Local Grade 12 LCI student Konnor Russell has been awarded the Southern Alberta Art Gallery’s Curator’s Pick Award, and the young artist also received honourable mention for a 2D Award of Merit.
SAAG’s Art’s Alive and Well in the Schools is an exhibit featuring artwork from Lethbridge and area K-12 students.
“It was really cool. It was such a great experience,” said the first-time entrant.
Russell’s award-winning piece is entitled, The Trip and is themed around the “trippy” 1970s art he saw on Instagram. “These cool posters that hung up at music festivals and a bunch of those old stoner movies from the early 2000s like ‘Harold and Kumar.’ I was inspired to create this psychedelic pencil crayon drawing.”
According to Russell, he likes working with pencils, pencil crayons, and ink. “I’m not a huge painter, but I’ve dabbled in watercolour. Oil paints I’ve done, but I’m not great at it. I like trying out new stuff like collage.”
Over the summer, Russell hopes to enter more artwork to the Gallery.
“I’m going to try to expand. I might try to see if I can learn how to paint better, so maybe I can do some cool stuff on bigger canvases,” he noted.
It’s a huge honour winning the award, Russell added. “I couldn’t believe it when I won it. Being in the Gallery is pretty crazy. It’s such a cool thing to experience. Having something in a gallery is really uplifting and it makes me want to do more.”
Now in its 49th year, the Art’s Alive exhibit has exhibited nearly 17,000 pieces over the decades.
(Photo submitted)
