Students at Thomas Haney secondary will be showing off their artistic talents in an upcoming gala involving every arts department at the school.
Kennedy Pabuaya, Francesca Andreolli, both in Grade 12, and Taryn Antalek, Grade 11, have organized the event called the Thomas Haney Galleria of Fine Arts. It will feature painting, sculpting, drawing, photography, music, theatre and culinary arts.
The idea for the show came about as they were searching for a project concept for their marketing class.
In the process, they learned that fine arts department head Amy Messner had been looking for students to help her put on an art show for some time.
“Our art department is huge and thriving and we really wanted to showcase all the talent we have in this school,” said Francesca Andreolli.
In September, the girls started coming up with a plan, but soon realized that their concept was much bigger than what their budget and space allowed for.
“We wanted to have live theatre, live music and we realized we could not have all that at the same time because that would not work,” explained Andreolli.
“Our original plan was so grandiose, we couldn’t afford it,” she added.
So the girls got creative by talking with teachers to come up with another idea.
“We had to decide how we wanted it to look, who we wanted to have there, what was the audience we wanted,” said Kennedy Pabuaya.
The show will feature 60 visual artists, plus 10 photography artists, two students from the music program who will be playing the piano in the rotunda, and student volunteers from the theatre program who will be act as guides dressed in period costumes.
Students in the culinary arts program will be catering the event. There will also be a movie room playing a variety of short films that students have been working on.
One of the biggest challenges for the organizing team was how to display the art pieces without enough easels. They were able to get use of a folding art board and are planning to hang the pieces down the hallway of the fine art wing, using removable hooks.
Grade 12 arts student Leah Del Pino will have two paintings on display. One will be a gouache, a mix between acrylic and water colour, inspired by surrealist paintings, although, she says, it is not a complete surrealism. It depicts a little girl hovering over a box containing a finger puppet of herself slumped over a table.
“It’s a little odd, lots of bright colours, working on the subject of innocence and kind of going blindly into your future,” said Del Pino, adding that it’s a reflective, personal piece.
Her other piece that will be in the show is a charcoal portrait of celebrity Adam Driver.
Elijah Strand will be highlighting his digital art. The Grade 10 student will have album art on display that he has created for his own electronic music. He will also be displaying a Tron movie poster he worked on in the first term.
“My most recent one I am going to have depicts a cherry tree in front of a red sun which is mostly inspired by old Japanese black and red and white paintings done in the style of minimalist artists,” said Strand.
Henry Chan and Savannah Hutton are both Grade 11 photography students who will have black and white images on display. Chan will have 15 dry-mounted eight-by-10-inch portraits of his friends laughing, while Hutton will have six images representing the light at the end of the tunnel. One of them is a light bulb hanging from a string off of a tree.
Ava Buckley, Grade 11, works mostly with pencil crayons. She will have three celebrity portraits on display, all 18-by-24 inches. One depicts Jim and Pam from the American sitcom The Office that aired on television from 2005 to 2013. She will also have a portrait of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia from the Star Wars films, and Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. She will also have one acrylic painting of a cow.
Andreolli thinks that the show is not so much about getting the artists names out in the public, but showing the rest of the school and the community the talent that is being produced.
“Especially to show the community what these kids are doing inside our school. These kids are going to be graduating and moving on to other things. But they started here and they are doing amazing stuff inside the school,” said Taryn Antalek.
• The show takes place April 13 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Thomas Haney secondary, 23000 – 116 Ave. in Maple Ridge.
Admission is by donation, with all money raised going back into the art department for future shows.
