Unbeknownst to most, there is a small but thriving visual arts community on campus, fostered largely by U of T’s Visual Studies program, the division of the Department of Fine Art that involves practical instruction and studio work. The program provides students with a solid base of art theory and critical skills, as well as practical instruction in all aspects of artistic practice. Classes are taught in drawing and painting, printmaking and photography, sculpture and installation, video and performance art, and recently courses at the graduate level have also been added.
Each December, the program’s students are given a chance to strut their stuff with the annual Christmas “Eyeball”, a casual, non-exclusive show of student work organized by the Fine Art Student Union. The show’s name is a playful reference to the Eye Bank of Canada, whose provincial offices are housed in the same building as the Visual Studies studios, the Connaught Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. This agency’s presence in the building is a daunting one, with art and art practice oddly out of place amongst the graphic displays warning of the ravages of degenerative eye disease.
For one night each December, the building’s hallways are lined to full capacity with students’ work, past posters urging passersby to donate their corneas and doorways marked with biohazard warnings, which, one thinks, must surely hide gleaming eyeballs in glass jars. The works run the gamut from drawings, paintings, and photography to video, digital prints, sculptural installations, and even performance pieces. Each year, the students’ work is by turns stunning or mediocre, fantastically original or boringly cliché, brilliant or banal, but tinged throughout with the rawness of young talent that is refreshing to each viewer alike.
This year’s Eyeball takes place this Friday (Dec. 5) at 1 Spadina Crescent, beginning at 8 p.m.
