Brains Aflame Part 1: Ombre

Brains Aflame by Point Grey Art Careers 12

A student response to James Welling’s “Mind on Fire” exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery.

On Thursday December twelfth the Point Grey Secondary grade twelve Art Careers class visited the Contemporary Art Gallery for a full day workshop.  We explored James Welling’s exhibition with a focus on curatorial practice and conceptual art practices.  As part of our investigation we undertook an experiential response to Welling’s working methods by conducting a photo-shoot in which students were asked to explore in-camera abstraction techniques.  The students were interested in questioning our assumptions of perception and the photographic image as well as how the inherent ambiguity affected the reading of an image.  The students met afterward to discuss and edit the images and categorize them based on the abstraction technique or subject matter of the photographs.  In effect the students curated an exhibition of photography, taking a cue from Welling in grouping images based on intended effect.  

This group of amazing artists includes Cosette Bote, Kevin McAllum, Aly Slobadov, Kiel Torres, Nancy Tseng and Catherine Wang.

Below is the first grouping of photographs affectionately titled "Ombre" by the students.  Stay tuned for the rest of the exhibition in future posts.  The Contemporary Art Gallery also posted their own blog exhibition of the student's work here.

Aly Slobadov

 Forever Young

Cosette Bote

Meditation By Kai Vorland

Going Postal! The Opening

Our Going Postal! Opening was a great success, demonstrating the community spirit and great enthusiasm of our student, teacher and parent community.  Good art, good food and good people - that's what its all about.  

The show was exhibited using a temporary system of portable walls borrowed from the school board.  The gallery is now under construction, being patched, painted and having a proper hanging system installed for future shows.  We hope to have all work completed by February and start right up with some really exciting exhibitions that are in the works!

Going Postal! The exhibition

On November  14th 2103 We had our first ever exhibition at the Point Gallery!  I know i'm posting this way too late but i've been busy, and the internet hasn't worked and a whole bunch of other excuses!  Well, better late than never right?  The exhibition was a blast, with amazing artwork sent in and exhibited by over one hundred students and teachers in our community.  See the previous "Point Gallery" post for details about submission requirements.  Suffice it to say that all artwork submitted were either decorated envelopes or postcards and all were sent through our wonderful postal service.  Below is just a sample of the artwork.  Stay posted for photos from the opening!

Psychological Portraits by Art Careers 12

The first project completed by my Art Careers 12 class this year.  The project s intended for inclusion in their portfolios and is meant to engage their understanding of observational drawing and material use while introducing an element of conceptual intent.  The students were asked to produce an image with emotional or psychological impact through the use of symbolism.  They knocked this one out of the park.  I'm very excited about the variety of solutions that the students found for the challenge.

The assignment sheet that I gave them is below.

Catherine Wang

Kevin McAllum

Cosette Bote

'Beauty' by Nancy Tseng

   Our basic figure and form, our body movements, our animals, our plants, everything on our planet is a form of beauty, yet at the same time everything is judged that way. Is there a real definition, a picture, a criterion, for beauty? We are so absorbed by what society defines as “pretty” that things unable to meet these standards are shamed into being “ugly.” The abstract forms in these pieces capture the fake perceptions of beauty media feeds us. Though when we break from these conceptions, beauty is in fact, limitless. 

Unsettling by Aly Slobadov

The theme of my exhibition is inspired by my growing interest in the horror genre within the last year. I also wanted to experiment with different mediums for each piece. My first drawing was of a character called Alex DeLarge in the film “A Clockwork Orange”, which I found in my old sketchbook from grade 10. Since the movie is quite dark and somewhat disturbing, I thought it’d fit well in the exhibition and decided to work on it to make it feel more complete. I experimented with charcoal, which I didn’t have much previous experience with. The second piece was a sketch from the summer, which I added oil pastels to, which I don’t often use. The next piece was a reproduction of a comic from the ‘50s, which was later made into one of my favorite childhood cartoons. In my last piece, I wanted to incorporate two of my polaroids that didn’t develop, and i thought they fit well since the darkness of the photo is quite unsettling.