Current Faculty
Natalie LeBlanc, B.F.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Natalie is an artist and art educator who currently teaches studio and digital processes and practices to undergraduate and graduate students at UVic. Her art practice, research, and teaching are highly intersecting. Her award-winning doctoral research explored the generative and pedagogical possibilities of closed and abandoned schools in Canada through digital photography and site-specific installation. Her current research examines how conceptual art practices inform artistic and arts-based research methodologies.
Website: https://www.natalieleblanc.com
Natasha S. Reid, Ph.D.
Natasha S. Reid is an art educator, arts administrator, and artist who has worked with museums, community art spaces, and universities in various locations across North America. She received an M.A. (2007) and Ph.D. (2012) in Art Education from Concordia University and conducted Quebec-funded postdoctoral research at UQÀM and NYU. Using narrative research, arts-based practices, and critical multicultural approaches, Reid investigates and activates the life histories of artists and art educators, place-based experiences, and diverse cultural identities, with a focus on biracial identities. Her research, including elements of her art and curatorial practices, has been published in various journals and books and she serves on numerous review boards.
Website: www.nsreid.com
Alison Shields, Ph.D.
Alison is an artist and art educator living in Victoria, BC. She is an Assistant Professor in Art Education at the University of Victoria. She received a PhD from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of Waterloo. Shields has participated in local and international artist residencies and has exhibited her paintings across North America. Her current art practice and research examines studio practices, arts-based and artistic research, artist residencies and painting.
Website: https://alisonshields.com
Michelle Wiebe, Ed.D., RGD
Michelle combines her love of art and design with a belief in the value of learning through inquiry. She feels that art education at UVic with its strong studio focus and varied courses is the perfect place to be because the program allows her to interweave her art education knowledge about theory and studio practice at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Website: https://www.mxwiebe.com
Emeriti Faculty (Retired)
Donald Bergland, Professor emeritus
Don Bergland is a surrealist artist living and working in Victoria, Canada. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D in Visual and Performing Arts from the University of British Columbia and is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Digital Arts at the University of Victoria, where he was a faculty member for over thirty years. While at U.Vic, he introduced innovative programs in digital creativity and studio performance while developing the unique style of artistic expression he calls theatrical surrealism, a method of exploring psychological oddity while using surrealistic techniques for the expression of themes such as human existence, reality, mortality, and eternity. Bergland maintains an active international exhibiting career and has featured his artwork in over 250 major exhibitions throughout the world, winning over 80 exhibition awards in the process. His current focus is in using 3D modeling environments to create surrealistic imagery for international exhibitions.
Website: Don Bergland
Robert Dalton, Professor emeritus.
Dalton’s career began as a high school art teacher, then college art instructor, then art education professor at UVic for 23 years, retiring in 2016. Media includes drawing, collage, watercolour, and acrylic. Imagery draws from nature and ranges from realism to formalist abstraction. His life in Alberta and later British Columbia leads from prairie landscapes to recent themes of eagles and salmon.
Website: www.bobdalton.ca
Michael J. Emme, Professor emeritus.
Emme is a printmaker, cartoonist, photographer, and digital artist. He has worked as a secondary and post-secondary art educator at UVic, UofA, CWU, NSCAD & Various Northern BC schools. His research focuses on on theory/philosophy of lens meaning for students & researchers and fotonovela comics as a collaborative/ multimodal research method. Editor and art director: The Journal of Social Theory and Art Education; The Canadian Art Teacher and review board with The Canadian Review of Research in Art Education, Studies in Art Education & Phenomenology and Practice.
Website: http://michaeljemme.ca
William Michael Zuk, Professor emeritus.
William (Bill) Zuk is a multimedia artist and Professor Emeritus in art education whose studio practice combines visual art, poetry and film inviting the care and protection of Nature, wilderness, and endangered species. Wildlife and wilderness are increasingly being threatened by human impact and upheavals of global warming and climate change. There is an urgent need to plan and organize art education programs that take steps to protect and preserve Nature, endangered species, and with it our future.
Website: zukart.ca
