Volume 57 Number 4
Friday, January 27, 2017
Thompson, Manitoba
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Art display at museum the first solo for a student BY IAN GRAHAM EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
The featured local artist at the Heritage North Museum in January was distinct from the others who have put on shows there, not because of the medium she works in but because of her age. Adira Carter, 14, has a collection of photographs, paintings and a clay sculpture up at the museum. She is the first student to have a solo show at Heritage North, though there have been student art collections in the past. “It’s really cool,” says Carter, who is homeschooled. “I’ve seen the guest book and now there’s more names that are in there and I’m like, ‘Wow, people have been here and they’ve seen all this.’ It’s really interesting to think about people liking everything that you do.” Carter was inspired to put her name forward as a potential featured artist at the museum by a poster she saw. “They pick the 12 artists for the whole year,” Carter explains. “Everyone said submit a portfolio with at least 15 pieces of artwork in it that they’d done and they picked me for January. I was really excited about that.” Carter’s interest in the arts began with painting when she was eight years old or so. “One of my first paintings I did was with my mom,” Carter says. “She helped me paint a fish for my grandpa and that was when I really started getting into a bunch of different kinds of art. I like to draw a lot, too. I always had sketchbooks everywhere I went.” Her artistic interests
Nickel Belt News photo by Ian Graham Fourteen-year-old Adira Carter’s art show at Thompson’s Heritage North Museum in January marked the facility’s first solo show for a student. widened several years ago when she got a digital camera at a garage sale. “I started taking pictures of everything,” she said, a habit that only intensified when she got a Sony digital camera a couple of Christmases ago. “I took a lot of pictures then because I had my new camera.” Now she also takes pictures with her iPhone, a few examples of which are among the 26 pieces Carter has on display at the museum. This isn’t the first time she’s seen her art hanging on a wall where people could see it. Carter has en-
tered pieces into the Northern Juried Art Show the past three years, earning a third-place award the first time, a second-place award in Gillam the year after that and first in the older youth category at the show in The Pas last year, where she also received the Call of the North award. “I was really happy,” she says of last year’s recognition, particularly because she was there to receive it in person. “We actually got to go that time. The year before I didn’t go because it was in Gillam.” Most of Carter’s work on display at the museum
consists of photographs, though she doesn’t actually have a favourite medium to work in. She does, however, have a favourite photo. “My favourite is definitely ‘Sapphire,’” she says. “It’s of my friend’s husky. I took it when I was watching the dogs for her because she was away for a while. I took it over the fence. I put my camera up. I couldn’t see the screen. I shot the picture and it turned out really good.” Carter is not one to take dozens of shots of a particular subject, saying she usually doesn’t take more
than five frames of anything except maybe a sunset from different angles on her street. And like all photographers, she can recall examples of the ones that got away. “One day we were at the soccer field and there was this cloud,” she remembers. “I really wanted to take a picture of it so I could draw what I saw but I didn’t have the camera and I was just really upset about that.” Part of the fun of having her own show was setting up her artwork along with her mom and her grandpa. “We volunteer for the art
show here, the Festival of the Arts here, and I’ve always helped set up with that but I’ve never done all my own stuff,” she said. Though she only had a few paintings on display at the Heritage North Museum, Carter has many more at home. “All the paintings I’ve done, I’ve hung them up on one wall and it’s almost full,” she says. “I really want to finish that.” And what does she have planned when that day comes? “Maybe take it all down and start another one,” she suggests.
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