UOIT exhibits artwork of local high school students

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) recently hosted From the Fridge to the Fringe, an art show featuring the work of grade 11 and 12 students from Monsignor Paul Dwyer Catholic High School in Oshawa, Ontario.

This is the fourth year the university’s 61 Charles Street Building has hosted the event. Focusing on the work of graduating students, the exhibit is based on the idea of moving from the security of the support received at home, out into the community where artists attempt to establish themselves in the public eye. Although Paul Dwyer students are the main participants, in previous years other high schools from Oshawa and Whitby, Ontario have also shown their students’ work at this event. 

As a Visual Arts teacher at Paul Dwyer, Steve Longauer encourages his students to assume pride of ownership in their roles as artists, both at school and in the community. Since 1997, Paul Dwyer Visual Arts students have pursued this goal by displaying their art in many different upper-storey and street-level empty spaces in the downtown Oshawa core.

“When the 61 Charles Street Building opened, merging Oshawa’s industrial heritage architecture with forward-thinking philosophies of our new university, I saw the perfect opportunity to make our artistic heritage and artistic future a part of this partnership,” he said. “The building provides a distinctively professional setting, where the architecture represents the reshaping of Oshawa’s past culture with its future growth.”

Through displaying their art at UOIT, the students feel a tangible extension of support from the university. “The event brings students and their families into the UOIT environment, and encourages them to feel as if these spaces are their own,” he explained. “The more the university connects with the arts, the more visibly it can identify with Oshawa’s cultural past.”

UOIT has hosted other art events at 61 Charles Street the past, including the Oshawa Space Invaders Art Festival in September and October 2013.

“UOIT is committed to supporting local high schools in developing students across all academic disciplines,” said Joe Stokes, Associate Registrar, Enrolment Services. “Education in the fine arts is an important aspect in many of the program offerings at UOIT, such as the Digital Media specialization in our Computing Science program, and our Communication program. We are happy to support culture and the arts within our community, and events such as the Fridge to the Fringe Art show contribute to the City of Oshawa’s plan to create vibrant places and promote access and inclusion to broader cultural life.”

• Link to Oshawa’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Plan