Ceramic stacking bowls, paper cutouts and comic drawings are among the Port Coquitlam high school artwork on show as part of the second edition of Imaginings.
The annual exhibit in The Outlet and the Gathering Place, in Leigh Square Community Arts Village, continues the inaugural theme but offers two new twists for this year’s exhibit: the inclusion of pieces from CABE — Coquitlam Alternative Basic Education — and the addition of two scholarships from the Port Coquitlam Community Foundation.
Co-organizer Jacquelyn Collins said the philanthropic group awarded the accolades to Maia Karwowska of Riverside and Emma McKay of Terry Fox — both of whom have been accepted to attend the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, in September.
The scholarships will be used for their tuition, said Collins, an art teacher at Riverside.
Opened last Thursday, Imaginings II displays the work of about 200 art students at CABE, Fox and Riverside, including April Kornitsky and Shawn Wang from the latter school.
Kornitsky, who will study fine art at SFU, has two acrylic paintings in the exhibit: Detrimental Growth and Reaching Abyss, which were in the Emerging Talent showcase of Grade 12 art at the Evergreen Cultural Centre, in January.
When Kornitsky looks around the Michael Wright Art Gallery, where her pieces are hung, to see what’s been produced in PoCo classrooms over the past year, she shakes her head. “I never want this to stop. I always want to come into a gallery and see our art in this way. It’s an amazing experience…. and it’s a great opportunity for our careers.”
Grade 12 student Shawn Wang, an international student from Taiwan, also has two works up at the Gathering Place: Blossoming (watercolour) and Excalibur (drawing).
When he views what his peers have created, “It makes me want to try harder and be better,” Wang said. “In Taiwan, we don’t get a lot of time to do art because it’s all tests in business and math. For me, the only way to learn art is to keep practising. I feel like art is very reflective of the artist and emotions. It’s a form of beauty.”
Imaginings II: A Collection of Port Coquitlam Student Artwork runs until July 29.
