A Jock McDonald Remix Project by Pete Smith.

This blog is a running journal that was made in conjunction with my artist residency at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada that took place between December 2014 and February of 2015.

To get an understanding of how this project fits into the larger scope of my art practice, please visit:

www.petesmith.ca


Friday, January 9, 2015

Correspondences

The first thing I did was go to the library to ask about our archives. Our archives are located on Richmond Street, but for some reason, appear to be closed until February. Obviously, this doesn't work for me. So I emailed Victoria Sigurdson, our head archivist.

Hi Victoria,

My name is Pete Smith, and I teach here in drawing and painting. I am doing a research project in relation to Jock Macdonald who was OCA faculty from 1950-1960. I am hoping to have a look through our archives from that period. The website says the archives are closed until February, but my project is time sensitive as it is in conjunction with an artist residency I'm doing at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, and that residency ends on the first of February. I hope we can work out a time that I could visit.

Best,

Pete

Hello, Pete:

Thank you for your query regarding archival materials. With the Archivist unexpectedly away, I have to ask for your patience at this time. I will endeavor to perform some cursory searches early next week.

Off the top of my head, I can tell you that we do not have very many (if any) primary materials related to Jock, but I do know of a photograph of Jock teaching a painting class in the collection.

Significant collections of Jock’s papers are held by Library & Archives Canada, the National Gallery http://national.gallery.ca/english/library/biblio/ngc036.html and the Vancouver Art Gallery http://www.memorybc.ca/j-w-g-jock-macdonald-fonds;rad.

I’ll get back to you with more information as soon as I can, Victoria.

-- Victoria Sigurdson MLIS, BFA Visual Art (Hons)

Head, Visual Resources & Special Collections

Dorothy H. Hoover Library

Thank you, Vicoria for the info and links. They're very helpful. What I'm really looking to find is things like where his office was? What classrooms he taught in? For what classes? Teachery stuff related to the physical building really.

Best,

Pete

I followed this link to the National Gallery Archives. Apparently there is a box of stuff in their archives from OCA that includes attendance files, etc. This is awesome. I wrote the following email to their archivist, Cyndie Campbel:

Dear Ms. Campbel,

I am doing a research/art project on Jock Macdonald, and am very specifically interested in his years at OCA. Your website shows you have a box of papers that relate to his teaching there. Is there any way that I can look through these on line? I am very specifically trying to find out where his office was and in what classrooms he taught his classes.

Sincerely,

Pete Smith

Lecturer, Drawing and Painting, OCAD University

Unfortunately, the email was returned to me with the following weird, computery problemy message:

athena.ngc.mbac rejected your message to the following e-mail addresses:

ccampbel@gallery.ca (ccampbel@gallery.ca)

athena.ngc.mbac gave this error:

This message has been blocked because the HELO/EHLO domain is invalid.

Your message wasn't delivered due to a permission or security issue. It may have been rejected by a moderator, the address may only accept e-mail from certain senders, or another restriction may be preventing delivery.

Diagnostic information for administrators:

Generating server: OCADMAIL-CAS.ocad.ca ccampbel@gallery.ca athena.ngc.mbac #554 5.7.1 This message has been blocked because the HELO/EHLO domain is invalid. ## Original message headers: Received: from OCADMAIL-MAILDB.ocad.ca ([fe80::d5d0:c488:3ab3:f241]) by ocadmail-cas.ocad.ca ([::1]) with mapi id 14.03.0123.003; Fri, 9 Jan 2015 06:37:30 -0500 From: "Smith, Pete (Academic)" To: "ccampbel@gallery.ca" Subject: jock macdonald at oca Thread-Topic: jock macdonald at oca Thread-Index: AdAsAHqETmjeyBLUTWuY+HgYyn++7g== Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2015 11:37:29 +0000 Message-ID: <0F13409B8C6AE440AD9C7AB87674B7F101C20871C1@ocadmail-maildb.ocad.ca> Accept-Language: en-US, en-CA Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [174.95.219.127] Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="_000_0F13409B8C6AE440AD9C7AB87674B7F101C20871C1ocadmailmaild_" MIME-Version: 1.0

I will try phoning her later today. I teach at Durham College this afternoon, and then my opening is tonight. My plans before that are to go on a Durham area/Painters 11 scavenger hunt to find some of the places that their activities took place in.

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