Blyth Festival Art Gallery presents stunning Student Show to open season

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

While the annual Student Art Show at the Blyth Festival Art Gallery (BFAG) is a highlight of every season, the bar was set just a little bit higher for the 2025 show, as it is being held during the BFAG’s 50th anniversary season. Luckily, the young artists of Huron-Perth have collectively risen to the occasion with an almost-over-the-top-but-not-quite extravaganza of art that speaks to the absolute essence of rural creative spirit. 

 

This year’s exhibition featured a record number of works that transformed the Bainton Gallery into a technicolour showcase of emerging talent. As always, the sheer diversity of the artwork on display was striking. Visitors were greeted with a rich tapestry of mediums and methods, including (but not limited to) sculpture, photography, digital art, printmaking, crochet, drawing, painting and collage. From abstract compositions to realistic portraits, each piece invited viewers to engage with the unique perspectives of its young creator.​ 

 

BFAG Exhibition Committee Chair Kelly Stevenson, who curated the show, encouraged visitors to take advantage of the salon-style showcase by creating their own narratives between seemingly disparate pieces. Her suggestion really opened up the room into a sort of shifting kaleidoscope of imagined stories built on the connection of proximity. While Noelle Lockhart’s (F.E. Madill) painting “Cyber City” is an intriguing piece of sci-fi art on its own, adding McKayla Brown’s (Listowel District Secondary School) pencil sketch “Howl’s Moving Castle” adds an interesting bit of interdimensional world building. Bringing in an eye-popping depiction of Kobe Bryant, also by Brown, serves only to deepen the intrigue. 

 

Meanwhile, Ava Greve’s (St. Marys District Collegiate Vocational Institute) cheeky depiction of complicated contemporary chanteuse Chapelle Roan was powerful enough to hold her own in the shadow of some much older muses  brought to life by Kennedy Boersma’s (St. Anne’s Catholic Secondary School) painting “Caryatids of the Erechtheion”.

 

Of course, some pieces lend themselves more to the theory of the self-contained pocket universe, such as Aasera Schultheiss’ (Listowel District Secondary School) beautifully wrought diorama entitled “Giant Whale”.

 

Although the brightest colours are oft the first to catch one’s eye, spending an extended stretch in the room will gradually bring one’s attention to the brilliance of some of the exhibition’s less in-your-face artworks. It requires a breathtaking amount of skill to render hyper-realistic graphite sketches like Danika Durand’s (Central Huron Secondary School) “Cat”, which is practically meowing from its spot in the corner into one of the hearts of judges, who awarded the work one of the evening’s honourable mentions. 

 

The wide range of artistic expressions was really illustrative of the diverse backgrounds and experiences of each student included in the show. By providing a platform for local youths to display their work, Stevenson and BFAG are not only celebrating 50 years of art this year, but a half-century of sowing the seeds of achievement for fledgling rural artists, which, in turn, ensures that the gallery’s next 50 years will be just as innovative and inspiring.