ATHABASCA — Brazilian artist Romero Britto once said, “Art is too important not to share” and the Athabasca Rotary Club shows its agreement by providing an opportunity for three local students to learn more about art.
Since 2018, except during COVID-19, the Rotary Club has sponsored two Edwin Parr Composite (EPC) students to take an intensive week-long SummerScapes art or Alberta Theatre Artstrek course at Red Deer College in July, and a third student is sponsored by Mike Gismondi and Lori Claerhout in memory of their son David.
Paige Robinson, 17, and Ainsely Krahn, 16, are sponsored by Rotary and the Claerhout-Gismondi household to further their education in art and Connor Palmer, 17, will be taking theatre thanks to the sponsorship.
“I’m always trying different things,” Robinson said in a June 2 group interview. “I want more of an opportunity to try different mediums and stuff.”
Robinson and Krahn head to the college for July 21 while Palmer goes later in the summer.
“I’ve never done anything like airbrushing, which I’m extremely interested in,” said Robinson. “I’ve done sculpture … but I want to see what else you can do with some better materials.”
Palmer may be familiar to anyone who attended the The Outsiders play recently performed by EPC students at the Nancy Appleby Theatre. He’s been in other productions and is eager to hone his craft in Red Deer.
“It’s a week-long hardcore training class for all types of acting,” he said. “At the end of my program I get to put on She Kills Monsters.
He said his goal is to become a drama teacher like EPC teacher Brittany Miller, but Robinson isn’t as clear on her long-term goals.
“I want to do art, but I haven't really decided,” she said. “There's so many things I want to do but I want to keep art as, not like a job but a passion/hobby kind of thing. That's something I'm really interested in, but on the side. I want to do a whole bunch of things, but I just can't decide yet.”
Krahn is a bit more focused.
“I want to go to art school after high school and I want to do character design or concept art,” she said.
Krahn and Robinson had to submit photos of five pieces of original art along with descriptions and a short essay on why they wanted to attend, so Palmer was shocked he only had to write a short essay.
“I just had to write a thing about why I want to go to this; what's my passion about drama,” he said.
Gismondi and Claerhout sponsor one of the students to honour son David, who attended Landing Trail Intermediate School (LTIS) and EPC before becoming a fibre artist based in Vancouver. He passed away at 30-years-old in 2016.
“He used found materials in his art,” Gismondi told the three students. “There’s a lot of alleys in Vancouver and people throw stuff out so he’d collect it and then he’d mash it up into something new.”
The two art students will be invited to do a presentation to the Athabasca Rotary in the fall and Rotarian Marilyn Bittorff, who helps organize the sponsorship, encouraged them to bring their art.
“When they come back in the fall, they bring some of their projects and stuff to the meeting to sort of show some of the projects you worked on," she said. “And the one year the one girl had done quite a bit of art that she brought in, and a couple of her pieces got purchased.”
