![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday | Friday, August 13, 2004
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca Information and submissions: bulletin@uwaterloo.ca |
U of T student killed in solar car accident
Mechatronics engineering student Andrew Frow, 21, was killed yesterday while driving the University of Toronto's solar car "Blue Sky" along highway 7 and 8 from Stratford to Waterloo. He and his teammates were on their way to UW as part of the Canadian Solar Tour. The tour has been cancelled.
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There's a technological element to the works of Cora Cluett, who says she's feeling at home at UW nine months after arriving as an assistant professor in the fine arts department.
Her paintings "allude to technological abstractions through the substantial presence of paint", says one curator, Jessica Bradley. Cluett graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and has spent time at the Banff Centre for the Arts, at an artist-run centre in Windsor, doing a master's degree at the University of Guelph, and teaching at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Right before coming to UW she was artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
![[Three textured squares]](/images/2004/0808cluett.gif)
Work from Cluett's 1996 exhibition in Guelph |
According to Nancy Campbell of the Macdonald Stewart gallery, Cluett's paintings there represented "the emerging concept of intimacy in contemporary society". At that time her primary motif was a face-like symbol called the emoticon -- "a breezy electronic device that duplicates the effect achieved in an earlier, handwritten life by abundant underlining of words. Emoticons are units in a complex language of symbols adopted by users to give an emotional or personal edge to electronic communications, allowing users to alter the normally austere format of e-mail to imply such gestures as a wink, a smile, or even a kiss." The emoticon for a kiss :-* appeared repetitively on Cluett's abstract canvases.
A sister element to her canvases included several series of colour Polaroid photographs of the artist's mouth, each housed in a metal box and pierced with a music box key. By turning the key the viewer was allowed an audible, physical response to the image.
She and her husband, Paul, were both offered appointments by UW's fine arts department, and they decided to make the move, coincident with Cluett's showing, "Scavenger's Daughter," which involved 16 recent works at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and at the Wynick/Tuck Art Gallery in Toronto.
While she is a painter of much-acclaimed abstract pictures, Cluett has remained interested in photography as an art form, an interest that encompasses digitized computer art as well. She says: "The department of fine arts at Waterloo is fortunate in that we will be able to make use of the environmental studies darkroom facilities this fall, and possibly through the winter as well. Eventually we would hope to establish our own fine arts darkroom here in East Campus Hall."
She sees such a facility as essentialt, since photography and new media art is so entrenched within historical and contemporary art, perhaps, in "helping us close the gap that currently exists between drawing and painting skills and the computer science skills and knowledge that underly three-D animation and other computer-related technologies that are available today. . . .Fine arts students all over the world are interested in using these new technologies to express their ideas."
The latest in a series of Keystone Campaign donor profiles prepared by staff in the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs puts the spotlight on Rob Gorbet of electrical and computer engineering, who joined UW in 2000. As a winner of the Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Awards, Professor Gorbet’s students describe him as accessible, easy to talk to, and that he goes out of his way to help them understand difficult concepts. Rob thrives on the variety and flexibility in his job and enjoys wearing many hats – teacher, researcher, manager, administrator, artist, mentor, counsellor, and champion for the FIRST Robotics competition at UW (FIRST gives high school students the opportunity to build robots that compete in various regional competitions – UW is hosting a regional in 2005). Rob’s best memory at UW is yet to come – “It will be the opening ceremonies of the inaugural FIRST Robotics Waterloo Regional in March 2005!”
What motivates you to give to UW? Competition for federal and provincial scholarship money is fierce and I see first-hand excellent students who are not receiving scholarships, which greatly reduces their chances of going to grad school. Obviously, this is close to my heart and one day I hope to benefit by being able to mentor and work with a student who has an Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Science & Technology (OGSST). Rob donates to the OGSST and the Canadian Engineering Memorial Fund.
What makes you proud to work at UW? One of the aspects of my job involves interviewing our students for co-op work terms in Finnish research labs. I’m always amazed at the experiences these students have acquired by third year and the employers echo these sentiments as well. I am proud to send these students overseas as UW’s ambassadors.
Have you lived in any other interesting places? I was born and grew up in Ottawa; when I was 11, my Dad moved our family to Paris, France for three years – a life altering experience. Later, as a UW student in Electrical Engineering, I spent two work terms in
France and participated in an exchange at the University of Technology in Compiegne
(north of Paris) where I also met my wife Maud. Maud and I have two children –
Améline (five years old) and Simon (10 months old).
What is the strangest food you have ever eaten? It’s a toss-up between dried caterpillars – at an exhibit on edible bugs at the Montreal Botanical Gardens – and raw octopus in Japan.
The Office of the Dean of Engineering is preparing to move home to CPH again, from its temporary quarters in CEIT. Today is packing day, with the bulk of the move happening on Monday. The dean’s office hopes to be settled again by 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 17.
Also on Monday:
And finally, a note from IST: “In order to facilitate moving courses to the newest version of ANGEL (6.1), service to UW-ACE will not be available on Monday, August 16, 2004. All course material and student data will remain intact and will be accessible after this date. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
C&PA