Little more than a week after her solo exhibition opens at KPU’s Surrey campus, Sylvia Grace Borda will explore a world where art meets science in a talk at a Vancouver landmark.
Borda, Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s first artist-in-residence, will speak at Science World on Tuesday, Jan. 29, as part of a KPU-sponsored series there. To illustrate how she uses scientific concepts in her art, she will use examples produced in residencies in Europe and at Kwantlen.
Her main medium is photography, and one way Borda uses science in her art is through photogram projects, a method of projecting real object images onto photosensitive paper or material.
In the town of Lumsden, Scotland, Borda worked with seniors and youth in a project that combined shortbread making with learning more about vegetation in the area. They used photograms of the flora to create edible photographs on Lumsden shortbread biscuits, according to a KPU release.
“The biscuits told people about their local geography, environmental science and citizen science,” Borda says. “They facilitated community interaction and brought together this movement that allowed seniors and youth to create their own social enterprise.”
From her 7 p.m. talk at Science World, she hopes what people take away is “the need to engage science and art together. A lot of this kind of work with science and art is already happening at KPU. Today’s complex issues bring together people to help solve or tell the story.”
More event details are posted at kpu.ca/scienceworld.
The connection between art and science is the next topic at the #KPU @scienceworldca Speaker Series. Meet artist-in-residence Sylvia Grace Borda as she chats about her art and its connection with science on January 19. Learn more https://t.co/brqWi0cowN pic.twitter.com/PASG9GTJF5
— KPU News (@KPUmedia) January 14, 2019
Meantime, Borda’s solo exhibition, which showcases some of her new art projects created while in residence at KPU, will be featured at the Surrey campus’ Arbutus Gallery from Jan. 20 to Feb. 8.
On the web, Borda’s work is showcased at sylviagborda.com.
Her art projects include Every Bus Stop in Surrey, B.C., for which Borda spent a year creating “a composite portrait” of the city. The photo exhibit, shown at Surrey Art Gallery in 2004, “consists of just over 800 individual bus stops chronicled across 380 square kilometres,” says her website. “The artist walked kilometre-long blocks in rural Surrey, in other areas, borrowed and rented cars. Sylvia has come to know Surrey in a way few of its residents have ever seen it.”
• RELATED: PHOTOS: ‘Out of Sight’ a sight to see at Surrey Art Gallery, from 2017.
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