Visual Arts

If 2020 taught us the character strengths of resilience and perseverance, 2021 made us learn the character strength of gratitude. As a department we are so grateful for the work put in by the students, families and staff at Mazenod College. We were very lucky to open the doors of 2021 into a brand new refurbished facility. We now have a space that caters for 28 students across a design studio, computer lab as well as a state-of-the-art Creative Digital Media room featuring a green screen room. We are extremely grateful to Mazenod College and have seen a huge improvement in student engagement and interaction as a result. The new facilities have inspired our students to be creative thinkers and to achieve outstanding works as you will see throughout the Mazenodian in the Visual Arts pages.

We were very fortunate to showcase student work from Year 7 to 12 in two exhibitions this year. The first was during Term 1 at the Catholic Arts Exhibition in East Richmond and the second in Term 2 at the ACC Art and Technology Exhibition held at Federation Square. It was a real delight to see so many outstanding works hung up and viewed in such prestigious locations. Many thanks to Paddy McKenna for facilitating the running of the event at Federation Square.

On behalf of the Visual Arts department we would like to thank Nicholas Burgos for being the Art Technician for the past two years. We are very grateful for all your help from organising stock, assisting with classes to framing for our pending exhibition. We wish you all the very best with the rest of your RMIT Architecture degree.

Also, I would personally like to thank John McCabe, Steve Emmett and Nicole Wong for all their efforts with remote learning. It is not easy to teach a visual subject via a digital platform, however through team work, support and encouragement we have been able to create new, alternative or modified tasks, allowing our students to continue to grow and develop both manual and digital skills. Despite being offsite, students have still been able to send files through and utilise the resources at school such as laser cutting and 3D printing in order to take their conceptual ideas from paper and create 3D versions of their creations. We are excited to be able to share this with them when they return.

Towards the end of the year, the rest of the Visual Arts faculty will undergo a new look so that students from Year 7 to 12 are exposed to industry standards. We would like to thank everyone involved as it is a huge undertaking and requires “lots of hands to make light work”. The Year 12 students are to be congratulated for all their hard work with folios and final presentations and we wish them all the very best with their pending exams and applications for further studies.

Rimma Campos Head of Faculty