A Look Into Hamber’s New Student Art Gallery

On May 8, the opening of Hamber’s Art Gallery took place. Over 300 of Hamber’s visual arts students were involved, collaborating on artworks to display in the new space.

The gallery, named the Gathering Space, is located in the first-floor main stairwell entrance,
so that enormous numbers of Hamber students walk through it each day to reach their classes. “It's at the bottom of a staircase, sort of in that area where there's […] extra space,” Ms. T. Seeliger (Visual Arts) explained. Its purpose is “to have an art gallery so that [Hamber can] display student creativity, create a community where art is valued, [and] allow for students to possibly do their own shows.” Ms Seeliger explained that “the display cases in the new building aren't really made to display artwork,” so the gallery was a new place to do just that. 

Joy Wang (11) thought the addition of the gallery was “really nice, because we don't have a lot of space where people can put up their art.” 

An art student, Vaughn Gamble (12), explained how “it's meant to be a space that is [...] in some semblance, run by students, and not by teachers.”

The Gathering Space provides students with the opportunity to showcase their work and have a space dedicated to their art. It also helps “display art as an important part of an education,” according to Ms. Seeliger.

“We often make work on our own, and it's just in our sketchbooks. And this is kind of an extra step so that you can show it,” she said. For Ms. Seeliger, the main idea of the gallery was to “build community and forefront the amazing abilities of the artists and the work that they do at the school.” 

An event was held to celebrate the opening of the Gathering Space, featuring a specialized land acknowledgement, speech, music, and portraits — all led by students. 

Faith Leung (10) and Sydney Chan (10) both made portraits for attendees, which they found a bit stressful due to the number of attendees. However, Leung found the opening event gave “a sense of togetherness.” Gamble, who spoke for the opening event, described it as busy but fine. Wang did the land acknowledgement and found that the event had a “very nice setup,” adding that “it was a pretty formal and good ceremony.” The event also included “collaborative art tables [where] students could try making different kinds of artwork,” according to Ms. Seeliger.

Artworks featured in The Gathering Space’s first exhibition, Assemblage, included a garden, radial relief prints, yarn art of Vancouver, a recreation of a tree branch, and more. Ms. Seeliger explained that for the garden, titled Garden of Ourselves, “Each flower or flowers […] were created by each student to represent their personal identity.”

She said that they were then put together “in order to show that all these plants that symbolize individuals become a garden.” Ms. Seeliger also explained how each class working together to form the pieces was a struggle, but rewarding in the end. “As we all know, collaboration is hard. So, it was definitely a challenge.”

Wang was one of the artists creating this piece, and described it as a “community garden of flowers, like a canvas with a bunch of paper flowers on top.”

Ms Seeliger also mentioned one of her class’s radial relief prints, Community Quilt, explaining how it symbolizes “how quilts are comforting, usually handmade, made by the community for somebody in the community.”

Moses Moes (11) loved the gallery, but wished “there were more projects, just because [he] got to only work on one.” Gamble, Moes, Chan, and Leung all worked on the food collage, Cravings. Each artist “put up a piece of food [...] related to their culture,” explained Chan. Moes created “a little lasagna painting” for the collaborative piece.

Artists gave their thoughts on others’ artworks, with the food collage and Vancouver yarn being popular favourites. Referencing the Vancouver yarn, Gamble explained that she thought “that one was really cool. That was my favourite.” Another art student, Cooper Evaschesen (8), shared that he likes “the food one, where it’s like 3D food.” Leung found the piece by the photography students “really showed so many different [and] unique styles that other students have.”   

Students spent around two weeks working on their pieces, and the planning process started in October for teachers. After receiving funding and installing railings, the Visual Arts department “decided [the gallery] should be about community and collaboration,” according to Ms. Seeliger. 

Gamble said she found making the gallery to be stressful since she was “on a time limit.” Chan also commented on the timeline, saying “there were a few days of the week where [she] had to stay after school for a few hours to finish it off.” 

Contrasting with Gamble and Chan, Evaschesen thought that “It was a pretty good experience, [and] it wasn’t that stressful.” Wang found that “making it was pretty fun because it was a community art piece, so you really had to kind of change or think about what you could do to your own piece.”

Ms. Seeliger explained that the gallery will remain open, and the next show will be a Grad show in June. As well, there is planned to be “a show every six weeks or so, and it should be this ongoing, changing thing.” She also explained how the art gallery is a potential risk. “If somebody decided that they wanted to wreck a piece of artwork, they could, [...] but we think this community can handle it.”