Arts Alive and Well and the imagination is the only limit as the exhibit features 400 works from students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 from all of The Lethbridge area school districts. The other exhibit, This is Water, features some new and innovative work form University of Lethbridge MFA and BFA students.
So if you are at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery for the Electric Eye Music Festival, Saturday, May 9, don’t forget to check out their new exhibits, which run April 26-June 7.
The 38th annual event feature a variety of works ranging in styles from realism to more surreal works and sculpture.
Subject matter ranged from the fun to the political.
“We‘re always impressed by the high quality works that are submitted, said SAAG communications co-ordinator Nicole Hembroff.
While some works are by individual artists, others are collaborations between classes or duos.
The St Francis Grade 9 class submitted a sculpture called In the Marsh they made out of chicken wire and fabric.
Some students took a political route with their works exploring issues like female body image, aboriginal suicides and healthy eating.
“We have everything from 3-D printing to T-shirts,” Hembroff said adding other students actually created hand crafted books featuring calligraphy, drawings and found items like feathers.
From the Water features U of L artists William Austin, Katie Bruce, Roy Caussy, Makaila Cline, Dylan Dobbie, Shona Fitz-Gerald Laing, Sam Loewen, Megan Morman, Elena Petzold and Potluck City in the upstairs gallery and in a room on the ground floor.
Potluck City is a collective who explored kitchens and discarded food a display of felt stuffed food item scattered over the floor of the lower gallery and an overturned table.
A lot of the exhibits in the upstairs gallery are interactive exhibits.
On artist , Dylan Dobbie has a multi-media work exploring 375 possible pronunciations and spellings of the name Keaton.
Artist Megan Mormon explored her own journey as a MFA student by creating a maze illustrating the challenges of reaching her goal and all of the steps that must be taken to achieve it. There are copies of the maze you can take home with you to complete if you wish.
The 22 works were curated by Morgan Bath and Christina Cuthbertson.
“The University of Lethbridge didn’t do their annual juried student art show, so this exhibit gives them the experience of being curated,” Hembroff said.
Both exhibits run until June 7 and will coincide with the Annual SOAR emerging Artists Festival.
The SAAG features all ages Electric Eye music Festival activities all day long, Saturday, May 9 beginning at noon with a mini-film festival.
An all ages gig follows at 2:3 p.m. featuring Birch Barks and an Ant and An Atom.
Music begins again at 6:30 p.m. with Fever Few, the Postnamers and Married Men.
