Art Enrichment Day

In February, I was asked by School District 2 in Moncton, New Brunswick, to spend a day with 6 advanced high school visual arts students, as part of an art enrichment experience. We started at 8:00am, bright and early on a cold winter day, at the Capitol Gallery in downtown Moncton where I had a Solo Exhibition. I gave an hour long artist talk about my paintings that were currently on display. First, I spoke about my experience as an artist-in-residence this past summer. I lived in Ciudad Colon at The Julia and David White Artist Colony which is situated in the rainforest approximately an hour outside of San Jose, Costa Rica's capitol city. It was here that I had my apartment and a studio. I then spoke about my background as a student: my experience at Moncton High School, Animation at NBCC, Miramichi, New Brunswick, Alberta College of Art and Design, and the completion of my BFA at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We discussed the business side of art including applying for grants, promotion of art, and the logistics surrounding art shows. We walked through the exhibition where I had 18 paintings. I spoke about each painting - the concept behind and techniques used to create each of them. The students were very receptive and had some really great questions.

We then proceeded to visit some of the galleries in downtown Moncton to explore some local art exhibitions. We went to Assumption Gallery, City Hall Gallery, Blue Cross Library Gallery, Terre Verde and, to finish off, we checked out Delta Beausejour’s gallery which was a space I hadn't even seen before. It was a nice surprise! Interestingly enough, most of the exhibits were abstract, which I thought was perfect.

After our gallery tour downtown, we headed to Aberdeen Cultural Centre where we had lunch at Cafe Aberdeen. After lunch, we met up with Amanda Dawn Christie, who is the Director of Galerie Sans Nom. We toured Amanda’s gallery as well as all three stories of the building. We ended this tour on Aberdeen’s third floor. For the rest of the day, I taught the students in my studio; we worked with the concept of “negative space” with an abstract twist. I turned my studio into a classroom for the day. The students were very enthusiastic and it was great to experience some new energy in the room. I set up my plants as the focal point od the assignment. The plants provided the positive image from which the students created their negative space. We put a twist on a typical black and white, negative space lesson. The idea was to work with abstracted color filling the negative space. As you can see below, the pieces came together in an amazing way. I found the day very exciting; the students, chaperons, and I had a great time. I would like to say thanks to the chaperones - Terra Mouland, art teacher at Queen Elizabeth School and David Brooks, art teacher at Bernice McNaughton High School.