Meet our Grade 12 IB Visual Arts Students

Our Grade 12 IB visual arts students are preparing for their final exhibition and exam in April, so please mark your calendars for our Opening Night Reception on Thursday, April 11. The exhibition will then be displayed for two weeks in our Stanfield Dining Hall/McLellan Annex.

After March Break, our students will focus on planning their display, writing a rationale and exhibition texts, and uploading their artwork. It has taken months of preparation, and each student is required to produce a number of art works based on their own direction or theme. This year, we have 26 Grade 12 students who will be exhibiting their work. The Grade 11 IB art students will be assisting our Grade 12 students with their displays as well as showing their work.

Until the art show, we will be showcasing our artists in our weekly newsletter highlighting one of their favourite projects during this two-year course. I hope you enjoy reading the profiles of our young artists. This week, we are highlighting Emily Mei '24, and Ellie Blois '24.

Emily Mei ’24 is from New Minas, Nova Scotia, and has attended KES for seven years.

I have chosen to share my sculpture called Reflection made of mixed materials.

My first love is dance, ballet. I wanted to incorporate my ballet pointe shoes into a sculpture. Placing the worn pointe shoes on a mirror to reflect all the hard work and pain that goes into the struggle for perfection.

I placed the flowers around the shoe to show the beauty that the dancers strive for. The shoes are called dead after dancing on them for an extended amount of time. This shoe is one of my dead shoes which reflects the dances that I have danced.

This dance theme was also carried into my comparative study, researching and comparing the two artists Degas and the American artist, Rachel Isadora.
Future plans: I plan to attend university in the fall.

I have chosen to share my clay sculpture titled The Beach.

In art class, I experimented with the medium of clay and enjoyed working with a three-dimensional medium. My goal was to construct one more clay sculpture before I graduated.

I wanted the challenge to work on a larger piece, so I chose the slab method which helps the construction to be more solid. After building the sculpture, it is then fired. Success, no breakage!

For the design, I chose to paint (glaze with liquid glass) scenes around Nova Scotia. Since I grew up around the water, I painted a buoy and lobster trap to represent the fishing industry, and a beach scene to remind me of my childhood.