Under normal circumstances, Head of Art and Design at MES, Mrs MacGregor, would be welcoming you to our real-life End of Year Art Exhibition in The Mary Erskine School this week. Sadly, due to the on-going pandemic, it has not been possible to host a real-life exhibition.
The event is always a highly anticipated date in the School diary, and allows us to showcase and celebrate the creative talents of our budding young artists and designers.
Keen to ensure that the efforts of her pupils did not go unrecognised this year, Mrs MacGregor would like to invite the ESMS community to a new Virtual MES Art Exhibition!
Mrs MacGregor explained that many of our art specialists were just a week or so away from sitting their final exams for GCSE, Higher and A Level, and due to submit their finished coursework to school for assessment, when lockdown came into force. Maintaining a positive attitude our pupils stopped what they were doing in school, calmly gathered up all of their work and took it home with them to finish off.
Since then, she has been in regular contact with classes via Firefly, email and MS Teams and after the first few weeks of settling into our 'new normal' pupils began to send in the most fantastic photographs of their completed school work.
Mrs MacGregor said "I have been so impressed by the level of commitment, focus and determination shown by our pupils. Nothing was going to get in the way of them finishing their art and design work this year, not even a deadly virus and global pandemic.
They have coped so well with these unprecedented circumstances and taken the challenges facing them in their stride."
Using a website called Artsteps, Mrs MacGregor decided to showcase their finished artwork via a virtual version of what the Art Department usually create in school at the end of the year, even re-creating the layout of the Department! Over the last few weeks Mrs MacGregor has been busy curating and hanging a full art and design exhibition for all to see.
Mrs MacGregor and the whole Department warmly invite you to take some time to look round this year's exhibition this year and see what our pupils have been working on, before and during lockdown. As usual, the team have tried to recognise and acknowledge the success of individual pupils in S1-S6 who they feel have particularly stood out this year by demonstrating creative and technical skills, commitment and progress.
Please follow this link to take a look around the exhibition. Please note that the virtual space is best experienced on a desktop computer or tablet.
