Emerging Talent 27 opens Jan. 17 at Coquitlam gallery

Paige Vivian always has a pencil and paper in hand.

At Terry Fox Secondary, where she’s a Grade 12 student at the Port Coquitlam high school, Vivian spends her spare time sketching out ideas, creating portraits of her classmates or drawing objects.

“Whatever is around me. Whatever I see,” she said.

Until March 12, Vivian and 29 other Grade 12 art students in School District 43 (SD43) will exhibit up to three pieces each in the 27th annual Emerging Talent display at Place des Arts in Coquitlam. The opening reception at the Maillardville venue (1120 Brunette Ave.) is Friday, Jan. 17 from 7 to 9 p.m.; the event is open to the public.

In an interview with the Tri-City News on Wednesday, Jan. 15, Vivian talked about her pencil and pencil crayon work that’s now up titled "Pawprint of Time," a class assignment under art teacher Grace Kim that challenged students to dream up something about their home life.

Vivian, who plans to attend UBC or Thompson Rivers University for computer science, replicated the images of her two dogs: Tilley and Ruxin.

Indeed, animals are a common subject in the 2025 student exhibit; however, the entries also offer glimpses to the teen artists’ mental states through memories, escapism, nightmares and dreams of utopia.

Organized by Angela Stevens and Janet Kim, SD43 teachers, the exhibition received 82 pieces of which 49 were accepted by the jury panel made up of:

Marietta Heily-Van Os (retired secondary art teacher)
Jeanie Mao (secondary art TTOC)
Gord Trembath (owner Cielo Media)
Yahya Haddadi (artist)

For Ava Naismith, who is in Kim’s art class at Terry Fox Secondary, she submitted an array of butterfly wings closeup, drawn in oil pastel, titled "The Art of Wings," plus a pointillism piece called "Sunflower," which she showed last May in the Imaginings exhibit in Port Coquitlam. The latter piece took her 38 hours to complete.

Naismith said she worked on the butterfly wings last summer to prepare her post-graduation portfolio. She plans to study art at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, SFU, Capilano University or University of the Fraser Valley to become an art teacher.

“I’ve been passionate about art since I was a child,” she said. “It’s an outlet for me outside of soccer.”

As for showing in a public gallery, Naismith said she’s honoured to have her pieces on the walls and be in good company with students who will also graduate this year.

“Everyone is so talented,” she said while looking around the Atrium gallery. “There are so many different mediums and lots of imagination.”

Student artists

Here are the schools and Grade 12 art students whose work can be seen in Emerging Talent 27 at Place des Arts in Coquitlam (click on the hyperlinks for the students' artistic statements):

Dr. Charles Best Secondary