By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
BGHS artists & teachers take trip down memory lane.
The annual Bowling Green High School Senior Studio Art Show is a trip down memory lane for both the graduates and the teachers.
As the students gathered and selected work to display in the annual senior art show, they remember when they were created it and why, said Nikki Myers, high school art teacher. Brings back memories for the teachers as well.
(Photo provided)
She was speaking in the middle bustle Tuesday (5/14/24) with the 14 graduates talking about their work to family, friends, and casual viewers in the atrium of the Performing Arts Center. This is a sampling of the work created over a four-year sequence, guided by Myers, Lloyd Triggs, and Regina Hilton.
The start of that memory lane, Myers recalled, was 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. So, these artists started at home. They were in class for the last quarter of that school year, and back full time in September. Now it’s feeling like something like normal.
One of the graduating artists, Raeya Powers-Kantorski said, that her love of art grew during the lockdown. She spent more time drawing. She saw how much her art was improving.
Her preferred medium is pencil on paper, but for “The Sanctified Beast,” a large drawing that’s her favorite, she wanted darker lines, so she used charcoal.
She’s planning to take some time off after graduation. Eventually she’d like to work in the video game industry.
Teachers challenge students as they progress through high school to go outside their artistic comfort zones by requiring them to learn a variety of media. The displays included drawings, prints, paintings, ceramics, graphic designs, and metals.
Caitlin Lee, who favors painting and drawing, created a wood cut print, of a rustic cabin. “It was fun to explore a new medium, a new process,” she said.
The art program pushes students, she said, to discover different materials, and styles, and subjects. This provides a solid foundation as she heads to the University of Cincinnati to study cinematography.
“We want them to put their own personalities into the pieces,” Myers said.
That comes through even in the metal work created on the assigned theme of Bowling Green history to mark the city’s 200th anniversary in 2033. The art teachers have set out to have students produced 200 works of art before then.
This year those pieces needed to use metal for at least half the material.
The assigned material will change each year, so that the final collection will showcase a variety of media, she said.
For a diptych she created, Elizabeth Tussing selected features she associates with the city. One celebrates the university, including references to Don Drumm’s mural on Jerome Library and a Starship delivery robot. The other features images of downtown – the clock dedicated to Alvie Perkins, the Cla-Zel sign, and the logo of the Black Swamp Arts Festival.
Her favorite work, though, reflects her love of still life paintings. Strawberries are spread across the canvas as if just spilled from a basket.
That piece, Tussing said, was in the Focus show last year at the Toledo Museum of Art.
(This year’s Focus exhibit. Which features the best work from high school students in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, will be in the Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery at BGSU from May 29 through July 31.)
Tussing plans to attend BGSU to study graphic design in the School of Technology, Architecture and Applied Science.
An example of her work in that vein is the poster for this year’s all-school musical, “The Addams Family.”
While Tussing, Lee, and Powers-Kantorski are planning to pursue art-related fields, most other students will not.
Still their art training over four years provides all students with valuable skills.
They learn, Myers said, to apply themselves to their work, and strive for quality. Working in a variety of material can be frustrating in that in demands learning new skills. That requires persistence.
Also, looking around the atrium where the students were conversing with viewers, she noted, it enhances their ability to communicate.
Other artists in the senior show are: James Den Besten, Juno Dean-Scheele, Mara Flegle, Allison Fry, Elena Hemming, Caleb Klinger, Kylee Knauss, Mishty Mallik, Sage Martinez, Alexandra Parish, Elizabeth Reger, Elizabeth Tussing, and Miriam Utz.
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Artists from Eastwood & BG among Congressional winners
As the winner of the Congressional Art Competition for the Fifth District, Charlotte Smith’s art will hang in a hallway in the U.S. Capitol complex where history has been made.
The Eastwood student’s earned that honor for a drawing of a woman who made history and did it while carrying a baby.
The top award and three honorable mentions were announced earlier this month. The art was shown during a reception in the Bryan Gallery in the BGSU School of Art. U.S. Rep. Bob Latta presented the awards.
Honorable mentions included Bowling Green High student Oliver Irvin’ s ‘Atomic Man,”Bowling Green High School, Faith Schneider, North Ridgeville High School, and Jayden Bennett, Upper Sandusky High School.
BGSU staff Matthew Kyba, curator of School of Art galleries, and curatorial assistants Matthew Bowlus and Precious Gyekye determined the winners.
Smith’s “Sacagawea and Her Babe” will be on display in the Capitol Complex. Latta said he notices members of Congress, congressional staff, and visitors pausing in the corridor where the art is displayed to appreciate the work.
The honorable mention art will be displayed in Latta’s district offices.
The students needed to select a historical subject. Smith said there were lots of presidents to pick from as a subject, but she was inspired by the story of Sacagawea. “She led Lewis and Clark on their expedition using everything she learned from her tribes and her family. That is dedication.”
Indigenous people are not well represented in fine art, she said.
She has also created portraits of her great grandmother, who had indigenous background, and her great grandfather who fought in World War II.
Smith is a sophomore. She has always loved to draw, but it was only when she moved to Ohio after her family had lived in Dubai that she found a support system. She credited Eastwood art teacher Jennifer Moorman for encouraging her.
Kyba said that the quality of the work in the show was more akin to an undergraduate show than a high school show. He praised Smith’s deft pointillistic technique. Smith said she used tiny strokes to capture the facial features of Sacagawea and her infant.
Latta, who presented the awards, said he did not possess any artistic talent, he encouraged the students who do to continue to pursue their art.
