BRITISH COLUMBIA ARTISTS  

(Vancouver Daily Province)
Probably dated April 25 1936

GRADUATES IN ART

by CINTRA

     The annual exhibition of the Graduate's Association of the Vancouver School of Art will be held in the Art Gallery early in May.
     Ten years have passed since the School of Art was opened and the first group of students began their work. The public was vaguely interested, indifferent, or skeptical, but the students worked away at such varied subjects as painting in oils and water-colors, sculpture, pottery, wood-carving and commercial art in all its interesting forms. The first graduation at the end of four years was an event of tremendous interest, after which the graduates sank into the obscurity of their studies or, in some cases, took further courses in larger centres.
     Outside their own circle little was known about them at first but as the years went by people began to realize that in our city there were groups of young artists in quiet studios, who were doing original work. The young men and women who sank into obscurity a few years ago were no longer obscure. A portrait by Irene Hoffar Reid was included in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery, a much coveted distinction. Margaret Carter won the Beatrice Stone Medal awarded annually for the best painting of the year, in 1933, and Vera Weatherbie the same in 1934. A portrait by Miss Maisie Robertson was shown in the All Canadian Exhibition at Ottawa, Beatrice Lennie was doing sculpture. Orville Fisher, Edward Hughes, and Paul Goranson became known all over Canada through their mural paintings in the First United Church, while their exhibition of Dry Points and Etchings in the Art Gallery last December were widely praised.

FINE LANDSCAPES
     On the walls of the studio shared by Margaret Carter and Irene Hoffar Reid are murals, landscapes, portraits in oils and conte, the latter a medium much used by the Old Masters.
     A climb up three flights of stairs in the Imperial Bank Building brings one to a studio where two busy and business-like young women are modern devotees of ancient arts. Frances Gatewood is responsible for the lovely pieces of pottery in many varieties of form and color that are to be seen there.
     The most exquisite hand book-binding is being done in this studio. Dorothy Burnett has chosen this rare and ancient craft. A connoisseur of a well-bound book or a lover of rare collections would be well repaid for a visit here, where an entire book can be made, a cherished old one re-bound or a new one bound.

WOOD CARVING
     When searching for the "unusual" one day we came across prancing horses carved in walnut, book ends of Canadian buffalo carved from Canadian wood, and an absolutely captivating, sleepy donkey. We were told they were made by a girl who has a studio somewhere in the West End and who "does" animals. Eventually we found the studio in a sunny corner, and Maisie Robertson the carver in wood. She shares a studio with Maude (sic) Sherman, already well known for her oils and water colors.
     Through the art of Mary Gordon, one of the graduates in Crafts and Commercial Arts, runs the element of laughter. Her Animated Map of Stanley Park in Winter, which hung for weeks in the window of the Arts and Crafts Building, added much to the gaiety of pedestrians who paused on their way to make out the quaint figures.
     We can only mention a few of the graduates and touch lightly upon their work. The coming exhibition at the Art Gallery will give an opportunity for people to see and judge for themselves what these artists are doing in their chosen lines of art, taught in our own schools, inspired by our own scenery and expressing the life of our country in landscape, portraiture and the various crafts.


Clipping provided courtesy of Burnaby Art Gallery, Irene Hoffar Reid Fond.

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