Voyage of Dream | Art Vancouver
The Voyage of Dream was an art piece created by a few students that was featured at Art Vancouver 2019.
The annual Vancouver Art Fair was held on April 25th, 2019. There are more than 1,200 works on display, including paintings, sculptures, and mixed media. The categories are diverse and quite exciting. This time, students from Green Apple Art Center also exhibited their giant work "Voyage of Dream" which took them 6 months to complete. This work was jointly created by students in grades 10-11 led by instructors Alison Guan and Fiona Tang, including: Mona Qin, Mika Shimmura, Calysta Chang, Nancy R. Wan, Tammy Y. Zhong, Alice Lee, George Huang, Roy Y. Zhang, Victor W. Tang, Anna Y. Han, and Amy Lin.
"Voyage of Dream" is a mixed media work that combines flat painting and 3D. In this giant work, the students hope to use a surreal approach to express the inner psychological aspects of hope, dreams, beauty, etc. In the middle of the picture of "Dream Journey" is the back of a woman with green short hair, and a stone hanging in the sky, combined with various fantastic objects, such as butterflies, suns, sailboats, clouds, etc., to successfully create a dream-like scene.
In addition, according to the students, the orange pentagonal three-dimensional decorations hanging on both sides of the painting were originally meant to be painted directly in the painting to represent deformed clouds. However, after discussion, they thought it would be better to let these clouds jump out of the painting and become a three-dimensional decoration, which make the work more layered. As expected, this idea was very successful, because during the exhibition many people took photos with these orange decorations, and some people posed in various interesting poses, making these orange decorations unexpectedly become alternative interactive installations, which were full of fun.
During the four days of the exhibition, our booth attracted a lot of people. Everyone was attracted by this giant work of 25 x 9 ft. Many people said that they liked our work very much and thought it was very beautiful. The contrast of the main colours, green and orange is quite eye-catching. Almost everyone who passes by our booth will stop to admire the students’ works, and take photos with them. Some people even shared with us that she really liked the short hair style of the woman in the middle of the picture. She wanted to take a photo and send it to her hair stylist, asking her to help cut it like this.
Other than exhibiting works, we also participated in many exhibition activities and lectures this year, such as the runway show on the opening night. Student representatives George and Mona took the printed versions of the work and walked on the runway to show their results to everyone. There is also the lecture "Teacher-Student Dialogue: Cultivating the Thinking of Creative Leaders", where our teachers David Youngson and Odera Igbokwe talked with student representatives Geogre and Mika about their thoughts and feelings about participating in the "Innovation Challenge Competition" and "New York Fashion Week" Sharing of experiences and concepts of engaging in art education; and Fiona Tang, one of the instructors of the exhibited works, creating live works at the booth.
In addition, regarding "Journey of Dreams", we interviewed the student representative Mona and asked him to share with me his experience of participating in this exhibition and interesting things that happened during the creation process:
1. What is the concept that this work conveys? Are you inspired by any artist?
I really like the illustration style of Chinese-American artist Jame Jean. I think his works are full of "surreal" and "dream" images, which are quite attractive to me. Since we decided to display larger works in this exhibition, our team members wanted to take a challenge that it would be quite interesting to present "dreams" in giant paintings.
2. Can you tell us something interesting that happened during the creating process?
We named the work "Dreamland" because we wanted to try to "visualize" the messy images of dreams and put them together. At the beginning, I drew the rough composition and proportions on digital copy, and then everyone worked together to draw it on the canvas.
3. What do you think is the difference between individual creation and collective creation? What's the biggest challenge?
This was my first time working with so many people, and to be honest, it was quite confusing at first because everyone had different ideas. Of course, this also means that we can put all our ideas into this painting, making the final product richer and more complete.
4. In this work, did you refer to any painter or style?
Mystery, surreality and the works of Jame Jean.
5. Why do you like to draw?
Because drawing allows me to express my ideas freely, and drawing also allows me to meet a group of like-minded people. Although everyone wants to convey different ideas, we are all walking on the same painting path, which makes me very happy.
6. Have you ever heard any advice that impressed you?
Try to try all new things, even if you are not interested, you should try your best to experience it.
The four-day Vancouver Art Exhibition concluded successfully, and Green Apple Art Centre looks forward to seeing you all again next year.