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 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.

The Spirit of Unity Show Opening Night part 6

More big inkjet on acetate prints of some excellent photography in this series called "Separate Grounds".

Soraiya Salemohamed took the top three of cherished subjects.

Hana Turner used Elvis to show her love for music in the photo on the bottom left.

Alexandra Crone's artist statement tells how she pulled most of her family together to participate and in doing so, heard some new stories.

Sadly, its not clear to us to which artist the middle print belongs! Sometimes we are a bit slow. Maybe this ambiguity is intentional?

The Spirit of Unity Show Opening Night part 2

These large scale inkjet on acetate photo prints were done by students from Mulgrave School and collectively were called "Separate Grounds".

They hang loose from clips fastened to the wall and project themselves on the wall behind from the display lights. It gives them a 3D quality that immediately caught our eye across the room. All of the "Separate Grounds" photos at the show just grabbed our attention the same way.

MC De Beer did the ones at the top, and .... (this name to be determined - sorry!)... got these shots of her grandfather and objects representing her Iranian heritage.

The Spirit of Unity Show

this looks to be a cool show featuring all the high schools in West Vancouver. the featured art is by hanna kim and is done in prismacolor. the show is produced in partnership with the West Van Baha'is and the West Van school district. click on the image to read the details.

is your school or district putting on a show? let us know. canadaschooleh@gmail.com