Insight

On Friday, December 5, parents and the public are warmly invited to join us for our Showcase performance Concert for a Winter’s Eve at the T.Gil Bunch Centre for Performing Arts in support of the local food bank. It is a wonderful way to begin your Christmas celebrations. Book online at http://theatre.brentwood.bc.ca or call the box office at 250-743-8756. Tickets are $10. With proceeds going to the food bank. Curtain is 7:30pm. Brentwood Visual Arts, faculty and students also wish to welcome you to celebrate a sampling of recent works of art by talented Brentwood artists.  If you visit campus please come to view the new art installations in the Centre for Arts and Humanities that comprise the show Insight. You will be as astonished, as visiting American parents and students were during the opening gala event on Thursday, Nov. 27th by the talent, breadth and scope of our visual artists.  After the American Thanksgiving Dinner, students were invited to attend the opening in house groupings. They arrived in theatre dress and sipped sparkling apple cider as they viewed the show.  Student artists/docents proudly featured their works for their friends. There were many conversations about the art. It was inspiring to see the interaction between artist and audience.   INSIGHT Insight is an exhibition of new work from the students in 2D Foundation, Drawing and Painting, Ceramics, Photography and 3D Foundation and Sculpture.  As the first official Gallery Opening of the 2014-15 academic year this is cause for celebration. After months of effort, students and instructors alike can view the fruits of their labours as finished, framed accomplishments, and the rest of the Brentwood community can gain a richer understanding of what goes on in Brentwood’s studios every other afternoon. This term every potter in the Ceramics program gained insight into, in the words of instructor Peggy Elmes, “ what every potter through history has done: helped society move forward”. They did this by creating bowls that were sold at the Youth Empowerment Society charity fundraiser the "Souperbowls of Hope" This charity helps to fund the many programs that help street youth in Victoria. Hot meals, a place for counseling and employment skill resources, detox, shelter and a place to feel safe is all provided by the Youth Empowerment Society. Here are some examples of the 97 bowls that Brentwood students built, fired, decorated and donated. The student photography on view downstairs is the work of Paul Fletcher’s senior students, all of whom are in their second or third year of study in this demanding discipline. The work reflects the development of their personal approaches to tools, techniques and subject matter, offering insights via the viewfinder onto life on –and beyond- campus. This carefully curated selection also serves as a preview for the annual photography show that the students will host this spring in Downtown Duncan, an exciting offsite exhibition that is not to be missed. On the plinths that line the gallery walls is the work of David Hunwick’s sculpture students. Grade 9’s have been experimenting with line, shape, texture and form using cardboard, clay, wire and found objects. Their sometimes quirky, often lyrical creations represent an experimental, experiential approach, developing insight into the world of materials, and, through materials, the world. More experienced sculpture students worked this semester to sculpt using an oil based clay, and then were introduced to one piece mold making and casting techniques, using their sculpted pieces as the basis for resin casts in a variety of evocative colours and consistencies. These processes culminated in the group piece Skull-lastic produced by the Advanced Sculpture class, an installation piece that greets (or confronts) viewers at the foot of the arts centre stairwell. Students in 2D Foundations have been exploring concepts of portraiture and identity. Mr. Hunwick’s students produced portrait studies from photographic sources, while John Luna’s students have made labour intensive oil paintings from that most casual of sources: the cell-phone snapshot. Complementing these insights into persona, on the stairwell the 2D Art Rotation 9 class has produced graffiti-style works whose compositions are made entirely of words they chose to describe themselves. Scattered throughout the hall are selected works by the AP Studio Art class, each student pursuing an independent body of work, here offering the first glimpse of their developing series. Works in progress by these talented individuals may be also glimpsed in the ‘open studio’ atmosphere of the Audain Studio (room A258). Finally, Soleil Mannion’s Drawing and Painting classes have delivered a breathtaking array of sensitive, layered landscape paintings and pastel sketches. These works radiantly reflect the accumulative insight that is produced by students who have brought perspectives with them to Brentwood from all over the world, and, judging from the mixture of jubilance, prospect and endeavor in their vistas, are looking both to one another and to spaces and places beyond these walls for inspiration. The Visual Arts Department would like to thank the hardworking Brentwood staff for their assistance in mounting this exhibition, as well as their tireless efforts in giving students, teachers and visitors alike a beautiful setting in which to both make and view art.