{"id":19489,"date":"2018-01-03T16:40:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T21:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19489"},"modified":"2018-01-03T16:40:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T21:40:58","slug":"upcoming-grads-putting-finishing-touches-on-mayors-celebration-of-youth-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/upcoming-grads-putting-finishing-touches-on-mayors-celebration-of-youth-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming grads putting finishing touches on Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether they are in the dark room, furiously wielding their paint brush, or limbering up their fingers for a few finishing touches on a sculpture, local Grade 12 students are gearing up to showcase their creativity for the community at large in the Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts.
\nFor the past seven years, graduating arts students from all four of Aurora\u2019s high schools gave pulled out all the stops for winter exhibitions at the Aurora Cultural Centre. Last year was the first time all four high schools worked collaboratively on a single show and this year is the first under the new banner of \u201cThe Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Arts.\u201d
\n\u201cSupport from the Mayor\u2019s Office [on the show] means a lot of opportunities,\u201d says Stephanie Nicolo of the Aurora Cultural Centre, who has helped students curate their art since the program\u2019s inception. \u201cThis opportunity for the students has been here for seven years, but having the official support from the office allows for a little bit further support in being able to secure a sponsor. The Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts is sponsored by Geranium Homes and this has now allowed us to expand beyond the visual arts.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve always known there is more than just 2D art, so they will be able to now express themselves through spoken word, poetry, film, theatre, dance, music and we\u2019ve not been able to do that before.\u201d
\nThe bar has been raised and the students are more than willing to meet the challenge.
\n\u201cOverall, this is a cool experience because you get to present your art and you\u2019re proud to show it off to people outside of your school where you know everybody,\u201d says St. Maximilian Kolbe student VerakKocski.
\nAdds Hallie Tutkaluk of Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School: \u201cIt is good as a young person to have opportunities like this and take advantage of them because when you\u2019re older and further along, it gets harder to have an opportunity to be in a gallery like this. It is a great experience for young artists trying to get into university and develop a good portfolio.\u201d
\nParticipating students are working on projects large and small. Sarah Cole, a student from Williams, for instance, is focusing her attention on both traditional and digital art, including photography, while Sydney Scanga of St. Max is working in acrylics, and Williams\u2019 Emily Dougherty is honing her sculpting skills.
\n\u201cA lot of us will be portraying our self portraits,\u201d says Verak. \u201cI just want people to get an idea of who we are. That\u2019s how I painted it, so people could look at my painting and think, \u2018Ah, this is the kind of person she is. This is her character.\u2019
\nAdds Sarah: \u201cI have been doing digital art for about seven years now and really getting into it over the last three. I am going to be submitting that because it is something I use to express myself a lot.\u201d
\nAlthough it is too early to see the social trends that might emerge through the art, a thread might be offered by Hallie who shares some of her work will be looking at presenting \u201cthe teenager perspective on social media\u201d \u2013 mostly the negatives, she says, but also the positives.
\n\u201cI am interested to know what the older demographic will think of the ideas that are coming from younger people now,\u201d says Emily. \u201cI feel like my art isn\u2019t something that would normally appear in a gallery like this so it will be interesting to see what the reaction will be from people coming in thinking that it is more art you would see in galleries and this kind of setting.\u201d
\nEager to see how things pan out is Mayor Geoff Dawe, who has opened the exhibitions for all of the past six years.
\n\u201cIt is a great opportunity to see some incredible art,\u201d he says. \u201cI was blown away the first time I came in, to be frank. I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect. I always look forward to being surprised. A couple of years have been pretty dark [in theme] but last year was a pretty light show, very friendly. But then I came downstairs and there was a painting of a woman being waterboarded. It was almost a whiplash of emotions when you go from very pastoral pictures to something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts runs in all galleries at the Aurora Cultural Centre from February 3 to March 3. An artists reception will take place the evening of Wednesday, February 7, which is open to all members of the public, while performance art will ring out through the Centre on Friday, February 9.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether they are in the dark room, furiously wielding their paint brush, or limbering up their fingers for a few finishing touches on a sculpture, local Grade 12 students are gearing up to showcase their creativity for the community at large in the Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2018-01-04-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-54l","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 16:30:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}