Spring has arrived, and students and faculty are enjoying being out of the dull greyness of constant cloud and rain. So the name of the year-end exhibit for first-year Camosun Visual Arts students, Out of the Grey, makes perfect sense, which Visual Arts instructor John Boehme acknowledges with a laugh. He says that Out of the Grey started 10 years ago to give students some hands-on experience.
“We’ve transformed the space, which is normally for work, into exhibition space,” says Boehme, adding that this gives students a chance to see “what it takes to hang a show, light a show, in an effort to give an applied outcome for students so that they can go out into the field.”
Visual Arts student Keened Penty says their kitchen was a disaster for weeks as they worked on a chair for their exhibit.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, I want to try and grow stuff. Let’s see what happens. One of my chairs has grown crystals,”’ says Penty.
How, you might ask? Penty covered the chair in sodium borate.
“That was a really fun project, to just kind of play around with the chemistry in my kitchen, but actually make a sculptural object out of it. It was a kitchen disaster, with Canadian Tire buckets everywhere,” says Penty.
Visual Arts student Kirby McLean has four pieces in the show, one of which is a print.
“The other three are sculptural pieces. The biggest challenge for me so far has been drawing and painting,” says McLean. “I think I’m more sculpture based, but I’ve learned a lot in this program. It’s been really great hands-on learning.”
Visual Arts student Carle Thompson says she didn’t get ample opportunity to experiment with art in high school other than drawing and painting, so it was an accomplishment to create sculptures and present them for others to see.
“It’s something I had never done before,” she says. “[It] was a good opportunity.”
Visual Arts student Josie Taylor came from Armstrong, BC, where she worked mostly in the area of 2D and also didn’t have the opportunities she has now.
“We just kind of had one tiny art class, where there wasn’t really lot of room to explore different mediums,” she says. “It’s really great to be in the program, having to do such a huge array of different mediums, just completely throw yourself in there.”
Out of the Grey
Saturday, April 6 until Monday, April 8
Opening session April 6pm-9pm
Young 111 and 117, Lansdowne campus, Camosun College
camosun.ca/learn/programs/visual-arts