Natural selection on display as Medicine Hat College curates its graduating art show

Instructor Jessica Plattner said the arts offer a way to creatively connect with an artist and also affords artists a way to develop skills important to real world issues.

“I think our students learn creative problem solving which is a skill that’s dying out,” Plattner said.

“They have to figure out how to express what they want to express visually,” she said.

“They go through a process visually of messing up and failing and scratching it out and starting again and that tenacity and stick-to-it-ness combined with intuition is so important.”

“We don’t have a lot of that in our culture right now.”

Artists worked together to curate and market the show on top of creating the art.

Grace Mastel, a graduating artist, said that art should be appreciated because of the time commitment but also because the art is seen everywhere in the everyday world.

“I hope the community takes away not only an appreciation of the art, but the joy that we find in it and that they find joy in it themselves,” Mastel said.

“I hope they take away the importance it has in our world from graphic design to fine art to video documentaries,” she said.

“I hope the community sees how important the effort and the time is that we put into everything.”

Plattner echoed the sentiment, saying she hopes the community takes something away beyond art.

“I hope they take away how important it is to express your individual connection to different ideas in the world,” Plattner said.

“We live in a world that’s full of so many images and we lose faith in our own creativity,” she said.

“One thing this program focuses on is individual creativity so we can express our own ideas in new and different ways.”

The exhibition and reception begins at 7 p.m. Saturday evening and will run from April 6 to April 19.

by Adrian St.Onge

Natural selection on display as Medicine Hat College curates its graduating art show

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