Alumni Association AGM: The NSCAD Alumni Association invites all alumni to attend the 2026 Annual General Meeting, taking place on Zoom on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, Noon to 1 p.m. (Atlantic). The AGM is an opportunity to connect with fellow alumni, learn more about the work of the Alumni Association, and help shape the future of alumni engagement at NSCAD. During the meeting, attendees will hear updates from the Board of Directors, learn about initiatives planned for the coming year, and get an inside look at new communications strategies and alumni engagement advisory groups designed to strengthen connections across the alumni community. Alumni will be able to vote for new Directors between September 29 and October 6, 2026. Additional information about the candidates and the voting process will be shared in the coming weeks. We encourage all alumni to participate and make their voices heard. Registration is required! Register for the NSCAD Alumni Association Zoom AGM here.

Alumni @ Work Virtual Talk: Join fashion designer Matthew Brown (BFA 2026) and celebrity fashion stylist, costume designer and creative consultant Akshay Tyagi (BFA 2008), as they share insider stories about their styling well known celebs and creating looks for high profile Bollywood actors, professional athletes, well-known musicians and more. Register now for Celebrity Styling Behind the Scenes happening Thursday, September 24, noon to 1 p.m. (Atlantic). Register here.

Mentors wanted: If NSCAD changed your life, we want to hear from you! We're piloting a mentoring program for NSCAD alumni to connect with first year students. This opportunity is open to alumni in the Halifax area for in-person meetings, as well as other locations for virtual mentoring. If you're interested, please contact the alumni team at alumni@nscad.ca .

Public Lecture: NSCAD University is pleased to welcome internationally-renowned live artist Tania El Khoury for the first of its 2026–27 Public Lectures. El Khoury is the founding director of the Center for Human Rights & the Arts as well as a Distinguished Artist in Residence and Associate Professor in Theater and Performance at Bard College. She is a live artist whose interactive installations and performances reflect on the production of collective memory and the cultivation of solidarity. The lecture is free and open to the public on Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 7 p.m. at Halifax Central Library, Paul O’Regan Hall, 5440 Spring Garden Rd., Halifax, NS. El Khoury will also present a performance and art installation at the Treaty Space Gallery, in partnership with the Prismatic Arts Festival between September 17 and October 2. Read more. 

Alumni Profile: Kim Hastreiter (BFA 1974) has spent a lifetime defying categories. Artist, publisher, journalist, cultural tastemaker, fundraiser, gardener, chef, collector, and curator, the New York icon and founder of the magazine Paper has helped shape contemporary culture for more than five decades. Through it all, Hastreiter has remained true to the artistic mindset she developed at NSCAD University.  "I've never been able to be pinned down to a category," she says. "Am I a journalist? No. Am I a publisher? Not really. I'm a collector. I collect things I love. I collect people who inspire me. In that way, I'm an artist and a curator." Read more.

New role: Tori Fleming (BFA 2013) is the new Executive Director of Craft Nova Scotia. Tori is well-known for her work at the Centre for Art Tapes, and more recently, the Atlantic International Film Festival. She has more than 15 years of arts administration experience working with galleries, festivals, and advocacy groups to create vibrant, stable art spaces where artists can thrive.  Congratulations Tori! Read more.

Exhibition: The Sky is Green, a solo exhibition by Mia Sandhu (BFA 2009) explores themes of femininity, sexuality, cultural hybridity, self-authenticity, and safety. Expressed through her playful paper and gouache/watercolour-based works, Sandhu seeks to examine inner conflicts seemingly intrinsic to womanhood while also challenging more abstract concepts like unrequited assimilation and cultural dysphoria. The Sky is Green runs until October 17 at Patel Brown, 21 Wade Ave, #2, Toronto, ON. Read more.

In memoriam: The NSCAD community is remembering Emily McLaughlin (BFA 1989) who passed away in December 2025. Emily studied fine art and art history at NSCAD in the mid-1980s. One of her professors described her paintings and drawings as sophisticated, complex, and remarkable. Tamar Drushka Hewitt (BFA 1990) remembers Emily fondly, "She was a gifted painter and I will always remember some paintings she did that were inspired by the yellow label on a can of olives. I can still see those paintings in my mind´s eye, and wish that I had one." During her time at NSCAD, Emily met Jacob Allderdice and the two married in 1992. Their son, Jasper, was born in Toronto in 1994. Emily returned to school in the early 2000s, graduating from Seneca College's Library & Information Technician program, and then worked at the Public Library in Aurora, ON until the end of 2010. In her retirement, Emily travelled extensively, continued to make art, read widely, took up pottery, cultivated many friendships, collected antique furniture and artwork. Emily was active in delivering humanitarian aid through the Prem Rawat Foundation and was instrumental in bringing the Peace Education program to the Vanier Centre correctional facility for women in Milton, ON. Read more.

New business: Former Halifax Mooseheads hockey player and current gold miner Justin Munden has teamed up with Warren Jardine (BDes 2021) on an East Coast-inspired fashion brand that showcases Warren's hand painted art work, inspired by the ocean. Dear Ocean launched its first collection online last month all featuring East-Coast inspired prints of Jardine's acrylic paintings of mussels, seagulls, fishing boats and oysters. The collection has been shipping across Canada. Read more.

Exhibition: New work by Rachel Reeve (BFA 1998) is featured in Frondescence, a solo exhibition at Brooklyn's Usagi gallery this month. A hands-on connection with natural elements and formative years spent in Japan are central to Reeve's artistic process. By engaging with plants, seaweed, fish, and other marine life as both subject and collaborator, she fosters a relationship of reciprocity. Her compositions often emerge intuitively, guided by the organic qualities of line, form, and texture inherent in each specimen. Bringing together botanical printing, gyotaku, monotype, Japanese paper, and hand-printed textiles, Frondescence explores relationships between body, landscape, memory, and the natural world. Rather than presenting individual works as isolated objects, the exhibition unfolds as an ecology of relationships. The exhibition runs until Monday, September 28 at Usagi, 163 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY. Read more.

Project: Grammy award winning artist Laurie Anderson (DFA 2024) has been selected as the 13th person to submit written work to the Future Library project. Her next manuscript will remain unseen for 88 years, joining Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong and other prominent authors who have written secret manuscripts to be locked away until 2114.The texts are stored in a specially-designed silent room in the Deichman Bjorvika building at the public library in Oslo. At the end of the project, the full anthology of texts will be printed using paper from trees from the Future Library forest in northern Oslo, where 1,000 spruce trees were planted by Katie Paterson, the artist behind the project, back in 2014. Read more.

Image: Robert Bean, Crow #4

Exhibition: Work by Professor Emeritus Robert (Bob) Bean (BFA 1978) is featured in Rituals of Flight, an exhibition that explores and documents the presence and patterns of crows and other black birds in Sydney's historic North End and Ashby neighbourhoods, mainland Nova Scotia and farther afield. The exhibition runs until January 8, 2027 at Eltuek Arts Centre, 170 George Street, Sydney, NS. Read more.

Exhibition: NSCAD alumni including Marla Benton (BFA 2001), Jessica Berry (BFA 2007), Mary Jane 'MJ' Lundy (BFA 2003), Eunseon Park (BFA 2017), Ralph Simpson (2011) and Wilma Butts are some of the artists on display as part of Newness. Artists in this exhibition are asking something new of a material, a process, and ultimately asking something new of themselves. Newness may be literal or abstract: a shift in direction, a first attempt, a reinvention, or a response to changing contexts. Assembled together in the same room, these objects reflect the promise of craft in Nova Scotia at this moment. They represent a community that is rigorous, resilient, innovative and energised for the future. Exhibition jury members included Krista Grunsky (BFA 2018), Lindsay Macdonald (BFA 2005), and Shauna MacLeod (BFA 2011). The exhibition runs until Sunday, September 27 at the Mary E. Black Gallery, 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS. Read more.

Photo by Skana Gee

Exhibition: New quilts by Marilyn Smulders (BFA 2019) are on display as part of Block Party. Since graduation from NSCAD University, she has continued to quilt, finding inspiration in the quilt making traditions of the Amish, Gee’s Bend quilt makers of Alabama, and rural Nova Scotian women.“Block Party is an expression of my love of quilting. I love everything about it: drafting the designs; choosing the colours; sewing, sewing, sewing; and then the actual quilting – the slow, meditative way of stitching the three layers (backing, batting and pieced top) together. I dig the old patterns, how they’ve been around for centuries and yet can still look new and fresh. I admire the innovation of quilters, who can always find a shortcut or a special ruler that makes this slow art zip along." The exhibition runs until September 27 at Lunenburg School of the Arts, 6 Prince St, Lunenburg, NS. Read more.

Installation: Joseph Ferrugia (BFA 2003) has been selected as a featured artist for Nuit Blanche Toronto. His installation, Echoes of the Apiary, will transform the podium green roof of Toronto City Hall into an immersive environment of glowing beehive structures, drifting smoke, and layered sound. It will be a meditation on humanity's evolving relationship with bees. Drawing from experience in art making, beekeeping and education, Ferrugia creates projects that connect environmental awareness with collective storytelling. His practice blends historical research, immersive environments and public participation to encourage reflection on humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world. Nuit Blanche takes place Saturday, October 3 and Sunday, October 4 at venues in downtown Toronto. Read more.

Artist Talk: Brigitte Clavette (BFA 1980) will give an artist talk exploring her practice and the work she created as artist in residence at Beaverbrook Art Gallery in May 2026. Drawing inspiration from work in the collection, Clavette will discuss the ideas, research, and creative process that shaped her new work. There will be two free talks on Thursday, September 24: 5:30 p.m. in English and 7 p.m. in French. The talks will take place at the RBC Education Centre, 703 Queen St., Fredericton, NB. Read more.

Greenshaw drawing as part of the Colourful Parachutes exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto (2026)

Award: The Toronto Friends of The Visual Arts selected Claire Greenshaw (BFA 2003) as a finalist for its 2026 Artist Prize. Greenshaw's practice is grounded in drawing as a way of thinking, seeing, and making sense of the world. She is known for her command of line, tone, and observation—drawing with both precision and emotional acuity. The Artist Prize recognizes a late-emerging to early mid-career artist, whose primary practice takes place in the greater Toronto area, and who demonstrates exceptional talent, with an exhibition history in either solo or group exhibitions. The finalists each receive $7,500. Congratulations! Read more.

Exhibition: Su Rogers (BFA 1984) explores the role of women in the fishing industry as part of her latest exhibition Atlantic Women Fish Packers at the Chester Art Centre. "These expressive figurative works combine images and text to explore the often invisible work of Nova Scotia women in the fishery–both as fish packers and as fishers.
The paintings draw on many sources: religious iconography echoing the reliance on faith to sustain fishers and their families through storms and loss; classical symbolism relating to the age-old biblical work of fishing; and folk traditions and motifs which decorated and enriched domestic lives in the coastal communities. The exhibition runs until Sunday, September 27 at the Chester Art Centre, 60 Queen St. Chester, NS. Read more.

Sow to Sew Symposium: The three-year Sow to Sew Project will wrap up this Friday, September 18 with the Sow to Sew Symposium and the opening of an exhibition called Sustain-abilities: Craft at the Edge of the Earth. Presented as an immersive showcase that spans 2023-2026, there will be interlinked public presentations that revisit and expand upon conversations about sustainability in craft. Events in the symposium will highlight past and present project participants, their material explorations and meaning making, tracing the complex network of relationships sown during this sustained activity. The Symposium will take place Friday, September 18, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. at NSCAD's Fountain Campus, 5163 Duke St. The exhibition runs until Saturday, September 26 at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, 1891 Granville St., Halifax, NS. Read more.

Top: Works from Flaxology: Sow to Sew Summer 2025 Artists-in-Residence Sonia Chow, Charlotte Little, Maggie Sigrid Wilde 

Exhibition: The Gardiner Museum, Black Artists’ Networks in Dialogue (BAND), and the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) present a landmark curatorial partnership exploring contemporary ceramic practices rooted in Caribbean histories, memory, and cultural transformation. After the Island: Caribbean Canadian Ceramics considers how artists of the Caribbean diaspora are embracing the medium of ceramics to explore themes of knowledge transfer and the liberatory potential of the clandestine. The exhibition will feature work by NSCAD CRC Eddy Firmin, along with other Caribbean Canadian artists. The exhibition opens Thursday October 8, at 7:30 p.m. at the Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen’s Park, Toronto, ON. Read more.

Faculty Profile: HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajundar, co-chairs of NSCAD's Fine Arts Division, believe curiosity and friendship are not distractions from success, but the foundation upon which artistic lives and careers are built. As practicing artists and educators, they see artistic practice as something shaped through relationships, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas. Their vision is rooted in the belief that strong communities foster stronger artists, and that friendship creates the relationships, networks, and collaborations that sustain artistic practice over time. "There are no shortcuts in artistic practice, you have to show up for yourself and for each other." Read more.

Photo by Vuk Dragojevic

Exhibition: Three NSCAD faculty and alumni are presenting Networks, Systems & Folds at Saint Mary's University Art Gallery starting this week. Part group show, part collaboration between Sage Sidley (MFA 2020), Félix Bernier (VAC 2019, MFA 2021), and Yifan Liu (MFA 2023), the exhibition uses new media to explore the consequences of digital technology in our lives today. The opening reception is Friday, September 18, 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition runs September 19 to December 6 at Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, 5865 Gorsebrook Ave., Halifax, NS. Read more.

Top (l to r): The student team, including Haley Nicholson, Petra Bouwers (BFA 2026), Rafi Islam, Qing Wang, Remi Geraci.

Bottom: The painting and drawing studios at the end of the project.

Project: The Summer Studio and Campus Renewal Project has come to a close. With support from alumni through the Head, Heart, and Hand Fund, NSCAD's Studio Services Manager John Deal worked with five students to make small repairs and improvements in the studios and common spaces, primarily in the Drawing and Painting areas. Thanks to their work, and the generous support from NSCAD alumni, the studios feel lighter, brighter and fresh; ready to welcome a brand-new group of young artists. "It’s meaningful to give back to a place that has given me so much. Working alongside other students and recent graduates who feel the same way makes it even more rewarding. Thank you for helping to make this a meaningful, memorable and enriching experience for all of us." Petra Bouwers (BFA 2026). Learn more.

Exhibition: NSCAD staff member Emily Shanahan explores ideas of value through the lens of consumerism in her exhibition WORTH. Materials collected from purchase remnants (cardboard boxes, price tags, shopping bags) are repurposed into new forms. By taking these materials apart and changing their intended use, Shanahan carves out a new role for them, asking what worth they may acquire or forfeit. WORTH runs until September 27. There will be an opening reception on Saturday September 5 at 3 p.m. and an artist talk on Saturday, September 19 at 3 p.m. at Hermes Gallery, 5682 North Street, Halifax, NS. Read more.

Shortlisted work: Multidisciplinary artist and ICA faculty member in NSCAD’s Drawing department Ibe Ananaba has been shortlisted for ART COMP 2026. ART COMP is a not-for-profit organization that hosts an art competition open to all local, national and international artists. Ibe's painting titled, What Does Tomorrow Hold?, was selected as one of the Top 100 artworks that will be on display at 100 Kellogg Lane in London, ON from May to September 2026. The closing awards night will be Thursday, September 24. Read more.

Exhibition: HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajundar are participating in Soft Hardware, the first in a two-part project celebrating Franz Kaka's tenth anniversary. Across painting, sculpture, and installation, the exhibition considers making as a sustained form of thinking and the accumulated knowledge embedded in processes of cutting, carving, joining, layering, weaving, painting, drawing, shaping, and assembling. Bringing together distinct artistic languages, Soft Hardware considers what it means to construct, sustain, and transform an object, and proposes that making is itself a way of knowing. The exhibition runs from Wednesday, September 16 to Saturday, October 31 at Franz Kaka, 945 College Street, Toronto, ON Read more.

Call for submissions: Submissions are OPEN for the 2nd Annual Taos Film Festival. TaosFF welcomes short-form and feature-length narrative and documentary films, including experimental, animated and international projects, with no limits on production date. There are four submission deadlines, and submission fees change with each deadline:
AUG 1, 2026 — Early
NOV 1, 2026 — Regular
DEC 15, 2026 — Final
JAN 15, 2027 — Extended

Selected film makers will be notified March 1, 2027 and the festival runs 
April 29 to May 2, 2027. Read more.

Call for applications: Toronto Arts Council’s Media Artists Program provides support to media artists who have a professional independent art practice for the creation/production of new work or the completion of works in progress. Funds are intended to cover direct costs of creation/production, and materials. Applicants may apply for production and/or post-production. Media Arts includes independent film, video, audio, digital, video and electronic games, virtual and augmented reality and new media artworks. New media refers to works that use multi-media, computers or communications or information technologies for creative expression, including installation and performance art works that integrate such technologies. The deadline to apply is Thursday, October 15. Read more.

Exhibitor registration: Craft East Buyers Expo 2027 is now accepting exhibitor registrations! This is your opportunity to connect directly with retailers, buyers, galleries, gift shops, museum stores and other purchasing professionals looking for new products and makers for their upcoming seasons. Craft East will be co-located with the Halifax Gift Expo 2027, with both shows hosted by Craft Alliance at the Halifax Convention Centre. March 7 and 8, 2027. Early bird rates to register end on September 30, 2026. Exhibitors can register on the Craft Alliance portal. Read more. 

Call for nominations: Members of the arts, social sciences and humanities communities are now eligible for nomination for the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prizes. The Molson Prizes are awarded to two individuals—one in the arts and the other in the social sciences and humanities—in recognition of their outstanding achievements. Deadline for nominations is Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Read more.

Call for entries: Submissions for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2027 are now open. Inspired by LOEWE's own beginnings as an artisanal workshop, the prize is designed to recognize excellent and innovation in craft in all its forms. Shortlisted works will be exhibited in spring 2027, from which the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize Jury will select the winning piece and special mentions. Entries will be accepted until October 15, 2026. Read more.

Call for submissions: 2027 Call for Independent Projects: The DesignTO Festival brings people together to celebrate contemporary design across the city January 22 – 31, 2027. DesignTO Festival is Canada’s largest annual design festival celebrating design as a multidisciplinary form of thinking and making, with over 100 exhibitions and events forming Toronto’s design week each January. The deadline for submissions is Friday, October 9, 2026. Read more.

NSCAD at Nocturne: Nocturne 2026 is set to run Saturday, October 17 and Sunday, October 18 across downtown Halifax and Dartmouth. Nocturne curator Annalise Prodor (BFA 2011) developed the theme Embodied City and invited artists to respond to the theme by creating works that question what it means to be embodied in urban environments and create opportunities to engage with lived experiences in a more direct and meaningful way. Some of the NSCAD alumni, faculty, and students taking part in Nocturne 2026 include: Gabe Moore (BFA 2024), Eleanor King (BFA 2001), Ada Denil (BFA 2023), Geordan Moore (BDes 2007) aka Quarrelsome Yeti, Andrea Rahal (BDes 2004), Mengnan Qu (BFA 2012), Jacinte Armstrong (MFA 2020), Faculty Ufuk Gueray, and Maggie MacCormick (2012-2015). Read more.

Festival of Bodywork by Jacinte Armstrong

Work from Black Olives by Ufuk Gueray at HERMES gallery.