Inter-House Art Gets a Reboot

“The goal was to make it a one-hour event, tight and fun,” Mr. Goodman explained, “something engaging for the students to get excited about.”

 

For the first part of the event, the students painted their House Directors, or, in a couple of cases, other members of their House duty staff. Each House had a team of painters, with at least four – two senior students and two juniors – and up to seven. Painters were given a head start at 5:30 p.m., with the rest of the students joining them in the gym beginning at 6:00 p.m.

 

“I was really impressed with how the paintings came through,” Mr. Goodman said.

 

The second part of the event had Houses each creating a short TikTok-style video inspired by a famous piece of art. Examples given were The Last Supper and Dogs Playing Poker. Those were all the instructions the students received. Most Houses leaned toward the classics, with videos drawing inspiration from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Raphael’s The School of Athens, and Munch’s The Scream, among others.

 

Organizers were particularly excited that it was the first inter-House event in decades – since the end of the round-the-lake relay – to include every single student at the School. That came in the third part of the event, in which all 500-plus students gathered in the gym for a guided drawing of Baby Groot from the Marvel universe and submitted their finished pieces.

 

“The students were great,” Mr. Goodman said. “It’s not easy sitting in a gym on a sunny Friday night, and they rocked it.”

Renfrew House hosted a barbecue at the Sports Village after the event, and students played beach volleyball and some of the other casual sports the village offers. There was a lot of positive feedback from the students, and organizers are already looking at some tweaks to make for next year.

 

Mr. Goodman thanked the other members of the Fine Arts department, the Events department, Mr. Lamont and the Head’s Office, and Ms. Mariel Solsberg, who took time out of her maternity leave to lead the guided drawing.

 

“It’s a great testament to the culture of staff at Shawnigan,” Mr. Goodman said. “There were a lot of people pulling hours outside of what’s required.”