a magnet to which students and art patrons were drawn.

Copies of this book may be available at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Artist's Biography

Nationality: Scottish-born, Canadian
Born: 1886-11-29, Newmilns, Scotland
Died: 1964-06-28

Charles Hepburn Scott graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1909 and worked in Scotland and Belgium prior to emigrating to Canada in 1912, finally settling in Vancouver in 1914. He made a significant contribution to the development of art in British Columbia in the first half of the twentieth century. Scott's belief in the importance of cultural consciousness for a city and its citizens inspired him to be a founding member of the B.C. Arts League in 1919. This group lobbied for the establishment of an art school and an art gallery for the city of Vancouver at a time when neither existed.

Due to the efforts of the B.C. Arts League, the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art opened its doors in 1935. Scott served as the school's principal from 1926 to 1952 and was instrumental in establishing the school as one of the most vital in the country, attracting teachers such as Jock Macdonald and Fred Varley. In 1931 Scot travelled overseas with one of the founders of the new Vancouver Art Gallery, Henry A. Stone, to purchase the 113 works of art which would become the foundation of the Gallery's permanent collection. Later that year the Vancouver Art Gallery opened to the public. To Scott this was "an important step in the cultural history of the city" as well as "a dream come true."

Away from the demands on his time as an administrator and teacher, Scott used what little leisure time he had to paint and much of his work, such as the paintings Alfresco, Portrait of Melvin, and Morning Tea, depict the artist's home, garden and family in Vancouver. The B.C. landscape was also a favourite subject for Scott. Opportunities to sketch outdoor occured during the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art's summer camps on Savary Island and the occasions when Scott joined Macdonald and Varley on sketching trips to Garibaldi.

Source: Vancouver Art Gallery News Release "Focus: Charles H. Scott" August 2000.

Learn more on the Vancouver Art Gallery site

Tom Becher has contributed, for many years and through a variety of roles in administration and instruction, to design programs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, beginning in 1978.

Currently, he is active in raising the social and economic capital of design disciplines and design-intensive industries in British Columbia through the Resource Database Project. In addition to many community-based initiatives, Tom has always promoted best practices in design management, beginning his career as an architect in 1974. He later diversified into interior design, exhibit design, industrial design, computer development, and interface design, furniture development and manufacturing, as well as corporate strategy.

Tom's academic fascination continues to center on design processes that generate environments, objects, and messages that make us more human.