Parting Wisdom: An Insightful Q+A with the Graduates of 2024

What was your favourite experience from your undergrad journey?

The opportunity to work with Mark Johanssen and Sara-Jeanne Bourget on that really large-scale print we did for the Piling/Upon show was really special. It was cool to work directly with two faculty members as mentors and another student and then have that work shown on campus.

The print we featured in the show was about 30 feet long. Solving that problem with faculty members and building that relationship was rewarding.

What advice would you give to students entering their first year at ECU?

Definitely apply for and take as many opportunities as you can find. The school has a very large number of really cool professional apprenticeship and mentorship opportunities, especially through the Shumka Centre. They're not usually advertised in public spaces, and many professors won't directly tell you about them.

In the context of career development, I recommend looking at work in the arts and speaking to the Career Development Office. You should also talk to whoever you can to build relationships with, including professors outside of the classroom. Those people are absolutely there to be your friends and to help you grow, not just as an artist but as a person. I’m a strong advocate of building relationships with mentor figures as much as you can.

What did you get to do working with the Shumka Centre?

I was fortunate enough to be paired with an artist mentor through their artist apprenticeship program, the Art Apprenticeship Network. I was really lucky to work with an artist named Sylvan Hamburger. I worked with him on a couple of his pretty large-scale installations around Vancouver. Seeing the inner workings of someone's actual professional practice in the city was cool.

What are your plans/goals for the future after you graduate?

Obviously, I would love to keep making as much work as I can, and I have a largely print-based practice. Right now, that would mean either finding or creating a print studio wherever I end up after Vancouver. I don’t know if I'm staying in the city, but starting a print studio would be cool if I moved to a smaller town. I’m considering maybe Nelson, BC. There are some towns in the States that I could move back to as well. I like the idea of opening a print studio and working hard to build the really cool, tight-knit community that exists in any shared studio space.

In my experience, the print studio school has such a cool community full of people willing to stop and be present with you and what you're interested in. You then get to learn from those people about what they're interested in, building within this very regimented set of processes together, teaching each other and learning from each other. I'm trying to find that after school.

What was your favourite experience from your graduate journey?

Probably the sense of community that grew from such a new building. I came in 2019, where it was only a couple of years old at the time and it's been a really great experience to see how different communities and different people gather and make the space their own with such a clean slate. I've got to witness and be a part of a tremendous amount of growth and renewal within the new space. I often reflect on those connections, especially community connections. After coming out of a pandemic, I see how people are coming together to make really amazing things, considering a lot of really intense subjects and things going on in the world. It’s impressive just how we all find a way to work together, have our voices be heard and to be able to find our people. I feel really privileged to be a part of that.

What advice would you give to students entering their master's degree at ECU?

I would say always remember that it flies by; the last 18 months or two years have flown by for me. I advise getting your hands in every lab that you might want to, talking to techs and making the most of your time here. Once you're out, you don't have much access to many of the amazing resources here. I would say other stuff can wait. Come every single day and use everything that you possibly can, because other stuff can usually wait until after the program.

One more thing: use the Writing Centre, too. They are amazing and I've worked there the whole time. They deserve a shout-out.

What are your plans/goals for the future after you graduate?

For the future, I feel like I've just been given the most opportunity ever. I have just applied for different residencies and my own kind of personal, what I've considered residencies, but that's not the only thing. I want to continue to be involved in my community, the urban Indigenous community. I'm lucky because I have a previous history of frontline community work. It would be great to incorporate both this degree and still be involved with working with people and bringing access to many different people because sometimes the arts can feel very inaccessible in many ways for whatever reasons. It's really important for people to have access to the arts. I’m interested in finding ways to bridge those two or multiple worlds.

What I’m working on is just continuing to make work, continuing to be involved with people and the community around me, the communities that I've built through my time there, and just trying to keep the momentum going. It really has been a gift to be able to focus on my own work very intensely and to come out of it—it doesn't feel like an end. It feels like you're just being sprung into the world, which is really exciting and cool.

What was your favourite experience from your undergrad journey?

My favourite experience ought to be the people. Honestly, they make the journey of these four years more bearable and fun—kind of passionate and inspirational. My favourite part of the learning journey and being a part of ECU is meeting like-minded people with similar passions and goals.

What advice would you give to students entering their first year at ECU?

One thing I learned in the later years of my degree is ‘you don't get it if you don't ask.’

Don't be afraid to network—it's the big buzzword right now. It's important, especially for design and visual art students. Connect with people you don't normally connect with and stay open-minded about things you think you're incapable of doing because you'll surprise yourself.

Also, mentorship is very important—that's a big piece of advice: look for a mentor in the position you see yourself in because that's the most helpful way of getting there.

What are your plans/goals for the future after you graduate?

My most recent plan is to start my new full-time job, which I actually got through the co-op I did with Design for Startups. It's wonderful that ECU is doing that because that helped me get employment.

A future step in 5-10 years is that I'd like to have my own design firm and just be on my own. Being the boss is definitely the end goal.