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.

Surrey White Rock Art Society Art Scholarship 2009

Naomi White is the inaugural winner of the Surrey White Rock Art Society sponsored Emily Carr Entrance Scholarship. ECUAD's Winter 2009 edition of the Visions publication included the very fine work above. Congratulations Naomi!

Fine Print: Since the publication is winter 2009, and this is before the 2010 application deadline, we assume that Naomi is last year's winner, was in grade 12 last year and the work above is part of her grade 12 egg and not done at Emily. Enough hand-wringing. Enjoy the art!

high contrast

this work was done last school year as part of a grade 10 project at Sacred Heart High School in Walkerton, Ontario (so the artist must be in grade 11 this year, right?). the project was to take an image, manipulate it on a computer, then paint it. Ms George's own example is very cool, but you have to go to their super blog to see it... http://artshhs.blogspot.com/

Kater's Creations

here are two of Kater's several corsets that she has created for her grad portfolio. one takes recycling to a new level and the other one is perfectly impervious to airport scanners. Others are made of candy and, um, rubber thingies. very imaginative stuff, even if there's no washing machine setting for them.

No Canadian Visual Art?

no image to post from the annual Scholastic Art and Writing awards because there are no Canadian winners for visual art. we suspect it is because this long running contest (over 80 years!) is almost unknown in Canada.

but congratulations to Jesse Shulman for winning a silver medal in the science fiction/fantasy category in writing. Jesse is the only Canadian winner in any category. (Jesse, contact us to tell about your experience.)

if you are in grade 7 to 12 next year, check out artandwriting.org well before December. if you are considering an art school in the USA, some serious scholarships may come your way.

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 5

These two sets of works contrast in a big way. The softness of the babe and the piercing look of the eyes...

Joyce Yang Song did these three sweet paintings of her baby sister. They are strong in a graphicky way, have a street-art-sprayed look to the facial features, and are very fine in the decorative part of the head - look closely!

Detail of the eyes from Erica Phillips' contribution has very fine images of people in the iris and elsewhere - again, look closely. If only we could learn to focus a camera better.

The Spirit of Unity Show Opening Night part 4

Linda Jeong's "Where are you from?" at the top was done in acrylic on illustration board. What we thought were collage body parts are actually painted in very fine detail (maybe one or two are collaged eyeballs or lips?) This one has to be seen in person as, again, our photo barely captures its power.

Jia Seung's Consensus uses a shocked self portrait to get her message across that unity doesn't preclude the individual. Its done in mixed media and a detail image appeared in part 1 of this series.

The Spirit of Unity Show Opening Night part 3

Another favourite from the show: Kate Holley's "A Poem for Us" written out and arranged by line in button art. Excuse the poor photograph we took - this piece, as they say, "popped". Thankfully she wrote the poem in a more traditional manner as her artist statement - we used it as a form of training wheels to go back to the buttons and have another look. The detail image shows how some of the text is very inventively portrayed.

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 Opening Night part 1

It was a packed opening night for The Spirit of Unity Show at the Ferry Building and the West Vancouver Library. These images are details from Jina Lee's "Harmony" and Jia Seung's "Consensus", both incorporating acrylic on cardboard. Go to the show to see the rest of these awesome artworks.

Need More Canadians

this oil painting by Charles Fiddian from Gresham's School in Holt is awesome but NOT CANDADIAN! its posted here to encourage Canadian Kids to enter to win the Saatchi Gallery / Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for Schools for 2010. any age up to 18 can enter and the deadline is in early August. the details:

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/portfolio/index.php

if your school submits, let us know at canadaschooleh@gmail.com

iPray

From 2009, Francine Navarro posted this graphic at http://portfolio.francinenavarro.ca/?p=23 , and had this to say about it:

"This poster garnered the most attention. It is a response to our growing dependency on technology and society’s weakening connection to their faith. This poster was featured at the Mississauga Images Art Show, and received the Catholic Youth Award for its juxtaposing of technology and religion. The poster was also mass-produced into magnets and distributed throughout the school community. Created with Adobe Illustrator."

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

Said the Whale Album Cover Entry

our favourite entry from the "Said the Whale" band's album art contest submitted by acire2 and jax. The winning entry and some other entries can be seen at http://www.saidthewhale.com/