Art equipment was scattered across tables and hands were smothered in clay and paint as Art Magnet students worked quietly at their tables, layering paint, shaping sculptures and adjusting sketches. With the Feburary 6 deadline coming soon, they were building artworks they hoped would score high with jurors.
Art Magnet students are participating in the annual Visual Arts Scholastic Event (VASE), a statewide competition where students submit original artwork and interview with a judge.
Vase works like a UIL-style evaluation and requires students to use only their own sources for art submission. Students design their own artworks and then choose if they want to submit them.
“Each one kind of reflects each individual students kind of artistic expression,” art teacher William Sanders said.
Sophomore Nala Taylor said her artwork is a personal painting of a figure with wings flying into the sky. She said her inspiration for the piece comes from a rough summer she had.
“It is very personal, but I decided that instead of just being sad about it or reminiscing about the subject being difficult, I should make it into a painting,” Taylor said.
Balancing school, band and art has made the process difficult for Taylor, but she found time to work on her artwork at home during school breaks and made substantial progress. She also works on her artwork once or twice a week leading up to the deadline.
Junior Daisy Huerta is built a wasp sculpture made from old technology parts. She pulled, breaked and ripped apart circuit boards, filing them down and gluing them together with detail. She finished making her wasp, and now she’s working on the nest.
“I’m a little nervous to see if I’m going to finish in time,” Huerta said.
Junior Lyzette Carmond is creating a sculpture based on an original character she designed. She said the piece represents a symbolic connection between them. The sculpture seems to made out of UV resign and clay portraying a giant hand with an eye. She said the piece represents a symbolic connection between them.
“It is like a symbol of two of the characters [in] love,” Carmond said.
Carmond said she started the project by painting a white base and adding more layers of paint and colors over time.
Visual Art Magnet teacher Kate McKnight said VASE takes hard work and planning in order to place well.
“It takes a lot of time, our students are working on that right now for February,” McKnight said. “It’s probably the strictest of all the art competitions.”
McKnight also said VASE has challenging rules that students often overlook, such as using original sources.
“So if you’re drawing a picture of a giraffe, you’re gonna have to go to the zoo and photograph a giraffe, or you have to draw from memory,” McKnight said.
She said she hopes students gain confidence from presenting their work to outside judges.
“They are basically getting to talk to some stranger about their work,” McKnight said. “So they get that external validation which is great experience.”
