HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2003-04-09, Page 25THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2003. PAGE 25.
AMDSB trustees acknowledge retirees
- By Stew Slater
Special to The Citizen
While carrying out their normally
routine approvals for retirements,
resignations and new hires, trustees
of the Avon Maitland District School
Board occasionally highlight a
teacher, principal or staff person
whose name crosses their desk under
the generic title of “staff
adjustments.” Such was the case at a
regular board meeting Tuesday,
March 25.
Included on that meeting’s staff
adjustments were the retirements of
teacher Jim Workman, former
Mitchell District High School
principal Gwen Bestard, and Ontario
Secondary School Teachers
Stratford Gallery exhibit opens
The 2003 Lawson Killer Perth
Huron exhibition features the works
of four artists from Peith and Huron
counties. It is curated by Gallery
Stratford Director / Curator Robert
Windrum.
Works by Matthew Jones
(Stratford), Margaret Pryde
(Stratford), Robert Skipper
(Stratford) and Linda Wiebe
(Goderich) are brought together
under the title The Sum of the Parts.
The exhibition opens Sunday, April
6 at 2 p.m. and continues until
Sunday, May 4.
On show concurrently with The
Sum of the Parts is 40 Years of
Photos: Juried Salon Exhibition
Celebrating Stratford Camera Club’s
40th anniversary.
The Sum of the Parts looks at
artists/craftspeople whose sensitivity
to materials and their assemblage
results in works where the final
product is something greater than the
Federation (OSSTF) local president
Bill Huzar.
Workman is well-known in the
district for, over the course of many
years, bringing widespread
prominence and provincial success
to the girls’ field hockey team at
Exeter’s South Huron District High
School.
The retirement of Bestard,
meanwhile, is particularly
interesting at this time because she is
currently on leave from the board
and is employed by a private girls’
school in Kuwait. A recent article in
the Journal Argus newspaper from
St. Mary’s, where Bestard’s family
resides, explained that she stayed on
in the Persian Gulf nation until just
prior to the invasion of neighbouring
sum of the parts. Each
artist/craftsperson combines some
very basic materials, adding in their
creative sensibilities to produce
works which resonant with emotional
appeal, whimsy, warmth and sensual
presence.
Jones, a woodworker based in
Stratford, creates functional items
such as benches, lamps and screens.
Maintaining a simplicity, which
appears influenced by Asian and arts
and crafts movement sources, Jones
brings together shapes, materials,
wood grains and textures that lend
the items a presence that surpasses
their functionality. Pryde, a graduate
of the Furniture Design and
Construction program of Sheridan
College, said, “I went... to become
a furniture maker and somehow left
in 2000 an artist.”
This transition is evident in her
constructed works as they clearly
contain elements alluding to
Iraq by forces from the United States
and Britain.
She then caught a last-minute
flight to England.
“Gwen has chosen to retire from
the board and continue her
international career,” explained
Education Superintendent Geoff
Williams.
From the over-all perspective the
school board, however, the
retirement of Huzar is probably most
significant of the three.
In an interview, the veteran
OSSTF supporter explained he’ll
have lots to keep himself busy after
he retires June 30, including
community theatre in Goderich,
church involvement, and his position
as secretary treasurer of the
function, but also have a strong
sculptural presence as well.
Using found objects in
combination with more traditional
construction materials, her work aims
to “change the viewers way of
interacting with utilitarian objects.”
Skipper has been working full-time
as an artist for the past 36 years. He
has developed a visual vocabulary of
1,500 molds of objects used in
combination to create painted relief
works. Referencing architecture,
landscape and narrative the works
featured in The Sum of the Parts tend
to have a brooding melancholy
stemming from the motif of “arrivals
and departures - of animals, people,
dreams, memories. . .”
Skipper lives and works in
Stratford and has shown in galleries
in Ontario, Quebec and Florida.
Wiebe, a resident of Goderich,
graduated in 1990 with a Bachelor of
Art from McMaster University. The
Consumers Council of Canada.
Huzar began his teaching career in
Sault Ste. Marie in 1975, and two
years later he became the OSSTF’s
chief negotiator in that northern
Ontario district. In 1984, he became
involved with the union’s provincial
organization, and then moved to the
Goderich area after accepting a
teaching position with the former
Huron County Board of Education in
1987.
Under present-day OSSTF/Avon
Maitland agreements, there are two
union employees who are granted
leave to discontinue their teaching
activities and work with the union
full-time. Huzar, who has been
elected president for four
consecutive one-year terms, is one
brightly-coloured works included in
the exhibition “reflect the subjective
experience of everyday life - in and
out of the natural world as well as the
world of dream.”
Constructing “signposts to engage
the viewer in personal soul memory”,
Wiebe uses found and transformed
objects, cast paper, fabric,
photographs and paint. The resulting
constructions are exuberant in colour
and intriguing in form.
Words and familiar objects,
recognizable structures and
anthropomorphic forms interact with
each other in the surreal space
contained within the shadowbox
frames.
Admission to Gallery Stratford is
Adults $5, Seniors and Students $4,
children under 12 and Gallery
Stratford Members are free. Gallery
Stratford hours are Tuesday to
Sunday, 1 p.m. - 4 p.m. and Saturday
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
of those. The other is a non-elected
position as Federation Officer.
Technically, both remain teaching
employees and are paid by the
board.
However, the OSSTF reimburses
the board for those expenses.
There are five-other one-year
elected positions within the Avon
Maitland local of the union, but
those people all continue teaching.
Those positions — two vice
presidents, secretary, treasurer, and
president of the union’s support staff
group — will be up for renewal
along with the election of a new
president at the union’s annual
meeting in May.
“It has been a wonderful
experience and I certainly have
appreciated the support of all the
members in the district,” commented
Huzar, when asked about his four
years as union local president.
Avon Maitland secondary school
teachers, under Huzar’s leadership,
are currently on work-to-rule with
Window
broken in
Brussels
storefront
On March 23 at 10 a.m. a break-in
was reported to an empty business on
Tumberry Street in Brussels. The
business had been empty for over a
year. Someone smashed the glass out
of the bottom section of the front
door.
Stolen from the front was a
ceramic unicom.
Anyone with information is asked
to call the OPP or Crime Stoppers.
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