West Van Grad Show Part 5

One of our several favourites from the show, Ms Sevan Agopian made "Eternal Blessing" to explore faith, hope and eternity. It is made with oil stick and encaustic collage on wood panels, and is relatively small with each panel about 8 inches square.

We are not proud here at CanadaSchool - we had to look up what "encaustic" meant. It means using pigmented wax as a medium; apparently an ancient technique. It can be used like paint when wet, manipulated when semi-solid, or carved and cut when hard.

West Van Grad Show Part 4

Ashley Ruby Szarkowicz produced this colourful jar-dropper called "Beyond the Blueprint". She plans to continue with photography after she graduates and sell prints like this one.

Erica Phillips did these two acrylics as part of a larger series of portraits of self and friends sporting symbolic tattoos. She appeared in earlier blog posts as acire2 but has outed herself to attend ECUAD this fall.

West Van Grad Show Part 3

Zora Sauerteig's "Doom" comic book cover was a fun piece. Any art that references the father of microbiology is alright with us. Hopefully Zora will have time while at ECUAD to finish the whole book by her publish date of November 2010. In the meantime we love the certainty of that future exchange rate.



Nikki Koo's spooky "Well" is suitably paired with the "Doom" piece here. Such an effective use of white pencil and those lonely bottles of white-out just lying around in office desks everywhere. Her talent will help her next year while at art school in New York.

There is a faint image of CanadaSchool's crappy photographer marring "Well" plus a reflection of a bit of the piece on the opposite wall. Maybe someone else should take the photos? We have a summer intern position opening up, so send in your CV!

Aside: For a fun intro to the first fathers of microbiology check out http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/18/stop-motion-lego-doc.html

West Van Grad Show Part 2

These two very large pieces were at the back of the crowded room, but both yelled out for attention immediately.

The stark fist in Melissa An's "Ownership" grips a female body made of collaged fashion images. The background mixes up stylized female forms like mannequins jumbled together but ready to be used as a commodity. The further back the viewer stands, the more depth this work exhibits.

Sam Beck's "Bob" had everyone talking about technique. We bet there was a run on duct tape tonight as all who saw this piece wanted to try it out as a medium. Click on the image to see the tape close up. A teacher (from another school) sagely noted that "Imagine handling all that tape... Sam made it sound too easy... I bet it was quite a difficult process", so congrats to Sam for such an arresting graphic piece.

West Van Grad Show Part 1

The 2010 Grad Show for West Vancouver students opened tonight at the Ferry Building at Ambleside Beach. There is some super-nice work there, and all could go on to art school, but not all have chosen to do so.

Above is detail from Laurisse Elodie Noel's "A Peaceful Need" done in India Ink on Paper. A ton of detail, yet lots of room to let the ink flow. Laurisse has a very easy and natural hand with the brush. We liked the very detailed symbol decoration - very much like ancient runes. Whatever you go on to do, Laurisse, please keep the art up!

(Sorry about the image quality - our Canon XTi is soon to be done for. Could someone loan us a new 5D? )

Exultation in Exhalation

Here's a cool piece by a Grade 12ver going into graphic design next year - either Chapman or Bates. The piece is called Exhaling out in Colour.