Jeremy Jaud and the Art of the UBC

Update [26 Octo­ber 2009]: Drip­py­town was can­celled last week. In place of the exhibit, the AMS Art Gallery has expertly put together VANIMAUX, which opens today:

VANIMAUX explores the Van­cou­ver ani­mal in its native envi­ron­ment draw­ing other sto­ries from six per­spec­tives. The con­tem­po­rary land­scape is unpacked by six [local emerg­ing] artists.

The show fea­tures Sad Mag con­trib­u­tors and fam­ily mem­bers Daniel Elstone, Kristina Fiedrich, Bran­don Gaukel, Tina Krueger, Judit Navratil, and Katie Stew­art. VANIMAUX fur­ther unpacks the idea of urban Van­cou­ver, wip­ing the Olympics sanc­tioned hype away and show­ing the beast for what it is.

VANIMAUX. AMS Art Gallery. 6000 Stu­dent Union Boule­vard. Exhibit open­ing Octo­ber 26, 2009, from 5–8 pm.

RVSP

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Jeremy Jaud is nearly chok­ing on his words. His excited phrases are gun­ning through the empty gallery and splat­ter­ings upon impact. Jaud is the art com­mis­sioner of the Stu­dent Union Build­ing (SUB) Art Gallery at UBC.

Until recently, most UBC stu­dents knew the the SUB Art Gallery as the site of the annual poster sale. Today, the gallery is a fix­ture for art afi­ciona­dos in Vancouver’s scene, in major part because of Jaud. After meet­ing the gallery’s pre­vi­ous art com­mis­sioner in an Art His­tory sem­i­nar last spring, Jaud took over the posi­tion and over­saw dra­matic ren­o­va­tions over eight months. Jaud is all pas­sion and smiles as he shares what led him to this posi­tion. “I saw it as an oppor­tu­nity to bear all my skill sets on one direc­tion, hav­ing a back­ground in art his­tory, visual arts, bud­get­ing, man­age­ment, and vol­un­teer work.”

Last month, the new space was inau­gu­rated with the show “Vanci­tyscapes,” fea­tur­ing Mor­gan Dun­net, a local artist whose impres­sion­is­tic paint­ings reveal the city of Van­cou­ver in its sim­plest moments of glory—images you might recall from late night stum­bles through the rainy streets of Gas­town. The open­ing night of “Vanci­tyscapes” saw over two hun­dred vis­i­tors, many of them stu­dents, like myself, who had been on UBC’s cam­pus for years, never set foot in the space, but gushed at its rein­ven­tion. This was just the start of the gallery’s con­tin­u­ing cel­e­bra­tion of Van­cou­ver. Jaud, orig­i­nally from Yel­lowknife, is drawn to Vancouver’s new devel­op­ments and the sense of com­mu­nity it pro­vides. “Van­cou­ver is con­stantly chang­ing, it’s always in the moment, it’s infectious.”

Jaud envi­sions the the SUB Art Gallery as a win­dow on the land­scape of art to the Belkin Gallery, Museum of Anthro­pol­ogy, Koerner Library, and beyond cam­pus to the rest of Van­cou­ver. He dis­cusses the unique­ness of the gallery in its daily access to thou­sands of students—the future pow­er­houses of Vancouver—and its oppor­tu­nity to ini­ti­ate or fos­ter artis­tic inter­est within them.

At the end of this month, the gallery is host­ing an exten­sion of an exhi­bi­tion called “Drip­py­town: Van­cou­ver Life Through the Eyes of its Inde­pen­dent Artists” at the Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Library (RBSC) at UBC. The exhi­bi­tion show­cases the RBSC’s col­lec­tion of print comics cre­ated by Van­cou­ver artists, includ­ing Colin Upton and James Lawrence, whose work together on a cover for the comic “Drip­py­town” gave the exhi­bi­tion both its name and nar­ra­tive. “Drip­py­town” presents Van­cou­ver and its char­ac­ter­is­tic rain, gray skies, and sil­ver lin­ings, as seen through the eyes of six local artists using the comic medium. Like Van­cou­ver, the col­lec­tion seems dreary at first but is ulti­mately inspiring.

The exhi­bi­tion is made pos­si­ble by the coor­di­na­tion of sev­eral forces: stu­dents of UBC’s School of Library, Archival, and Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies pro­gram, RBSC staff, Francesca Marini — a pro­fes­sor within the depart­ment, the artists, and Jaud.

Says Jaud, “UBC has such a broad range of art pro­duc­ers and peo­ple already inter­ested in the arts; con­duits and reflec­tors. More bridges need to be built between these var­i­ous groups so that our ideas can be shared, our mes­sages can strengthen and access can blossom.”

The SUB Art Gallery is cur­rently show­ing “Trag­i­cally Res­cu­ing His Fam­ily From the Wreck­age of a Destroyed Sink­ing Bat­tle­ship”, works by Kevin Day, from Oct. 13th — Oct. 23rd.

“Drip­py­town” shows at the SUB Art Gallery from Oct. 26th -  Nov. 3rd and at Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions from    Oct. 23 — Jan. 31st.

–Rebecca Slaven for Sad Mag