A piece about community and moving forward
Dana Mandeville’s BFA Grad Exhibition, Unbounded, was available to view in the S’eliyemetaxwtexw Art Gallery on Abbotsford campus from Oct. 5-8. Mandeville graduated from UFV in April with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, but she originally started going to UFV in 2014. Prior to her BFA she obtained her BA in history. I got to talk to Dana about how she created the piece, as well as her journey as an art student and her future projects.
For Unbounded, over a thousand sticks were meticulously tied together with scraps of colourful fabric in several panels. The sticks were all different sizes and shapes, from forests, rose bushes, and everywhere in between; some still had dried moss on them. The panels of sticks were suspended from the ceiling to create a spiral shape you could walk through, permitting you to physically participate with the piece. The piece was huge but incredibly detailed and cohesive.
It was a beautiful installation that cannot be fully described in words or photos. It was highly experiential, as is typical of Mandeville’s style of art, which tends toward the large-scale and interactive.
Can you tell me a bit about your inspiration behind this piece? What was the process like to make it, and how did you decide on this idea for your grad piece?
For a grad piece we are supposed to come up with something that we can work on all year, so I worked on it all through last year — both semesters. My life kind of fell apart at the beginning of the fall semester — a lot of personal things. I came up with a quick sketch of something like [Unbounded], and I really like the repetitive act of tying together. I came up with the spiral because it’s a symbol for paths and moving forward; you don’t know what is there, but there is something to move forward to.
I had bags and bags of these little fabric scraps from my quilting. I had first started collecting the sticks alone, and it seemed like it was going to be an overwhelming task. I usually create art that has involvement of other people. Whether the art gives them a physical space to be in, or they have something to touch or play with, I want to have art that interacts with people. I didn’t know how to incorporate an interactive part with this, but I really needed help and was feeling kind of isolated too with everything that was going on.
My professor, Grace, suggested that people can help me collect sticks, and I thought that was a great idea. Sometimes you need to ask for help. So, my classmates collected sticks, friends collected sticks, I collected sticks, and Grace gave me some. There’s some drumsticks in here somewhere. I didn’t count them, but I think there are definitely over a thousand sticks. I started working on it in October 2019, and I made the last panel in May.
Can you tell me a bit about your experience as an art student at UFV? What were some of the highs and lows in getting your BFA?
I’ve always wanted to go to art school, since I was 16, but I dropped out of high school. I was homeless, and I slept outside of [the Ontario College of Arts & Design University] in Toronto. I went to college when I was 27 for environmental technology. Then I moved here and I couldn’t get a job, so I went back to school. I was going to go into the teaching program and I had already gotten my BA in history, but I needed to pick up a few prerequisites. So, I got into a couple art classes, and I realized that I really want to take visual arts, so I applied into the program.
There weren’t as many streams as I would’ve liked. I’m a quilter and I like to do fibre art, and bigger colleges have many more streams to enter into. At UFV you have just five main streams you can do: digital media, sculpture, painting, printmaking, or photography. You have to take three of them to get the major. I was really hoping for a way to work with fibre, and in sculpture I did get to work with fibre a lot because you can self-direct.
I was honestly a little scared that if I went to art school that I would lose my natural creativity, but it only increased it. I thought I would have to conform, but they made it so I didn’t have to conform to anything, and I was free to do basically whatever I wanted.
What advice would you give to students considering the BFA or those just starting?
A lot of people take the art classes because they think it’s going to be easy, but you really do have to put a lot of work into it. It’s not an easy A. If you’re there and you’re putting the effort in, it’s completely worthwhile. But if you’re just taking art classes because you think it will be easy, that is the wrong approach to take for anything, really. Art takes a lot of time: you have to do research, there is a lot of writing, technical components, and you do have to [learn] the art history aspect as well.
You’ve been a BFA grad since April. Going forward, what are your next steps as an artist?
I applied with two pieces to the Fraser Valley Biennale: with this piece and a performance piece I did about gender and policing of bodies. Maybe I’ll get in with that, but I’m not disappointed if I don’t because you have to try and fail a bunch of times to get anywhere.
A lot of stuff is shut down right now, and I’ve been reluctant to apply to online shows. I feel like I’ve been a bit of a snob, but I feel like my pieces are different when they’re online. I’m going to be applying for more shows and galleries that will hopefully be back open soon. I have to get my son through high school, but I’m thinking of applying for grad school after that.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Unbounded with Dana Mandeville (Andrea Sadowski/The Cascade)
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
