Finding Truth through Illusion: DP Arts Week 2024
“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
-Pablo Picasso
On Monday Night, as the lights illuminated the stage, as the sheet music shuffled on the stands, and as the last paintings were perfectly displayed on the wall, DP Arts Week blossomed like a flower in springtime, unfurling its captivating petals for an eager audience. At the event, Keystone High School students from DP Music, Theatre Arts, and Visual Arts all showcased their amazing productions they have been hard at work on for the past two years. As Keystone Drama Teacher, Mr. Joel Godiah explains, this celebration of all the different arts at the school ensures that “parents, teachers, students, and other members of our community are exposed to the power of the arts in commenting about the world around us.” This year’s DP Arts Week celebrated the creative visions of Keystone artists as they shared their own truths with the community.
This year’s DP Arts Week was all about discovering hidden truths through art, and the blending of truth and illusion. Each piece of art – be it the works of visual arts students or the performances of theatre and music students – held bits of truth about how the student artist perceived the world. Their choice of technique, instrument, or performative style depicted these truths in their own unique way, sometimes through a fine glaze of illusion. The duality of creative expression, a task that is both intensely personal but also related to the world around, is an important factor in all Keystone arts classes. The teachers at Keystone encourage students to focus on the creative process and thought behind each work beyond the artistic techniques themselves.
The music performances that rang out throughout DP Arts week with stupendous sounds were a culmination of the many different things Keystone DP Music students have been working on throughout the programme. The songs played by the Grade 11 and Grade 12 students were only a small representation of the research, creative, technical, and performative skills students have been hard at work on in class. This comprehensive approach to music classes creates greater meaning behind every note. “As far as our experience in our class is concerned, music (as art) created an opportunity to reflect and question their own beliefs, knowledge and understandings of the world,” explains Keystone Music Teacher Mr. Bernie Flores. “In so many ways, students discovered truths about themselves and the world.”
Monday night’s theatre performance generated a serenade of applause, giving meaning to all the hard work students had put in behind the scenes. “As an artist, your artwork is incomplete if it does not get experienced by an audience. It is like a break in the communication chain,” explains Mr. Godiah. DP Arts week gave theatre students the chance to connect with a captive audience, showcasing their artistry and expressing their creative ideas to others.
Walking through the visual art exhibition, audience members were greeted by an array of media, from canvases to fabrics and beyond. Each piece is display is unique, each piece full of a life and story of its own, passed on from creator to viewer. Before any of these conceptions came to life – before brush met canvas – the students faced the challenge of finding their own style, or their own “recognizable signature,” as Keystone Visual Arts Teacher Mr. Bolsyn Urmuzov explains. From the exhibition, it is clear that each student has done precisely that during their time in DP Visual Arts at Keystone.
The blend of styles shown off during DP Arts Week put a personal touch on every performance. Each note sang or played, each line delivered, and each piece displayed in the gallery resonated with a student’s personal truth. As Mr. Urmuzov describes, “life is an incredibly complex, intricate and nuanced phenomenon, and art serves as a tool that enables us to observe and understand a subject or object from our unique perspectives, interpreting its meaning through the lens of our life experiences, culture, religion, values, and principles.” The efforts of the Keystone DP students and teachers to curate such an amazing week of artistic celebration gave the whole community a new perspective – one where the lines between truth and illusion morph into an abstract painting that mirrors the everchanging world around us.
