SSES student Lara Zorgdrager honoured her late grandfather with her piece for the Grade 12 art class exhibit. Cory Smith/The Beacon Herald
COVID-19 wasn’t going to stop Michele Carter’s Grade 12 art students from showing off their work before the end of a unique but challenging school year.
As part of the Stratford Secondary and Elementary Schools’ course, a theme is picked at the beginning of the semester, and students create a variety of pieces before choosing one to display at Gallery Stratford. Now in its fourth year, the collaboration — an exhibit named apART — was forced to move due to the pandemic closing Gallery Stratford’s Romeo Street building.
Gallery curator Angela Brayham found a new space downtown in which pieces could be viewed from outside, while visitors could also browse inside while social distancing twice a week through June.
“It was always a goal to have a gallery show, and of course covid switched that up on us,” Carter said.
Brayham, who would have worked with Carter’s art students in the classroom, found space in Festival Square on Downie Street. The temporary gallery can be seen from Erie Street.
“It was really important to me to give the students the opportunity to show their work, especially since with Grade 12s, more than anyone else, so much that marks finishing high school was taken away from them,” Brayham said. “The art students work hard for this, so I thought it’s one way we can give them something to celebrate and recognizing something they’ve done.”
Twenty-six pieces of all shapes, sizes and styles adorn many of the gallery’s walls.
SSES Grade 12 art students created 26 pieces of all shapes, sizes and styles for their exhibit, apART, which is currently downtown. Cory Smith/The Beacon Herald
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Lara Zorgdrager honoured her late grandfather who immigrated to Canada from Holland in the 1950s. Her piece — “Thought you might like to have this” — aims to change the topic of immigration into a more personal narrative. Zorgdrager sketched her grandfather’s face onto the pages of a book given to him that Zorgdrager found while looking for a photo.
“He was just so excited and so proud of where he was from, but he was also proud of where he ended up,” she said. “I really wish … he could have seen it when he was alive.”
Though she wants to become a lawyer, Zorgdrager said art will always be a passion and something she uses to better understand reality. Having her work in a gallery for the first time fulfilled a dream.
“It doesn’t really feel real,” she said. “It hasn’t sunk in yet. It looks so much different on the wall than my kitchen table.”
Leeah Schoonderwoerd created an abstract piece using Photoshop and a pencil.
“It was easier to do than painting,” she said.
Creating an image using tools she already had made it easier for Schoonderwoerd after classes were postponed in March and never resumed.
“One of my favourite parts of art was going into class and seeing how different everybody’s pieces were,” she said. “It’s cool to see all the diversity of the different pieces.”
Most of the pieces were finished at home, and Carter kept track of her students’ progress during the weeks away. She also made the most of the limited time she had to get back into the school to get supplies students needed to complete their work.
“They wowed me with the ability to continue creatively with getting things done,” she said.
The exhibit never closes from the outside, but anyone can visit for a closer look Fridays from 3-7 p.m. and Saturdays from 12-4 p.m. over the next few weeks.
“In some ways it’s kind of nice because more people have access to this than they would a normal gallery,” Brayham said. “It’s not what we originally intended, but it still feels like a gallery, and it is a gallery, and it’s giving something for the community to be excited about right now.”
For more information, visit https://sites.google.com/ed.amdsb.ca/apart/home
cosmith@postmedia.com
