Cray Cray Yay Yay, George Grant Mackay!

Good morning and hello,

This is my first post of a soon to be weekend blog grind due to the recent completion of 3 projects to end this grade 10 year. Anyways let’s begin this first post with the end of the most recent project which also happens to be our year end exhibition project. Welcome to “Cray Cray Yay Yay!”

Let’s first talk a bit about what this project was all about and what our end goal was. As stated before, this was an exhibition project meaning that we would be presenting whatever work we created to an open audience both related and not-related to PLP; however what exactly were we presenting.

Cray Cray Yay Yay is a projected based on a old apple ad called “Here’s to The Crazy Ones”  and is all about this concept of crazy people who have left positive change on their communities. For the grades 10s, 11s and 12s, we first had to learn about different communities and what defines them. We then looked at different people throughout history who have impacted their communities for the better and we did this to first understand what we would be making. After a few weeks of learning and analyzing video texts, we each begun to chose our own individual impact makers who specifically changed our North Vancouver community. We would be making a “portrait”, an artistic representation of them that should capture their mood and impact so this could mean each of us could presenting things very different from our neighbors.

Ultimately, I chose a man named George Grant Mackay, the original builder of the Capilano Suspension Bridge as I felt his unintentionally popular creation had greatly left its mark from its beginning in 1889 all the way to the steel cable bridge that stands as a North Vancouver special today. Here is my draft portrait and original research:

Click me!

I chose to modify my draft due to the lack of symbolism and after some thought, I decided to center my portrait around this idea of “accidental” impact maker. Someone who did something not to impact their communities but due to chance, ultimately leave their mark. I did this through incorporating the North Vancouver flag colors while trying to bring out the colorful bridge and background to make this symbol of great “legacy”. Here is the final piece:

After completing, our portraits and research, the day of the exhibition came. Before this we had also decided on themes to separate our various community makers. My community maker was a bit hard due to his lack of intention but I ultimately settled on the ‘business’  section as the Capilano Bridge today is run by a private company that brings profit to this North Van community. I set up my digital art pieces along with some QR codes for more and information and soon, I was ready. Here are some pictures of my setup and the exhibition as a whole:

Thanks for reading till the end and see you very soon in my upcoming tPOL blog post coming soon!

Sincerely,

Jordan

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