This year at Christmas, all the stars fell perfectly in line. I was actually scheduled to teach Special Events during the holiday season!
The Winter 2015 Day group, the majority of whom were not even in Canada this time last year, got the hands on experience of decorating two locations this year for the holidays. The Resurrection Centre church in Lachine and the NOVA Career Centre.
The project at the Resurrection Centre Church was presented to me by Mrs. Simona McDonald from our NOVA Tool Shop. The students had the realistic challenge of having to work with boxes and boxes of decorations from years past, along with the challenge of a very large space to decorate. But of course the students are up for every challenge and the clients were very happy with our installation.
This year we also requested the job of decorating of the NOVA Student Lounge from the Student Council (sorry gang). It was an excellent opportunity as it gave the students the experience of visiting and measuring the site in person. They created plans using Google Sketch up, the design program I’ve recently added to our curriculum. I also challenged them to re-imagine and reinvent props we already had in our shop, which is a very valuable skill for a Visual Display Artist to have. The students work was so beautiful I could not help but share the decorations with all the departments around the entire centre!
Each of the 19 students presented their designs and we collaborated to create our final design. All the Christmas balls hung around NOVA where originally painted bright pastel colours and the larger ones are actually hula-hoops with stretched canvas stapled to them. The stained glass effect is created using shavings from wax crayons, wax paper and poster boards. The branches came off a tree which was destined for the garbage and the materials we used where scraps. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, REINVENT! That’s what we’re practising over here in the IDD department.
Visit us on Facebook at nfsb.me/decor or Intagram @novavisualsidd
Happy Holidays and all the best in the 2016!
Amanda Lemay
Teacher (Interior Decorating and Visual Display program)