March 20, 2015

Grace Art Glass Treasures of Toronto: a FREE tour of Art Glass 

Led by Sarah Hall, RCA

 

Sarah Hall was born in Dundas, Ontario, Canada in 1951.  She studied in the Architectural Glass Department at Swansea College of Art in Wales, UK and followed this with an internship with Lawrence Lee, master at the Royal College of Art in London.  After completing studies in the U.K., Sarah spent a year in Jerusalem studying Middle Eastern techniques in glass. Her work has received numerous awards for outstanding liturgical art. The American Institute of Architects has awarded Sarah several ‘Honor Awards’ in light of her challenging and creative installations within contemporary church architecture.

 
In 2002, Sarah was elected into membership of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.  Her exceptional contribution to the built environment was honored in 1997 by the Ontario Association of Architects “Allied Arts Award.” In 2005, Sarah received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship to research and integrate photovoltaic technology (solar energy collection cells) into her art glass installations. This unique fusion of art and technology is the first of its’ kind in North America.Sarah has established her studio in Toronto and keeps a busy schedule with lectures, exhibitions and projects which span a wide range of communities and architectural settings.

February 25, 2015

The Hegelianized Calvin:
Re-Examining Calvin’s Place in the Separation of Art from Religion

by Dr. Rebekah Smick. Associate Professor of Philosophy of the Arts and Culture
Institute for Christian Studies in the Toronto School of Theology. BA (Brandeis University). MA (Columbia University). PhD (University of Toronto)

Rebekah Smick specializes in pre-Kantian art theory and criticism, in particular the relation of early modern visual arts theory to poetics and rhetoric in the Western tradition. Her research and teaching investigate the aesthetic values of beauty and grace in the early modern period, the link between knowledge and imagination, the aesthetic function of metaphor, and the place of compassion. She is especially interested in delineating the connections made during the early modern period between aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, and theology. She is author of Antiquity and Its Interpreters (Cambridge UP, 2000) and is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà as Image in the Theology and Aesthetics of Compassion.