This year’s Winter Art Show was full of different art forms and concepts. From freshmen to seniors, any art student can have their art presented. To understand more about each piece I spoke to threev art students about what they have on display.
First, Junior Tina Whaples and her self-portrait. It’s an acrylic paint piece that depicts a girl in shorts and a yellow tank top browsing records at a music store. Whaples said that she is most proud of the “anatomy like body shapes and hands and such because I hadn’t really drawn that. But I think that this painting came out really well”. She acknowledged that she would like to continue improving on that aspect. Whaples did an excellent job on the shading, perspective and proportions.
Secondly, Britta Lynch made a ceramic piece. It’s a 2 layer shelf, on the bottom is a bench and in the background, we can see a dark blue night sky with a tree trunk and a tire swing hanging from a rope off of its branch. Atop the tree canopy, on the second level, a tent and campfire rest. There are fairy lights around the edge of the piece and inside the tent, the whole thing sits atop a bed of dirt. Lynch said, “Yeah, so basically, when we were younger, we spent like most of our time outside and, I feel like that’s where a lot of our memories were created”. “I think about the things that, hold value to me and then kind of see what I could make with them and what can be interpreted” Lynch said.
The arts are an important part of school and its curriculum, it can be an escape for many students, plus having many psychological benefits. A Study conducted in Houston Public Schools found that students who participated in Art had Improved writing achievement, Reduced disciplinary infractions, More student engagement, Improved college aspirations, and No drop in standardized test scores. Unfortunately, though the Nation’s report card found that depending on where you live, your ethnicity, or family income all impact how likely you are to take a visual arts course. However, this can change as a study done by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Public Administration found that by participating in arts even as an observer linked people to higher levels of civic engagement and social tolerance. This highlights the importance of exposing kids to art in early childhood.
Junior Norah Hicks was also involved in the art show. “I’m primarily like a digital artist. And this is like the first traditional piece I’ve done in like years.” Hicks said, “So the for this one, I did a digital sketch and then I printed that and then projected it onto the actual thing to use like a mechanical pencil to trace over and then I lined it using fine [marker] later.” She feels that digital art
“gives you a lot more creative freedom”. She said that “the composition is the thing that I’m most proud of because it’s very dense and I’ve never done anything like that with this sort of composition. It’s always a single or two characters that are kind of just standing around or posing or whatever. And I’m trying to reach out into other stuff”. This is the first piece Hicks has done that she is going to put into her AP portfolio. “The main idea of this is kind of the idea of like how life is very fragile because there’s all this with flowers. I want to use flowers specifically because like you can like just pull up like a flower or an animal can like come along and eat it or it can get like stepped on or run over or like eventually it’s going to get like cold and the flowers are going to die anyway, how fragile all that beauty is.” Hicks said. She felt this message mirrored her current life and struggles.
The art show was a great experience to gain an insight into the creative process and into people’s lives, and what art can mean to them. The winter art show may be over but there will be another one in the spring plus there are many concerts and other creative events going on. Stop by, or try something new, you just might learn a little something.
