Simcoe, ON – September 22, 2014 As part of a broad, year-long consideration on the theme ‘walk a mile in my shoes’, the students of the Grand Erie District School Board Enrichment Centres, Norfolk Campus – Elgin Avenue School were challenged to creatively reconstruct an old pair of footwear. If the Shoe Fits displays the outcome of this exploration undertaken by students in grades four to eight in the last school year.
For this project, students were asked to disregard the functional aspects of shoes, focusing instead on their formal properties – size, shape, texture. Using simple tools and found objects students then created artworks using an article of footwear as the foundation. The results are varied, offering clever interpretations of everyday environments and make-believe scenarios that undermine the intended purpose of the original article. The exhibition also features models of four-in-one footwear which were the product of a shoe research and development assignment.
“Yes, a bit silly, and fanciful, but the skills students have been taught to apply here in creative problem solving are just exactly the sort of skills our world will need tomorrow to bring creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems that face 21st Century inhabitants…” states Wanda Backus-Kelly, teacher of the Norfolk Campus enrichment program.
If the Shoe Fits: Students from Grand Erie District School Board Enrichment Centres, Norfolk Campus – Elgin Avenue Schoolwill be on exhibition at the Norfolk Arts Centre from Tuesday, September 2 to Saturday, October 18, 2014.
School tours with hands-on and curriculum-based activities are available through the Norfolk Arts Centre by contacting [email protected] or 519-428-0540.
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For further information contact:
Deirdre Chisholm
Director/Curator
Norfolk Arts Centre
21 Lynnwood Ave.
Simcoe, ON N3Y 2V7
