Spring Art Gallery draws in student artists

The Spring Art Gallery showcased various pieces in the foyer of the Auditorium for students and staff from April 3 to 5.

Amongst the contestants were juniors Ashley Guan and Joshua Yuan and senior Tim Xu, who created pieces that placed as the top three finalists of the art gallery. Honorable mentions include pieces by junior Joshua Yuan and seniors Echo Dieu and Johanna Hernandez.

Xu recreated an oil pastel drawing originally created by Paul Cézanne as admiration for Cézanne’s unique art style and was voted first place. He plans to continue art past his graduation.

“I have an idea of becoming a product designer, but I won’t let go of my hobby of doing art,” Xu said. “I would like to have a mini gallery of my own art in my future home.”

Guan incorporated humorous elements into her art submission and placed second.

“It was an assignment from art teacher Ms. Jung, and I was supposed to make a parody of a famous painting,” Guan said. “I chose ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring.’ I got the idea of using Kermit [the Frog] because he reminded me of my friend, who really liked Kermit.”

Working on his piece for about seven hours in art class, Yuan drew a skull as the main focus of his still life submission.

“The skull was one of [pieces that] drew me in because it was a technically difficult item to draw,” Yuan said. “It also has this representation of the balance between death and life, which I thought was interesting.”

The biannual art gallery originally was a display of artwork by Art Club members in art teacher Karen Keller’s classroom one day of the year. The event has since extended art submissions to students outside of Art Club. The various voices demonstrated through the gallery is the reason why Keller believes the event is necessary and beneficial to students.

“It gives a platform [to] student artists, otherwise they don’t really have a platform—other than the little bits in one class here or there,” Keller said. “This year, I’ve seen a lot more students come through [and with] so many different art styles.”