Granville Island’s giant (temporary) art gallery

Over 300 works by graduating Emily Carr students are now on display

“If you can’t find something that you find amazing in this exhibition, I don’t think you’re human,” says Patrick Andersson, associate professor and head of the graduation exhibit curatorial team at Emily Carr University. Over 300 works by graduating students from the design, media studies, and visual arts programs at Emily Carr are being shown in an exhibit aptly titled The Show, which runs until May 22. “It’s like a teenager that’s about to leave home. You kind of hope that they’re prepared and I think, for the most part, it’s pretty impressive how they’ve been able to define themselves,” Andersson says.The Show is a feast for the senses, featuring a wide range of works, including photography, painting, sculpture, design, animation, and more. “It’s process, it’s creativity, it’s ranging from the functional to the dysfunctional,” Andersson says. You will find everything from collage murals on the walls to more practical works, such as The Ark Project (a three-part project aimed at creating awareness and preparedness for natural disasters by industrial student Si Gal). Chloe Bluebird Mustooch with her piece 1200 Copper TearsAnother eye-catcher is graduating visual arts student Chloe Bluebird Mustooch’s piece, 1200 Copper Tears, which features a red dress suspended from the gallery ceiling with copper jingles woven into it. Mustooch says that a jingle dress is usually seen at the powwow scene of typically indigenous plains tribes and has 365 jingles to represent healing for each day of the year. But hers has a different meaning. “It’s comprised of 1,200 copper jingles, which are a prayer for each missing and murdered indigenous woman,” says Mustooch. It’s an issue that has affected her personally, with the loss of some of her own family members, including the murder of her cousin six years ago. The creation of the dress “is something that helped me deal with my own emotions for this issue and just kind of reconcile with that,” she says.Andersson, meanwhile, stresses just what a variety of artworks the exhibit features. “From apps to tsunami survival kits, it’s an enormous range.” He says the entire campus on Granville Island has been transformed into a work of art, as classrooms and studios have been turned into galleries. “We built the walls, we built the structures.” Even the library wasn’t left out. “We’ve set up what’s called an illustration alley. Each animation student has an area where they show their process and their animation.”With the exhibit filling over two buildings, there’s a lot to experience. “About 3,000 people come to the opening generally,” Andersson says. “By going to the opening you then realize you want to come back.”What: The ShowWhen: May 8-22, 10 am-8 pmWhere: The Emily Carr University of Art and Design, 1399 Johnston St.Free admissionCompressão by Adriana Silverio Sanches. Photo by Jeff VinnickAlong The Same Path by Steven Schmid. Photo by Jeff Vinnick