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By Robie Liscomb
Beyak
Jocelyn Beyak radiates an infectious enthusiasm. It’s a trait that’s helped her develop her photographic art to a high level and earn a Jubilee Medal for top standing among this year’s graduates from the Faculty of Fine Arts.
In her photography, the visual arts honours student deftly explores themes of personal and family history, memory, identity and place, creating images that intrigue and beckon to the viewer.
In one series, Beyak meticulously recreated old photos of her grandmother, using herself as the model. “I haunted the thrift stores to find exact copies of dresses she wore in the photos,” says Beyak, who then recreated the original poses and printed the resulting images in nearly life-sized format.
For her honours project, she traveled to Melab, MB, to revisit the area where her great grandparents settled after immigrating to Canada from Ukraine and Poland. She created a series of self-portraits with the now-dilapidated barn and stone house that they built, using her art to document and explore her experience of time, place and family identity.
Beyak became interested in photography at an early age, growing up in Chilliwack, where her father used to have a side-job taking wedding photos. A teacher at the Langley Fine Arts School ignited her interest in the serious pursuit of photography, which she studied for a semester at Langara College before coming to UVic.
While attending UVic, Beyak held down several outside jobs and was a major force in the Visual Arts Students Association, helping organize a black-tie art auction, a Halloween exhibition and fashion show, and serving as the organization’s treasurer. She also worked as photo editor at the UVic student newspaper, The Martlet.
Her work has been featured in a recent solo exhibition at Fifty Fifty Gallery and The Ministry of Casual Living, an artist-run gallery, both in Victoria.
Beyak plans to pursue a Master’s of Fine Arts degree after taking some time off from academia. “I need to take the time to think of a ‘grand idea,’” she explains, “something that I want to devote two years of graduate work to.”
Her work may be seen on her website: www.jocelynbeyak.com.
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