Colour Codified

Here are some arresting images of colour used to revisit established images.

An accomplished artist and teacher, Renee Van Halm reworked a famous Canadian Painter... check out Knowledge Network's short videos at http://www.knowledge.ca/program/cartographies-shorts , and choose the one with the graphic that looks like the top one above.

Next are two cool images from arthurbuston.blogspot.com found via boingboing.net. Not Canadian nor student work, but just cool. In one of them he analyzed the five most predominant colours from some Van Gogh paintings and presented their predominance in pie charts. Visual Analytics meets art.

My Rights vs Yours

The moustache - what a great symbol!

Hannah has an interesting story about her experience with authority imposing its will over display of her art. Some thought her piece was too insensitive to display outside of art class, and maybe so. It culminated with a protest at her school in which the students wore fake moustaches in solidarity with her. This happened about a year ago, so the time for a repeat protest is drawing near.

Although USA based, what happened to Hannah is something that will happen to all artists at some point. Its great that she had that experience and even greater that she shared and sparked a movement. The whole creative arts slamming into the issue of rights vs responsibilities thing.

Lets do the protest again this year? Someone pick a day. Like on some significant INTERNATIONAL free speech day or the first school-day after.

Message to Hannah - get in touch with us for an update. We assume you are still in high school, but as we are Canadian, we have no idea what sophomore means or what comes after!

Her side of the story... http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=216180135931#!/group.php?gid=216180135931&v=info

What are you waiting for?

These hands are saying "Here's the details. Be there."

The painting is one of a series of multi-cultural tattoos done by Erica Phillips and are symbolic of her commitment to art. The graphics by staffer Ms Barb Labounta were perfectly to the point.

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.

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.