Strong showing in prestigious art competition

Two Olds High School (OHS) students were among 62 whose artwork was chosen to be in the prestigious 2016 ShowOff Alberta College of Art and Design High School Student Competition.

One Grade 12 student, Shayna Konashuk, did so well she received a prize covering half the school's tuition ($2,750). She and her sister Kara, in Grade 10, were among 62 students chosen to display their work out of about 500 who applied.

They attended the show and found out their fate on June 11.

Shayna says getting that prize was "pretty cool."

She describes her entry.

"Mine was an installation based off of black market organ harvesting from prisoners in China. It's pretty dark," she says.

Much of her piece is made of clay.

"I made organs out of terra cotta clay," Shayna says. "They were on white fabric and then I had black cages made by hand.

"They had a label that said they were from a criminal and what the criminal's age might be and a description, what the organ was and the price on it.

"They were each on plinths that I covered in black cloth and then I had a background made out of Chinese yuans (their currency). I covered these big five-foot pages with these yuans. I just printed them out.

"On the floor, we took the yuans and we tinted them – faded them to look darker, so there were more red ones at the back. They were crumpled on the floor and as you got closer to the front, they turned darker and darker to kind of represent the whole black market feel and how it's kind of going downhill."

Shayna was unable to hear any judges' comments on her work because the judging took place June 9, before she came down to see it in place. But she says several teachers came up to her and told her they loved it.

"There were two art teachers with (this one) class and they were surrounding my art project and they were talking about it, so I kind of walked up. I just kind of stood there, listening (laughs) to hear what they were saying," Shayna says.

"Then she turned around and she asked, 'are you the artist?' And I was, like, 'yeah.' She's like, 'oh.' And she's like, 'so are you appalled by what's going on? The situation?' I was like, 'oh yeah, like, it disgusts me.'

"She asked me if I'd done a lot of research (about it) and I have. Just on the Internet and stuff. There are a lot of websites on it so I'm not the only one who's super concerned about this topic.

"She said I did a really good job and she asked me if I was in an advanced placement program or anything, and I was like, 'no, I'm just in an art class.'

"She was pretty impressed by that and she – many people definitely thought I was going to win a scholarship," Shayna says.

In light of that award, Shayna is considering attending the Alberta College of Art and Design, but possibly not full-time. Her tentative plan at the moment is to take fine arts at the University of Calgary, with a minor in architecture.

"Maybe if I could take other extra classes through ACAD (Alberta College of Art and Design) I might do that. I might take summer classes possibly," she says.

Kara didn't win an award but she was pleased to be in the show.

"It was really cool to just get accepted and be in the whole atmosphere of everything," she says.

Kara chose a challenging medium to work in – drywall.

"You dampen it down with water to make it not as powdery. I took two pieces of drywall and I just glued them together with just regular white glue and then from there, I already drew in my sketchbook a design of a tree coming out of it," she says.

"I thought it would be cool if I carved that out, so I did. I just kind of drew my stencil on and carved it out. I painted all of it black and after I went over it with some gold paint and I did that around the heart and then the tree I made silver. So that was kind of cool to do.

"The meaning I put for it was that you have these roots that are connected to you. So the heart's like the foundation of who you are and then the tree is like you kind of branching out.

"No matter how you go about what you're doing, you're always going to be attached to something. Things develop."

"Of the pieces there, there were very few Grade 10s that got chosen, so that's quite a big honour in itself just to be chosen for that," OHS art, ceramics and cosmetology teacher Renu Mathew says.

She's proud of both girls and their accomplishments.

"It's an honour to be chosen for the show, so just even getting your piece chosen out of the 500 is a pretty big deal. And to have it at a gallery – kind of their first real show – is pretty great," Mathew says.

She notes students from across Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut entered the competition. That included some pretty prestigious schools in Edmonton and Calgary.

"So it's kind of a nice feeling that small-town regular art classes can compete against certain big (schools)," Mathew says.

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