Rebecca Lee
Reporter

The Main Hall was crowded with gray display panels and white blocks, exhibiting papier-mâché masks, oil pastel paintings, sculptures of goddesses and other colorful art pieces for the annual Four School Art Show May 9–20.

“My concentration is about society affecting childhood development,” senior Chloe Look said about her art work this year. “[The girl in my piece] was in a stage in her life when she was between adolescence and adulthood and I tried depicting the confusion that she felt in that period.”

Look, an AP Studio Art student, used Prisma markers to create a drawing of a girl wearing a red dress with a green teddy bear floating down by a pink parachute. The artwork’s background is composed of contrasting, bright buildings.

“In all three of my pieces I put in some spray paint aspects,” SHHS junior Harry Conrad said. “I used digital pictures to set a scene and then I spray painted it to add effects and personality.”

Conrad’s artwork is a collaboration of digitally enhanced graphics of skeletal body parts, with solid black and white backgrounds dividing the image. Conrad gave the piece color by adding gray and red spray paint streaks throughout the white half of it.

Some art classes created pieces centered around a theme selected by their teacher while advanced students were given more flexibility in the subject of their work and its medium. AP Studio Art and Advanced Portfolio students decide to work in one media but can use various materials. Pieces were chosen based on each student’s concentration, according to art teacher Rachel McIntire.

Art teacher Clare Szydlowski gave her Honors Art II class the topic of “zooming in and zooming out” — using digital manipulation to explore an idea or image further. Honors Art students incorporated the idea of repeating patterns.

“The idea of repeating patterns is that it’s a single unit that is repeated over and over in Photoshop,” Szydlowski said. “The image then has a greater impact on its audience and sometimes its meaning changes.”

The Four School Art Show began 24 years ago as a CES–only exhibit and the following year CHS joined. SHB was incorporated into the exhibition a few years later and then SHHS in 2000, according to CES art teacher Robert Windel.

“I wanted to create a show that celebrated every student,” Windel said. “It represents every student, every year.”

Only one or two students’ work was highlighted before the Four School Art Show, according to Windel.

“I like how I can share my artistic ability with the community,” CES seventh grader Mara Sylvia said.

Sylvia’s piece is an acrylic oil painting composed mainly of cool blues and grays, depicting a cascade of cliffs over a body of water with the full moon in the sky. The art work is inspired by neo-impressionist Anna Rosalie Boch, according to Sylvia.

“It is encouraging for the students, and it’s great that they get recognition for what they created,” Szydlowski said. “I’ve been privileged to hear the opinions of other teachers who are thrilled by the students’ artistic ability.”