By Christina Clemis
Strokes of bright colour upon canvas and unique sculptures of paper mâché are displayed in the Ottawa Art Gallery, while the art work’s young creators mix and mingle with the viewers.
Old works of art served as an inspiration for young artists who created their own pieces for their debute show.
The gallery’s Firestone Collection, consisting of 1,600 works by 100 Canadian artists, was made available to students at Canterbury High School.
The students selected a piece from the collection that inspired an idea for a new work and the result is displayed, next to its inspiration, at the gallery.
Mela Constantinidi, director of the Ottawa Art Gallery, and Jonathan Browns, curator of the Firestone Collection, provided guidance to the 16 students as they chose an inspiring piece from the collection, created their own art and planned their exhibition: Re-view 2000.
“I was amazed and inspired by the pieces these students produced,” Constantinidi says. “They came up with some fairly bold work this year.”
One such piece is Kim Watson’s Untitled.
Watson, 16, says the couple in the background of Arthur Lismer’s ink sketch Flower Study and Child Playing with Distant Figures (1960), a minor part of the piece, served as her inspiration.
“The more I looked at the sketch, the more I began to think about the weird relationship between art and viewer,” says Watson.
To express this relationship, her painting has a man voyeuristically looking through a window at a naked woman. The woman glances over her right shoulder at her male viewer.
The scene, done in acrylic paint and pieces of steel wool, is encased in a bay window made of Plexiglas.
“The woman in the room (in Untitled) is in a natural environment and yet she can’t feel sexual freedom because she is being watched (like the artwork) from all sides,” says Watson.
Another student, Jill Ditner, 17, took the subject for her work directly from Jacques De Tonnancour’s sketch Cécile (1930).
In De Tonnancour’s sketch, a young woman stands with her arms crossed, a small frown upon her face.
Ditner took that woman, her pose and her expression and painted her at two later stages in her life.
A middle-aged Cécile is painted upon the front panel of a Plexiglas case.
Directly behind, on the back wall, a senior Cécile is depicted. Small thumbnail photographs form a border around the senior Cécile, showing what looks like Ditner herself expressing various emotions.
“She is regretful about something in her life,” Ditner says, “perhaps aging. I think we all regret things in our lives. Regret is a major theme affecting everyone.”
Mike Gaines toured the exhibit during its opening.
He came in from Stittsville with his family to see the work of a friend’s daughter and was impressed with the quality.
“I am simply amazed by what these kids came up with,” Gaines said.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for their talent to be exposed and it is great for them to experience the positive reaction and the warm feeling that this opening seems to have.”
The show runs from March 4 to May 7 at the Ottawa Art Gallery at 2 Daly Ave.
Art critics and the general public can see the results of the young artists’ work every day from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Admission for this exhibit is free.