Local youth have been busy crafting various works of art to display in the upcoming Youth Art Show to be held at the Cowichan Lake Community Services building on Sept. 27 and 28.
Community Services counsellors, Darlene Tully and Amanda Sawatzky put out the call for youth art work at the beginning of the summer, and are now in the final stages of preparing the upstairs gallery space, putting paintings, drawings, and photography in frames, and generally preparing for what will be an exciting two days for young artists in the area.
Opening night is Thursday, Sept. 27, from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and in true art gallery opening night form there will be snacks and beverages provided.
“We’ve got about 12 artists at this point,” said Tully. “There might still be something coming from A.B. Greenwell [School]. We’ve got some students who were still going to submit some things.”
Tully says that if the show happens again next year, she might consider having it sometime in October because then the centre might be able to engage local schools with helping students to prepare works they would like to submit.
“I’ve been a little bit loose with my deadline because, you know, just realizing that even though I had started pushing this back in June, no-one is really thinking about September in June.”
Tully says that whenever she talked to kids about the show, the response was positive and enthusiastic, but getting the work done and submitted seemed to be a little tricky for some.
The ages of the youth who submitted works is wide in its range, but Tully says the biggest contributors were in the 10 and under category.
Artists submitted art in a wide range of mediums including pottery, photography, paintings, pen and ink, and collage.
“So it’s a nice range that way as well,” said Tully.
Tully has enough art work to fill the walls of two of the front upstairs rooms in the Community Services building, but she says that there will also be some hung in the hallways alongside other works that were created by youth as part of the Thursday night drop-in, F.U.S.E, and K.I.C.K programs the centre offers.
“So if they’ve come here and they’ve done art and they don’t mind leaving it here for us to hang, it’s just nice to have different things on the walls.”
She says the art show is also an open house where community members can come and see what the space has to offer and provide feedback and ideas for future use.
“So even if people aren’t necessarily interested in art, maybe they would be interested in just checking out the space that we have up here. We do hope to develop this. We do have hopes of doing something for youth up in this front room here. So whether it’s some kind of entrepreneurial thing, or whatever, we just want to get some feedback,” said Tully.
She is working on a brochure for the event, one which will be handed out to each visitor to the show. Included on the brochure will be a questionnaire where community members can provide feedback and thoughts.
This brochure will also list all of the contributing artists, as well as provide an order form for the 2013 calendar featuring art show art, set to be printed and available for purchase sometime in October.
Some works will be available for purchase at the show, with proceeds going directly to the artist and Community Services keeping 10 per cent to go towards youth programs. Tully says she hopes to be able to provide prints for those that do not want to purchase an original, or for those works that are not for sale. Proceeds from these prints will go towards funding Community Services youth oriented programs.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see the works of some very talented youth in the Cowichan Lake area. There is no cost to attend.
The Show:
Thursday, Sept. 27, 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.,
Friday, Sept. 28, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
