The school year may be winding down, but the schedule of year-end activities is filling up! One of the annual activities that everyone looks forward to is the Student Art Show, where Visual Arts students show off their art, painting, ceramics, and drawing projects. This year’s event took place May 13-May 15 in the Burroughs Multipurpose Room, allowing students the opportunity to share their creativity with their peers and members of the community.
Unlike other programs such as drama or music which hold multiple performances throughout the year, the Visual Arts program focuses on this culminating year-end showcase to highlight the year’s worth of work from Burroughs’ various art classrooms. The resulting event gives visitors an insightful look at the artistic process, from beginning students’ first interactions with the fundamentals to AP Art students’ nuanced portfolios. Subject matter ranged from the personal to the natural world to popular culture, and everything in between.
Ceramics student Amalie Gilham, a senior, said she is typically inspired by nature, but she also gets ideas simply from going through her day as a teenager at Burroughs.
“School has inspired me, from seeing others’ art and stress from class and living mainly,” said Gilham. Other works are more personal, such as the box for a ‘fear vessel’ assignment that was inspired by a box that held items from her childhood.
While many students turn to art as a creative outlet and break from academics, Art Department Chair Colleen Howell also acknowledged the art program’s ability to prepare students for life.
“Most people do not realize it, but art can be involved, literally, in almost every career,” said Howell. “[Even] if not directly the visual art portions of painting, drawing, and sculpture, most careers want creativity as a job skill. Examples of directly being involved include creating sketches for projects like engineering, architecture and so on. Indirectly, the visual arts task students with coming up with more than one way of doing things. This can be applied across nearly every profession and some of the most ‘successful’ individuals are those who can ‘think outside the box.’”
