Inside King's-Edgehill School
I hope you enjoy our virtual exhibitions. We admire not only our students' skills and creativity but also their courage in sharing their work with us. Please join me in congratulating our 2020 IB Visual Arts students on their hard work and achievements.
I would like to introduce IB Artist: Annalise Emery:
This body of work is heavily inspired by my own love of photography. When I was younger, I used to do photography more than any other art form, but eventually I picked up drawing as my favourite. This body of work was both me stepping out of my comfort zone with painting, which I never liked until this year, and rediscovering an old love in photography. Through this body of work, I want you to see beauty in the world around you the way I do. All of these photographs were taken spontaneously during my travels through the world. I see the opportunity for photographs every day when I look at nature and our world when abandoned to the decay of time. There is beauty to be found in the often-ignored natural world, within the decrepit fall of our own industrial structures and dust of abandoned homes and towns. I want to share the beauty I see in nature and history with those who don’t know where to look for it.
In this exhibition you will see different series of photography and paintings that explore different themes of the world around us. Two of the series, Bodie and North Hills, explore the theme of modern decay in two different ways. The Bodie focuses more on the idea of the decay of time and frozen history. The town of Bodie in California was completely abandoned in the 1940’s with nearly all of their residence leaving behind belongings in the old mining town, and ever since most of it has sat untouched. The North Hills focuses on the idea of decay from destruction and forgotten history. The North Hills nursing home in Annapolis Royal, NS was cleared and left abandoned in 2006. In 2016 a fire caught in the abandoned building, destroying a section completely and damaging the rest of the building with smoke, heat and water. The forgotten complex has sat undisturbed and hauntingly marked with ash and shattered glass since. The Beach series focuses on texture and the reclaiming of forgotten things by nature and Travels series focuses on texture, light and hidden beauty in everyday places and objects.
The arrangement of the works would have started with my colourful self-portrait and Surf Nouveau pieces, leading into the Travels series followed by The Beach and into North Hills and finally Bodie. The works would have been arranged like this in order to take the viewers on a journey from the popular styles of bright paintings and uplifting, light photographs into the darker beauty of forgotten places like North Hills and Bodie. I want my show to inspire people to think deeply about the accepted standards of beauty in art. I want viewers to feel the same longing and unanswerable questions I feel whenever I find myself in abandoned places, the question of what happened there and have to settle with never truly knowing. I want those who see my work to see the beauty of decay yet feel the same unsettling ghosts through the show as I do when I’m there in person. I want my show to take them from the known into the unknown and leave them questioning.
Figure 1: Self Portrait (November 12th, 2018)
Chalk pastels on grey paper, 46 cm x 61 cm
This is the first work I did at the beginning of Grade 11 as an assigned project. This piece gave me a chance to practice working with colour for the first time and taught me how to use shading and light to give the work depth. In my show I want this to represent the standard of artwork, a delicate and colourful drawing of a pretty girl, something you’ve seen a million times before and will undoubtedly see again.
Figure 2: Surf Nouveau (May 25th, 2019)
Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas, 92 cm x 100 cm
This piece was directly inspired by the style of Alphons Mucha and his work Autumn Maiden. Mucha’s style of Art Nouveau is quite famous and has withstood the test of time as an example of elegant and stylized works. This is my first ever oil painting which gave me the freedom to explore colour and depth once again. Similarly, this piece represents popular culture in art, influenced by imagery of my home state of California, the centre of pop culture in North America, and the work of a well-known and respected artist, Mucha.
Figure 3: The Path Less Traveled By (May 5th, 2019)
Photographed on Nikon, 61 cm x 91 cm
Located at Mavillette Beach on the French Shore, this small broken boardwalk hasn’t been repaired in years and is slowly being reclaimed by the ocean and the nature around it. This photograph serves as the intro into the Beaches series which focuses completely on nature left untouched and this abandoned human structure. This picture represents the fleeting nature of our creations and the eternity of nature.
Figure 4: Long Hall End (September 21st, 2019)
Photographed on Nikon, 61 cm x 91 cm
This photograph serves as the introduction to the North Hills series. Much like The Path Less Traveled By, it is the continuation of the path from conventional art forms into the haunting beauty of the abandoned and forgotten things. Does it make you wonder? Who put that chair there? What broke the glass? Looking at this piece I want people to think, to wonder, and to come to the same conclusion that I have: There’s no answer we can ever know.
Figure 5: North Hills (Series) (September 21st, 2019)
Photographed on Nikon, 22 cm x 28 cm
This series takes the deep dive into the unknown. Most people have never been in an abandoned building, much less a half fire damaged one, but now you get to see it through this series. Take the journey through its forgotten halls and question everything you see, but there are no answers. Do you feel morbid curiosity? Or sympathy for whatever happened here. Explore it all for yourself and know sometimes there is more beauty in the mystery than knowing what's been left to rot.
Figure 6: Rosa May (November 28th, 2019)
Acrylic paint on canvas, 92 cm x 100 cm
This painting is based on a photograph I took in the ghost town of Bodie. The shop window had many more items, but the mannequin was the centerpiece, so the painting focused on it alone. This piece is meant to represent how things left to stand alone against time are damaged but don’t fall and to highlight how interesting broken objects can look. The name Rosa May was taken from a Bodie resident who once worked as a seamstress. Rosa was buried in Bodies Boot Hill unmarked cemetery due to her lifestyle and left to be forgotten by the townspeople. Yet eventually Rosa May was given a grave marker and is now one of the most well-known residents of the Boot Hill cemetery, once forgotten then found, much like the town of Bodie and this seamstress’ mannequin.
Figure 7: Marks Top Shelf (March 9th, 2020)
Acrylic paint on canvas, 92 cm x 100 cm
This painting is based on a photograph I took in the ghost town of Bodie. It is the ultimate culmination of all the skills I learned from my other paintings with light, depth and black and white shading. To me it represents how some parts of people and our history never changes. Shelves of old bottles and alcohol are very common as both decoration and still functioning bars and have been for decades. The black and white medium gives it a quality of timelessness and to make one question the places origin. Is it in a museum? Or decoration in a house? Is it in a bar? How old are the bottles? Where is this? The name is inspired by Rosa May’s husband Ernest Marks, who owned one of the saloons in Bodie in the late 1800’s. Everything in a town is linked one way or another, whether it's a new town or ghost town.
Figure 8: Bodie (Series) (July 21st, 2019)
Photographed on Iphone 7, 22 cm x 28 cm
This series is our final destination. Bodie, California is an abandoned mining town in the Sierra mountains of northern California. It is both my beginning in my home state and the end of my exploration of abandoned places. No matter how many other abandoned buildings I find my way into Bodie will always be the best; there’s nothing more haunting than a ghost town. The series was taken in black and white to give the feeling of just how old this place is. When I took the pictures, it was 35 degrees and sunny in the middle of July, but in black and white it could be any time of year or day in any year. Pay close attention to the photos in this series, because ghosts really dwell here. Hundreds of people up and left this town during the depression, leaving behind anything they couldn’t carry. How does this town frozen in time make you feel?
Figure 9: Checking Out (July 21st, 2019)
Photographed on Iphone 7, 61 cm x 91 cm
With this piece our journey comes to a close. This photograph is of a collection of hotel and bank
records from Bodie in its prime, and to me should always be the last photo in this collection. Look at the ornate handwritings, an art all of its own long lost to the past. Real people once carried and stored these records, and now they’re gone and forgotten but some of their memories remain in these papers. Look at this final piece and remember that time is fleeting, but some things last.
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Achievements like this make parents so proud! We find that most parents of King's-Edgehill students are happy to help out whenever they can and are eager to answer any questions prospective parents might have.