There’s a fresh supply of art in the house at the newly redeveloped and reopened St. Albert Curling Club thanks to two city high schools.
Last week students from Bellerose and Paul Kane high schools hung the first set of pieces in the athletic centre’s spacious second floor banquet area and by all accounts they have been a big hit with sports fans and members of the public alike.
“It looks fabulous,” said Doug McLennan, the president of the board for the club.
He said the high-walled room with seating for 300 would otherwise have been blank. The idea came to him that there might be an easy and low-cost way to decorate while helping some talented young artists looking for their first public showings.
“What we were looking at was some way to decorate the place and help out the schools’ art programs just to see if there was something we could do together. They don’t have any place in public to put any of their works and we have this big cavernous second floor so it seemed like a pretty good match made in heaven, really.”
He made contact with Bellerose art teacher Judy Smallwood who liked the idea and got Paul Kane involved as well. Normally, the four area high schools only make a big mark on the visual arts scene when they team up for the annual High Energy show at the Art Gallery of St. Albert in the spring. This gives them another high profile venue and it’s one that will be on an ongoing basis.
The plan is to have the schools rotate in new pieces a few times throughout each year.
“The thing sort of snowballed into a pretty cool arrangement between all of us because it’s not costing any of us a nickel.”
McLennan ended by saying that the show was a big hit at the chamber of commerce gala on the weekend. While Lewis Lavoie was creating one of his famous live paintings to be auctioned off at the end of the night, members of the business community were wandering around checking out the rest of the art.
“Some of the people were looking at the faces on this one wall and then they realized it was done by students. They were more than impressed.”
