Columbia River student artists explore ‘innocence’

The end of high school is a natural time to consider the meaning of “innocence.” Current events at the end of 2016 make it unavoidable.

“Can a whole nation lose its innocence?” wondered Columbia River High School art teacher Jason Phelps. “In addition to the theme of coming of age in a personal way, there was a lot of discussion about innocence on a global level. The students got introspective, but they also thought very big.”

Phelps’ upper-level art class was thrilled to receive, for the third year in a row, an invitation to step into the spotlight at North Bank Artists Gallery in downtown Vancouver. The January art installation at North Bank, opening Jan. 6, will be an exhibit of Columbia River student work that explores the many meanings of innocence — from the deeply private to the painfully public.

That subject was the students’ choice after much discussion and voting, Phelps said. It was their task to come up with a coherent theme; Phelps described his job as “deadlines and quality control.” (“Getting all the squirrels to run in the same direction” is another way of putting it, he added.)

Refugees from war-torn Syria and their treatment in Europe and America are very much on the minds of these student artists. So is simply growing up — which is never really simple.

“We have everything from refugees to childhood doodles,” Phelps said. “All kinds of approaches, all kinds of designs. I am really proud of them.”

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Haarberg dug into remembering her world at age 7, she said. Her piece is a huge patchwork of tiny, cartoony sketches — moons and rockets, teddy bears and happy hearts, all sorts of childhood images. The whole thing is an assembly of concrete pictures into one big abstraction, she said.

Kimzaira Sotaridona, also 16, created a fascinating version of the Alice in Wonderland story — a girl falling down a tunnel that gets increasingly crowded with complicated symbols of adult experience and knowledge — like a heart that’s no idealized Valentine version but the real, vulnerable, human thing.

And Jessica Cross, 17, painted a ballet dancer who’s all grace and poise until you look closely and see the signs of pain and pressure. Swanlike at a distance, she’s actually an anorexic, skeletal, disturbing figure. That’s a statement about the pressure to be perfect while growing up, Cross said — but it’s more than that, too.

“Things are so wrong with our country,” she said. “There is such corruption, but everybody is so oriented around social media. They’re obsessed with the wrong things.”

Children in crisis

Gloria Boieriu, 17, cannot get a famous news photo out of her mind: an 11-year-old Syrian refugee named Ahmed. When the photo was taken last spring, Ahmed was trying to get to Germany but was blocked at the Greece-Macedonia border — in a “squalid, disease-ridden tent city,” according to Time magazine, which published the picture.

“I have been drawing him constantly. I would like to go there and adopt him,” said Boieriu. Her drawing is Ahmed as a grown man who has never escaped that refugee camp. She said she reached out to photographer Ali Nourdeline, who lives in Germany, and asked for permission to base her work on his image — which wasn’t necessary — and was gratified to get a quick response. Nourdeline liked her project and was curious about the show and gallery where it would appear, she said.

“He was really interested to know all about the show,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Tracy Tran, 17, also worked from a photo of a Syrian child. She wanted to create something that poked at people’s suspicions about refugee children.

“It’s fine to refer to children as innocent but some people don’t see them that way,” she said. Her lifelike portrait of a little girl and her teddy bear was already somber when The Columbian visited; Tran’s plan was to add the final thematic touch by surrounding the painting with a high fence.

Giselda Medina, 17, went right to the heart of the matter: she sketched a child Islamic State solider. But then she wondered if that was “too aggressive,” and decided to portray other children around the world. But their situations are also troubled: they are struggling to survive by carrying water and selling knickknacks on the street. One is an African boy taking a bath in a bowl of water; he lives in poverty, Medina said, but in his innocence he doesn’t realize it.

Marta Larson, 17, combined the Syrian refugee crisis with her own family’s migration story. Larson’s diorama of a little paper boat crossing deep water is inside a well-preserved trunk that her great-grandmother brought from Wisconsin to Washington state and may have used — nobody is sure — on her earlier journey, from Norway to Wisconsin.

Look down below the plastic water to discover Syrian family snapshots at the bottom of the sea. You make paper boats when you’re an innocent child, Larson said. Then you grow up and realize what’s really at stake for people who make such a journey. The refugees from Syria have no other options, Larson said.

“They are risking their lives and leaving everything behind,” she said.