SUBMITTED PHOTO Tyrel Anderson, president of the Visual Arts Student Society, stands next to his artwork in the gallery.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
Medicine Hat College’s One on One Gallery is hosting a reception Friday to honour its most recent exhibit, “The Obscured,” which showcases the experimental artwork of second-year visual communication students.
Shayanne Summers, the social media representative for the Visual Art Student Society (VASS), says the exhibit was devised by four students in the visual communication program.
The purpose is “to encourage students and artists to really experiment and have fun with the works they’re creating,” she said.
“We’re actually very fortunate that we have a variety of mediums that were submitted. We have photography, type and design, painting, illustration and sculpture. It’s really cool that we have all these submissions, because it highlights all the opportunity that the program holds for the visual communication students.”
Summers’ responsibilities include printing out posters for the event to be put up around campus, as well as promoting it on VASS’s Facebook and Instagram.
VASS president Tyrel Anderson did a typographic piece for the exhibition, depicting elephants who have lost their tusks due to heavy poaching.
“I combined the typographic elements and played with colour theory to make a very hard-to-look-at image, and made it a six-foot-wide poster,” he said.
Anderson says the students were tasked with presenting a social issue they’re passionate about and that he’s always been interested in vulnerable animals from Africa.
“I figured it would be a good opportunity to get that out and share the word about it, because it’s a huge issue that’s not really talked about,” he said.
Kira Vlietstra, VASS’s vice-president, says she’s responsible for promoting the event outside the program, as well as to first- and third-year students within.
She submitted three of her paintings for the show, which she says combines work from class with art that was made in the students’ spare time. Hers are of the former variety.
“We had to appropriate some previous historical art paintings together, but obscure them and create our own composition,” said Vlietstra.
“I have this one woman in the main part of mine. I’ve kind of obscured her face in a way that presents her in a different context from the original painting.”
She also did a self-portrait, where she aged herself and “exaggerated the colour analyzation.”
The exhibit has been up and running since Jan. 17 and wraps up Jan. 30. Friday’s reception begins at 7 p.m. and everyone is welcome to attend.
