Maria Kofman

Maria Kofman got in touch with us to submit some work before she went off to Cooper Union in New York to do fine arts. The first is "Rock Formations 3" done in oil and is a pretty good size in cm, but if the units are inches, its huge! The second one is called the "faceless 6" and done in supersculpy. Maria is a grad from ESA and it shows. What a school.

Judges Speak

More ESA

From Shireen Ahmad's Tumblr lines and hunger. Sh's off to Parsons next year. Stolen from A Bailey's Flickr is Kodak Factory. Click on it to open a bigger view. It pops with a big black background. ----> Thanks Matt!

Matt Ledwidge

This guy is good. And has done alot. He's one of the Canadian winners of the ArtandWriting.org programme run out of New York, and one of our picks for SYWTBAA2012. See more at http://mattledwidge.tumblr.com/

o you want to be #1,2,3

The judges have spoken! Paula Rayo takes it with "The Memoirs of War", Andrew An gets #2 with "Snowboarding" and Nikki Watts is in #3 with "Thunder Dancer". Awesome work from them - and from all the finalists - and so many of the other entries. All the entries can still be seen (for now) if you still have your bookmarks set up, like this one: http://makeart.gallery.ca/gallery/most-popular/

NUSCHOOL hosts NYAW

These shots from Iqaluit, Nunavut. Looks like a blast, all hosted by NUSCHOOL and organized by Pascal Arpin with assistance from the Katimavik Kids. See more at http://nuschool.ca/recap-of-the-national-youth-arts-week-as-seen-through-the-lens-of-nuschool/

Market Your Art

So You Want to be... finalist Josh Tiessen finished second in the voting for his remarkably detailed piece "Overshadowed". In part from his online presence with the video above and his pro website here www.joshtiessen.com And Jaymii Marie posted this video on the SYWTBAA Facebook Page

So You Want to be an Artist 2012 - Finalists! Part Deux

So the voting has ended and the finalists stabilized - whew. Again, a nail biter as no-one knew their actual likes.

So You Want to be an Artist 2012 - Finalists!

So the drawn-out, dirty, no-holds-barred, street-fighting, world of social networks did their thing and the 12 finalists are set. It was a bit wonky to follow, but that just added to the nail-biting and exciting finish. Some came out early with big support, then suddenly others caught up and passed them in votes. Finalists - please write in and tell us about how you marketed your work: Facebook? Mum and Dad calling everyone? Special Interest Groups? Celebrity Endorsements? One finalist we know did all those things. We like the democracy of facebook voting, BUT, so many good pieces were left behind. ALL the entries deserve to have been seen by the judges. May we suggest for next year two streams? One for the crowd to vote on, and a separate one just to let the experts do their thing. Congratulations you twelve! See em here http://makeart.gallery.ca/gallery/finalists

so you want to be 2012 - 15 days to go!

This piece by Anika Kitka shows tons of imagination and strong craft. An amazing drawing. SHE NEEDS VOTES. Like it here http://makeart.gallery.ca/gallery/details/719/

Save PCVS

http://photobucket.com" target="_blank">"> This is one of many banners created by students at Peterborough Collegiate & Vocational School and used to decorate downtown Peterbourough in the summer of 2011. PCVS is in danger of closing despite a strident campaign to prevent such a thing from happening. Even Rick Mercer weighs in!

self-titled

Four of ESA's grade 12 students have banded together to create the collective "self-titled". Just freakin awesome. Appearing here: Two of Madeleine Watson's tiny Collages, Andrea Chartrand's massive composition two (and that must be her in the shot), one of Daniel Hritzkiv's Portraits of my Friends and Jean-Luc Lindsay's Job-Luc. Hritzkiv put it all together to create the site last year and it received lots of attention. Check it out at http://self-titled.ca/ What are they doing now?

So You Want to ... go to ESA

Hey, two students from the Etobicoke School of the Arts are doing alright in the National Gallery Contest, but both need your votes to crack the top 12: Matt Ledwidge's Landscape-tools and Alex Bailey's Regent Park One are almost too mature for this stage of the competition where (after friends and family are pressed into making their likes known) the public votes tend to consume the most easily digestible pieces. Anyways, Matt got in touch with us and directed us to ESA's site where we learned that he and Alex were entered into the makeart competition. We were pretty pumped to realize their entries were part of our personal top 12 entries. Matt - don't be subtle - ask for a like - ya gotta be obvious! Again, we don't like artist statements, but theirs are good at supporting their own artworks. ESA can be found at http://www.esainfo.ca/

So You Want to be ... 2012

The National Gallery of Canada's So You Want to be an Artist 2012 contest is off to a flying start with about 170 entries in a fight to be "liked" into the top 12. At that point things calm down and the experts take over to choose who wins the top three prizes. Many of the entries are really, really good, and several deserve to have more votes than they currently do. Well its only four days in and many many days to go, but here are some images that need some votes. Niki Watts' Thunder Dancer is an awesome piece in graphite. Ben McGuinness' At My Worst reminds us of cool punk photography from a long time ago. Julia Casol's Captured Elegance finds colour and composition in clutter (awesome painting!). And Shannon TJ's Vividsection is super professional illustration. We at CanadaSchool only wish the judges could see all the work. It makes us sad that good work might not make it into the top 12. Maybe next year they will have two streams: A popular vote and critic's picks. And a special note to those with very few votes - it takes guts to enter your work for the world to see and we respect that. Now is the time to take some more chances and work your networks HARD.

So You Want to be an Artist 2011

We missed this as it was happening, but here is the winning piece for the National Gallery's "So You Want to be an Artist?" contest held last year. The winning entry was very good. His artist's statement was very professional as well. As much as we don't like artist's statements, a well-written one is best. Oh, the link this contest was through Ms G-E's appeal for support for valwitton's piece "Scarlett" through the excellent art blog at http://artshhs.blogspot.com/

Both images courtesy of the National Gallery at www.gallery.ca