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Date: 1/11/2023
LONGMEADOW – The Betty Ann Lowe Room at the Richard Salter Storrs Library often hosts art exhibits, but this January, the art is the work of Longmeadow High School (LHS) art students.
The students in two 11th grade honors art classes participated in the exhibit. The digital art and photography students, taught by teacher Deborah Callahan, chose their favorite piece of art from the semester to feature. Callahan said some students chose a photograph they had taken to display as it was, while others chose to “highly manipulate,” their source material.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Mitchell’s Drawing and Painting students were given a prompt for the piece. They were told their art should use ambiguity in representing a person, place or thing that has meaning for them.
Student Mia Bombard explained her choice of colored pencils as a medium was intentional. “I wanted the fuzzy effect because mine was about memories,” she said of her drawing, which features herself and her brother as young children.
“I like putting 3D elements in my work,” student Emily Soto Feliciano, who used fabric to highlight a Puerto Rican flag in her work. “I want it to pop out. I want people to want to touch it.”
Amalia Rodriques said she used an app called ProCreate to compare her ink and acrylic painting with the photo she used as inspiration and see the ways she needed to adjust her depiction of her grandfather to look more lifelike. Bombard also used the app when creating her work.
“I didn’t tell them to use ProCreate. They did that on their own,” Mitchell said. “We’re living in such a digital world. It’s natural for them” to use technology in their art.
The students worked on their pieces for about three weeks. Over that time there were some false starts and they learned how to change mediums or techniques to get better results.
“Next time, I would probably not use ink,” because it was hard to control the lines bleeding, Rodriques said. Soto Feliciano said she scrapped her first canvas after a week and started from scratch.
Mitchell said the students’ skills are developed over their high school careers. “We start with skills, but we talk about the reason people make art,” she said. Callahan added, “You’re a communicator and you’re being communicated to. You are impacted by other works. It’s easier to be good at the skills, but harder to know what they want to say. And they have to say it.”
This is not the first time LHS has partnered with Storrs Library to show student art. Callahan said the library reached out to the school in 2017 to arrange an exhibit, which was spearheaded by now-retired art teacher Hilary Godin. Restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic paused such collaborations. This is the first time since the restrictions were lifted that the LHS students have been able to show their art in public.
Callahan said the exhibit was limited to the juniors’ 2D Art and Digital Design honors classes for a few reasons. The Advanced Placement art students will have a show of their own in the spring and a show at the end of the year will feature the wider art department. The juniors’ level sculpture students were not included because the venue does not have enough space.
Another reason to focus of the honors level art students is that they are at a place in their education that their art is less “teacher-directed,” Mitchell noted. Callahan said, “Juniors are an interesting age level.” Providing an outlet for their art at their age encourages their confidence and expectations of themselves, she said.
The student artwork, which is on display through Jan. 31, has already intrigued users of the library. A patron even expressed interest in purchasing one of the pieces.
“It’s cool. It’s nice to have artwork outside the school,” said Bombard. Rodriques agreed. “We do class critiques, but I think it’s cool to have other people seeing it and what they think.”
The students considered that the audience’s interpretation of their work may not match their intentions. The art had been displayed at the school before moving to Storrs Library. Rodriques said people viewing her work thought it was meant to depict her father, rather than her grandfather, who had recently died. “It doesn’t really have the same meaning if people think it’s my dad,” she said.
Similarly, Soto Feliciano said the audience at the school had focused on the image of a brain at the center of the painting and missed that the entire piece was supposed to resemble a postcard. Her work was an homage to her recently deceased uncle.
Nonetheless, the three students felt the experience was a good one, partly because the goal of an exhibit gave them a purpose to work toward. “Usually, when I work on my own, I never finish,” Bombard said. Rodriques agreed and said she will get bored and move on to something else. They agreed that the exhibit had a positive impact on them as artists.
“I probably wouldn’t go to an art school...” Rodriques said.
Soto Feliciano interjected, “I want to go to an art school.”
Rodriques continued, “... but I would still want to keep [making art].”
Bombard agreed, “Yeah, like, in college.”
A reception for the student artists and their families will be hosted in the Betty Ann Lowe Room at Storrs Library on Jan. 12 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.