One of the region’s most vibrant annual exhibitions provides visions of Sunshine Coast youth through the work of more than 100 emerging artists. The Shout Out! showcase of children’s and teens’ art opened at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery last week. Dozens of contributors and their admirers attended an opening reception on March 15.
Carol Carr-Andersson, the gallery’s vice-president, highlighted the addition this year of “creation stations” to foster impromptu creativity by visitors. “They provide all you need to do fun crafts,” she said. “The kids are already doing collage, painting, origami, rock-painting, as well as drawing, and some adults as well.”
The exhibition itself includes a dizzying array of mediums, encompassing traditional two-dimensional painting, textiles, and assemblage. In The Disaster, by six-year-old Benny Binh McLaren, vegetables and breakfast grains are affixed in a custom frame constructed from plastic building bricks. Eva Grant, 7, used acrylic paint and plastic playthings to create Self Portrait, which simultaneously presents Picasso-like physiognomy and a meditation on the ephemera of childhood (“We found these toys at the bottom of our toy box,” Grant wrote).
The Eve Smart Gallery is wholly dedicated to sculpture: a group of students from the Wildwood Learning independent school used polymer clay to depict a network of gaudy sea stars embracing a real-life rock. “Right now, some sea stars are getting sick because of wasting disease, and we want them to stay healthy,” they said in an accompanying statement to the piece, titled Hang In There.
Jonathon Haugen, a homeschooled seven-year-old acrylic painter, fashioned an impressionist perspective on a storied spacecraft in The Speeding Falcon. “I like drawing,” he said, “Most of the time I just use markers.” And his secret for creating the elongated streaks of celestial bodies seen at hyperspeed? “It’s hard to explain,” he shrugged.
Isla Grant, a nine-year-old from Gibsons Elementary School, used watercolours for a study of Canadian patriotism (and rainbows) in Opposite Canadian Flags. A complementary piece, Thing, combines three-dimensional objects into a portrait, wreathed by plastic and metal ornaments, that confronts the viewer like a martyr in an illuminated manuscript. “I got the idea for making a self-portrait of stuff,” she said, “but when I looked at it without the background stuff, it looked pretty boring. So I put background stuff on it.” Grant is in her third year of Shout Out! participation, one of many returning exhibitors. “I feel happy that people actually appreciate my work,” she noted.
In eight-year-old Farley’s acrylic painting Ex’s and O’s, a spontaneous game with his father became the impetus for a richly-textured geometric study. “I went to a restaurant with my family and we played X’s and O’s there,” the SPIDER Elementary student recalled. “After my dad won, I realized it could be artwork.”
Goldie Miller, an 11-year-old textile artist studying at Wildwood, crocheted two frogs (titled Fred and Ed: A Story of Love and Friendship) using chenille yarn. “I really like frogs and I really like crocheting,” she said. “I learned about crocheting from an online class and my friend Olivia.” Miller’s crochet repertoire is expanding — she has previously produced octopuses, pickles, scrunchies, and hand-warmers. Miller’s classmate, Marcelle Encinas, contributed two equine portraits inspired by her love for horseback riding. “I ride at Tsuga Creek by Shady Hazel Farm,” she said. Miller has also exhibited extensively at local markets. “I just really like horses, so I started learning how to draw them and I started painting them,” she added.
Animals and landscapes dominate the exhibition’s themes. An evocative chalk and pencil work by Bea Catucci (8), The Mexican Donkey, shows the demure beast covered in a fringe blanket, backed by towering mesoamerican architecture. Florence Chilibeck (8) used watercolours for her depiction of Sunset at Secret Beach (four silhouetted figures cast long shadows across the driftwood-scattered shoreline); Fern Chancellor (13) eschewed Coast locales for imagined geography (her intricately-mapped Luna Island).
Popular culture wields predictable influence (as in 16-year-old Aloha’s arresting Call Me By Your Name, in which Elio Perlman affects a plaintive glance under a gilt picture frame), balanced by unexpected reflections on mortality, like the mixed-media An Old Face of a Human by Nara Yi (11): a grinning skull, impeccably shaded, backed by starburst beams.
“I learn from both seeing stuff and observing the world around me,” said Phat Cat, a 10-year-old sculptor who has been crafting since the age of two. His steampunk creations (Steam Locomotum, a gear-operated stovepipe hat with twin chimneys, and the propeller-haloed urn of Airship Core) stem from experimentation in the Minecraft game engine. “I create stuff like this every single night. And this is what I made last night,” Cat added, gesturing to the flowing robe, staff and alt-Victorian headgear he wore for the reception.
The Shout Out! exhibition at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery continues until March 30.
