Students in the 2020-21 Creative Arts HMHS Focus Program.Photo by Creative Arts HMHS Focus Program
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KINGSTON — While the artwork in the 2020-21 Visual Paradise final show is the culmination of the work of 25 students in the Creative Arts Focus Program as is usually the case, the format in which it’s being showcased is different.
In previous non-COVID years, the focus program would normally hold an in-person, gallery-style show for the public to see the students’ artwork. But that is not able to happen this year, and the artwork is being displayed entirely online.
Mushrooms, a layered papercut by Mara Klug.Photo by Creative Arts HMHS Focus Program
“2020-21 was a year we will never forget,” Lauren McEwen, the Creative Arts SHSM (Specialist High Skills Major) Focus Program teacher, said in the opening letter for the showcase. “A significant lesson that we have learned throughout this challenging and unprecedented time is how important and valuable the arts truly are towards our wellness, positivity, appreciation and hope. Art-making allows us to process our experiences and to express and understand the world around us, serving as an aid for healing and recovering. It is in times of crisis when we need humanity, expression and the sense of community that the arts create more than ever.”
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A number of students were interested in the art of fashion, so McEwen was able to invite Carly Beamish, a costume designer who is currently out of work due to COVID, to come for a week and work with the students, providing hands-on instruction to create their own wearable art.
“We were able to get her tested, bring her to Kingston (from Toronto) and work with those students on designing and building and constructing garments,” McEwen said. “That was an awesome experience for those students. She actually taught over half the class, anyone who was interested, how to make masks.”
One of those students was Morgan Greastrom, who created sunglasses, a mixed-medium jacket and a number of purses and bags, along with their watercolours, sketches and digital drawings.
Heart Jacket by Morgan Greastrom.Photo by Creative Arts HMHS Focus Program
“I love the work I do and want to continue to learn even more through education and a career focused on solving issues within our society and the fashion industry. I am especially focused on creating solutions to issues related to LGBTQ+ people, socio-economic class, mental health/illness, sustainability, education and the intersectionality of these issues and many more,” Greastrom said on her artist profile webpage.
Due to the octomester schedule of the school year, students participated, both in-person and virtually, in the program from October to January.
“With running the program through COVID, it did present many challenges,” McEwen explained. “We weren’t able to do some of the things that the program normally thrives in, like trips to galleries and to Toronto and portfolio day and different things like that. In lieu of those opportunities, we really tried to keep things in-house and do as many things as we can in the room. That provided more time for the students to be in the class really refining their skills and exploring the things that they really wanted to explore.”
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Another silver lining to this year was to create the virtual showcase. The students were able to design their own display digitally, from how they would represent themselves as an artist to the information on their artist’s page and how their art was displayed.
“What you’re looking at in the Visual Paradise final show is the students come up with the final proposals for the works they’re going to complete during the semester, based on the portfolio requirements for post-secondary applications,” McEwen said. “So if a student is applying to a digital illustration or animation, they have to research the requirements for their applications and create a proposal of the works they’ll complete throughout the semester. It allows the students to advocate for themselves and works on their own confidence and self-efficacy.”
The artwork showcased by the students covers a wide range of mediums, from traditional sketches, painting, sculpture and mixed-medium to digital images, animation and fashion.
Woman I, a coloured pencil drawing by Kaitlyn Fleming.Photo by Creative Arts HMHS Focus Program
“There was a lot of digital drawing and animation,” McEwan said. “That was something that I was very surprised about, is how many students in the class were drawn to digital drawing.”
The Creative Arts SHSM Focus Program, which was founded by now-retired teacher Karen Peperkorn in 1990. It is a specialized arts program that allows students to spend a semester focusing on their artistic portfolio development.
“With this portfolio-building program, that’s when the students really get to explore those categories/options for post-secondary career paths,” McEwen said. “I think the students were really surprised of the freedom that they were granted with their creative expression. My beliefs, as an instructor, is that students will approach me with their ideas of the projects that they want to complete and it’s my job to help them complete them, but I’m not going to drive their bus for them, they’re going to drive their own bus.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
