While art students from Howe Sound Secondary always hold an end-of-the-year show, this year, the location was a bit different.
Teacher Nathalie Boisvert decided to bring the show by school bus to the farmer’s market downtown on Saturday for “Art on the Bus.”
“We’ve had end-of-the-year art shows at the school,” she said. “I wanted to take the show on the road…. It’s usually in the school. Nobody else sees it.”
For Art on the Bus, the students displayed the work both on the side of the school bus and inside, where several framed pieces hung, along with photographs of the students working on their projects during the year.
The students, taking turns staffing the bus, wore art show aprons with the bus logo, which were designed by Grade 12 student Leighlon Tower.
“I also make a lot of my own T-shirts,” said Tower, the winner of the school’s “top banana” award for top fine arts student.
He also draws comics and creates other art. He says he likes all aspects of art and wants to go into the field but has not decided where to focus his talents.
“I still don’t really know what I should get into,” he said.
The show featured the work of 55 students in different media. Much of it was based around themes from class assignments, such as fantasy creatures, stylized nature, vintage technology such as old telephones and turntables, Lego, creative masks and feather-fur-fish. The students also had to work on a foreshortened image, in which an object or view appears closer or at less depth than in reality, and had to break the image into three parts using three different media.
As the art class is offered in two semesters, Boisvert included work from both the fall and spring, although she added that a little more came from the current crop of students.
Through the day, passersby were impressed by the students’ art as well as to the idea of bringing the show out of the school and to the public.
Pat Robinson, who teaches intuitive art at the Brackendale Art Gallery and oversees the annual Howe Sound Women’s Centre art show each March, had not heard about the show but stumbled across it while at the farmers’ market. She was enthusiastic about Art on the Bus.
“What a great idea,” she told Boisvert. “I love it.”
While the reception was positive, Boisvert said the event also gave her a few ideas for next year, such as bringing an awning and some magnets to help display the artwork on the side of the bus, especially for those times when the wind is blowing.
“The big challenge is keeping the art on the bus,” she said.
