Alex Perry
Time Heals all Wounds
My world around me and events in my life help influence my work. The theme ‘This Land’ made me think about how the earth’s resources are often taken and never replenished, and how humanity has obsessed over consumption to the point where they do not care about the land, or the animals and people that call this land home. I had the idea that if humanity became extinct, the land would slowly take over again and start to heal. I want viewers to think about nature and how humans impact it. I think if more people understand how some things that we do are harmful to nature, more people will be open to learning how to change. Most people will be more open to help the environment if they know how to.
Amelia Lloyd
The World Becoming
When I heard the theme ‘This Land’, I knew right away that I wanted to choose a photo that I took of my horse and barn, because it feels like my land. In my artwork, I love to incorporate “Merlot“ my horse, because we have such an important connection. I want to visually communicate the beauty and feeling of freedom that I have when I’m with my horse at the barn. My initial intention was to show appreciation of the environment. Then, I began thinking about how humans are treating this land. I’m imagining that in very little time, our land could become dead and dull due to the destructive acts of people. I decided to split my photo in half: one light and colourful side, to show the appreciation of our land, and one dark gloomy side to show the abuse of our land. I used paint to intensify and brighten colours, and collage to highlight certain words that describe how I feel about my land.
Brandy Henderson
A Happier Place
When I consider ‘This Land’ I think of how this land is mistreated and dark in some ways. I wanted to express happiness and brightness in my piece. At first, my piece was a bit darker and so I wanted to make it feel like once you look at my art you feel a sense of happiness, joy, and calmness, rather than what we feel while we look at the land today. As much as we’d like this land to feel like a safe and happy environment, I don’t believe it will be that way every day. I took this photo from a concert, where I felt happiest because I find that music helps me with many things. Even as I write this statement I am listening to music. The land presented in this image makes sense to me, it makes me feel at peace.
Bronte Mayot
Sanctuary
As an artist, I wish to create works that inspire varying interpretations. The uniqueness of our minds is so underappreciated, and in our society, there is a general pressure to conform which restricts our creativity. This being said, my piece ‘Sanctuary’ can resonate differently from person to person. ‘This Land’ made me think of the human body as a vessel to our own personal sanctuary, and how we often take the privilege of having a functioning, healthy body for granted. In creating ‘Sanctuary’, I took inspiration from human anatomy and the study of anthropology. As well, this theme sparked ideas of hopelessness, which led me to think of a featherless bird. Overall, I attempted to display a connection between humans and creatures of our planet, conveying that harm to our environment is harm to all. I hope to inspire viewers to interpret ‘Sanctuary’ and analyze how they treat This Land. Ultimately, continuing down this path of destruction and ignorance will result in our downfall.
Chloe Atkinson
A Walk With Nature
Through my work, I wanted to explore how people connect with natural environments. Nature always seems to work slowly and purposefully, which juxtaposes how humans always seem to be rushing. My biggest challenge was figuring out how to showcase the idea that even though humans and nature seem so different, they can still connect profoundly. I photographed someone walking through a natural landscape to explore this idea. Then, I used embroidery to draw attention to the figure, as well as how they relate to nature. The orange lines branch off to different natural elements within the composition, showing the figure and nature uniting. I also worked with a black and white photograph, so I could use colour to emphasize different natural elements. This enhances the connection between humans and nature, by tying the figure and the natural environment together.
Denise Derilon
23 Stops From Home
I approach my creative work with an open mind and listen to classical music as the source of my motivation. ‘23 Stops From Home’ was not thought out or planned in any way. I found inspiration in many media and materials as I developed this work. For me, creating art has helped me discover who I am. Growing up, I learned so much more with art always being in my school schedule. It provided me with a journey of creative discovery, a process of my creation not going the way I planned. The word ‘art’ itself encourages me to value unpredictability and originality as well as to continually seek out fresh perspectives. I sometimes tend to break the mold and come up with a solution to problems. It inspires me to accept and embrace the fault in my creations, thereby actually unwinding the answer I was seeking. Art helps me find my true self.
Em Servos
Fallout
In my piece, I wanted to display the future of our world if humankind continues to destroy it. I created the “pollution effect”, the factory and the volcano using acrylic paint on the photograph. The collage symbolizes the destruction of the earth coming through the light parts of the composition. It shows the damage that we’re creating as we continue to do things that adversely affect the earth. We need to change something before time runs out. This is hinted at with the wording I cut out from magazines and placed throughout the piece. I wanted to make my final piece about this because if we continue, we’ll take all the beauty.
Hannah McClung
Under the Covers
This Land led my imagination to the land of the dead. It was named after the location I took it at, under a bridge, and after the childhood instinct to hide under the covers. For me personally, death has always been a touchy subject. It has been a journey just to be able to talk about death, let alone create a piece of art based around it. In my art I like to push myself, whether it’s with meaning or medium. I wanted to create a work with all my creative abilities to explore the importance and balance of death. I incorporated the street and structural ideas in this work to suggest a bridge and moving forward. Monsters represent souls and the fire represents mortality and beauty. In this monster parade, I show that although it can be scary, death is the part of the world that makes us alive. Even when we’re gone, things still move and breathe around us and we march on in the flow of life.
Loki Eh
“I Never Escaped”
What manifested as inspiration for this piece was a memory from 2014. I had just gotten out of a house fire and for a while, my family and I went homeless. Thankfully, after a few months we were able to move to a new house. Using acrylics, I painted a little girl, white dove's feathers for hair, innocently exploring the new place. She's holding a cow plushie to give her comfort and adorns an olive branch. I really wanted to make the girl represent a dove. Behind this girl lurks a monster, hidden and dark; an allegory of her past. It silently watches on as the little girl explores, hoping to leave her tragic past behind. She must notice the monster in order to escape it, but since she has yet to, she has not escaped. In short, no matter where you go, you'll always be in the territory of what haunts you, unnoticed or not.
Maegan Mantysaari
Playground
The theme This Land made me think of ‘view’. When you look at the neighbourhood around you, at a playground or a street, what do you see? Is it a boring black-and-white picture, or a bright and colourful scene full of possibilities? This land is all about how you view your world and that is what I explored in my work. By using various mediums, I created a scene that shows how a bland and boring view can be imagined full of colour and magic. If you choose to view it with imagination, this land can be your playground.
McKenna Currie
A Grey World
The driving force behind the creation of my artwork is the connection between the rapid spread of infrastructure and how it impacts climate change. The building of more highways disrupts the natural state of fertile land and increases the amount of light pollution emitted by cars. The world is building for population growth, but by doing so, land that could be used for growing food is being destroyed. This is counterintuitive and imbalanced. While using non-conventional art mediums, I created imagery and textures to illustrate the destructive consequence of light pollution. Light pollution dulls the stars in the night sky and reduces humans’ ability to observe them. I incorporated concrete because of its grey gritty texture, representing humans’ attempts to control nature. Concrete is one of the most widely used substances on earth and is incredibly catastrophic to ‘This Land’. This land is becoming duller by the second.
