It’s become an annual affair – live symphonic and choral music wafting into the rafters, some biscotti, works of art, from pencil sketches and oils to ceramics and wild papier-mache masks, at every turn. Try not to trip over the admiring parents.
This was the eighth year of East Lyme High EXPO, an annual event designed to showcase the arts at the high school. On a very rainy evening last week, it was sort of like SoHo meets the soggy lacrosse team, neither of which would let a gully washer stop their fun.
For at least 24 hours, the central commons of East Lyme High became an art show. The works of 75 students were mounted of wheeling panels and rolled out for the grand showing. More paintings and photography were hung on walls. At one end, the advanced students, in AP arts classes, displayed collections of their works.
“It started nine years ago when I was hired as one of the arts teachers,” said Rachel Michaud, Advance Placement (AP) fine arts teacher, who let her new administrators know that she has a passion for displaying artwork. The whole school had been renovated, so she decided to start the show by putting art all over the building. The event has gone on every year since, except one when Michaud was on maternity leave.
“This is a great opportunity where a lot of students who don’t get recognized will be here by displaying their work,” she said. “It gives them a self confidence and encouragement to appreciate what they do in the arts.”
Each of the school’s four art teachers take responsibility for picking out and displaying work from each of their classes. Nancy Henchey teaches photography and art history and Michael Elias has been teaching ceramics and crafts, filling in for Eloise Gada, who returns next year.
The suspense of the evening was the unveiling of Notes and Sketches 2008, A Portable Fine Arts Exhibit, 24-page magazine of the best student works of art over the past year. Aside from the handful of students and teachers who had been working on the publication, the final composition and whose works got published was a surprise.
“It is the best of the best,” James Warykas, art teacher and magazine advisor, told the crowd of students, their families and friends before each artist was called up and got to see their works in print. “The artwork is from ninth to twelfth grade, the only requirement is talent.”
The idea of the art magazine came from realizing that people needed something they could carry around and enjoy looking at long after the show, he said. The glossy magazine also is a good tool to publicize the art department.
“So we decided to go big,” he said.
Although the teachers have been collecting works from students over the previous year, they work to be objective, he said, masking the artists’ names until the final selections are made. Meanwhile, the student editors had to digitally photograph every piece of art, design the layout and decide which pieces made the final cut. This, in itself, is a good learning process for students interested in graphic arts and publications.
“Sometimes the artwork is great and it doesn’t photograph well; other times it doesn’t look great but it photographs well,” he said. “Finally, it has to fit in. Right up to the last minute, somebody’s piece gets replaced or changed. Then the names are added. We’re as surprised by the final outcome as you are.”
The editors in chief this year were Erin Boettcher, senior, and Jacob Leiser, junior, also was computer layout editor. He will be editor next year . Other editors were Amber Pero associate editor and ceramics/crafts editor; Catie Carernon and Taylor Lynch, art editors; Emily Larcombe, photography editor, Ramona Ostrowski, writing editor, and Alyssa Skiba, music editor. AP art students and Carmin Ladipo and several of the editors were digital photographers.
The magazine includes music composed by students, who also had a chance to perform their pieces at the expo.
A full page of the magazine was dedicated to several works by Taylor Lynch, a senior. The AP arts student plans to attend major in studio arts at UConn and hopes to get her masters in fine arts and minor in education so she can teach.
“I like to paint people,” Lynch said. “My concentration was taking human forms and kind of influencing their image for what I though they should look like, so their skin tones are painted in extreme color, or their bodies and limbs are elongated.”
For a class assignment to do a political painting, she chose to do a woman from the Middle East. It’s not clear which religion or ethnic group the woman and her baby are.
“She’s in a hospital, but it is basically a tent. I thought it was a strong picture,” said Lynch, who based the composite drawing on photos she saw in the newspaper.
James Gordy, junior, who plays defensive end, fullback and kicker, hopes for football scholarships and plans to major in physical education, proved that jocks can be artists, too. When his ceramics class was assigned to make piggy banks, he created and glazed one that looks like an elephant.
“I was pretty proud to get in the magazine,” he said. “I had no idea it was going to be picked. They sent a letter to my home to let me know my work was going to be in it.”
This was the second year for Gabby Robertson, 15, a sophomore, to be in the magazine. The school’s photography classes work with film, which is becoming a rarity in this digital age. She took a photo of fellow classmate, Ryann Foulke, lightheartedly twirling an umbrella.
Musical performances during the expo were provided by the Nick Wrobel Jazz Combo, Alex and Nick, pianist Joshua Brown and the East Lyme High jazz sextet, chamber singers and string quartet. The school’s culinary arts classes made a variety of biscotti.
Each of the student artists with a work featured in the magazine was presented a copy. Additional copies can be purchased at the East Lyme High School for $3 each.