WAG Art Beat 2020 Senior Gallery

St. Mary’s Catholic High School – Ms. Johnston, Grade 12

The grade eleven and twelve visual art class at St. Mary's were the lucky recipients of the 2019, 2020 Art Beat exhibit and mentorship program. The experience was simply put, surreal! Our mentor was esteemed printmaker and print technician Jessica Woodward. Collaborating with Jessica was seamless and enjoyable. Jessica proposed the idea of a take on the surrealist concept of the exquisite corpse, whereby each student would formulate an image of a character that fit within certain parameters on the linoleum block. The student creations could either be something that "made sense" or could be totally unique. Each print was then to be cut in half and mix-and-matched with their classmates to come up with completely uncanny, bizarre and humorous new combos! As you can imagine we had many laughs during our process! What you see before you are both the initial artworks of each student as well as a variety of combinations once these works were cut and paired.

The surrealists of the 1920s were rule-breakers and visionaries. They were most concerned with the status of the world they were living in and believed that by tapping into the unconscious and depicting images never seen before they could POSSIBLY change the world through art. The exquisite corpse was one of many techniques the surrealists used to create totally original work. This was typically done through the collaboration of three or four people, increasing the likeliness of even more uncanny work. Surrealism and the exquisite corpse are meant to get us thinking… what if.

Thank you to the Gallery, namely Stephanie Porter, for connecting us to both Jessica and helping St. Mary's high school deepen our connection to the Woodstock art community.

— Ms. Johnston