Students Celebrate Their Talents at Art Exhibition
March 7, 2016
By: Jane Schmucker, Toledo Blade
March 7, 2016
Amid the collages and cast glass, the painted silks and photography, the embroidery and origami, was an exuberant Donna Hensley, her eyes darting again and again toward the entry way of the Ninth Congressional District’s Invitational Art Exhibition as she waited for her students to arrive.
Of six entries from Perkins High School in Sandusky, four had won awards and one was the overall winner, chosen from 78 pieces to hang in the U.S. Capitol as Ohio’s 9th District entry in the national Congressional Art Competition.
And her students didn’t know this yet.
“We’re just so excited!” Ms. Hensley said as she waited in the lobby of Fifth Third Center at One SeaGate downtown with her fellow Perkins art teacher, Mike Beuglass, on Sunday afternoon.
And when Josh Trout walked in with his parents, spotted his teacher, and was pointed toward his piece, labeled as the “Congressional Winner,” there was all the thrill, amazement, and hugs all around that Ms. Hensley must have anticipated.
Josh, 17, who says he’s always been an artist and dreams of a career as a museum curator, made his still life for a class assignment in Ms. Hensley’s Art III class. He got a perfect score on that assignment, and he was pleased with how the vase he drew with chalk looked like glass in the end. That didn’t happen on his first try, which was with pencil.
Chalk is Josh’s favorite medium and what he used for his entry in last year’s contest in which he won the Rudolph/?Libbe Inc. award. For this assignment though, he was aiming to broaden his skills when he tried pencil. But after about two hours work, he threw his drawing in the trash and started over with chalk, where he was able to achieve the contrast between light and dark that he envisioned.
“It’s so freeing,” Josh of Erie County’s Perkins Township said of his work with art. “You can do everything you want.”
He has every intention of making use of the two tickets presented by Southwest Airlines to fly to Washington for the reception this summer for Congressional Art Competition winners in the Capitol Visitors Center.
Josh was also presented with $150 cash award, which is more money than his favorite artist, Vincent van Gogh, often saw for his work.
The more than $2,100 in cash prizes that were presented to high school students in a ceremony in the One SeaGate auditorium is also far more money than many congressional districts award to their art contest winners, according to U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) who hosted the event.
Some districts, she said, do little more than choose one piece to hang in the Capitol Visitor’s Center.
But Miss Kaptur said she sees great importance in the arts and hopes that sponsors will provide an even bigger pot of money for awards next year. Instead of the focus on STEM, short for science, technology, engineering, and math, she said she’d like to see STEAM, which adds art to the acronym.
“Pursue your talents,” she advised students from the podium, urging them to consider opportunities in design, producing everything from scarves to wallpaper to greeting cards to architecture.
A prominent example of local opportunities she presented was Libbey Glass, which sponsors the contest’s Commercial Design Award and uses that student’s artwork on a limited run of glassware, which is presented to those involved in the contest.
High schools in Miss Kaptur’s district — more than 40 in Lucas, Ottawa, Erie, Lorain, and Cuyahoga counties — were invited to participate in the contest, with each art teacher able to enter up to three pieces.
Teachers from a dozen schools did so, with a total of 78 pieces entered, which is up considerably from last year, and all of those works will be on display in the lobby of One SeaGate through Friday.
Josh’s piece will then be in the long walkway of the Capitol Visitors Center for a year and many other winners’s works will hang in the local offices of businesses and organizations sponsoring awards.
Other awards, presented in front of a crowd of about 125 Sunday in a ceremony organized by the Arts Commission, included:
First runner-up: Priscilla Nguyen of Perkins High School.
Second runner-up: Jennifer Meyer of Lakewood High School.
Honorable Mentions: Duong Pham and Sean Kling of Maumee Valley Country Day School; Jessica Artman, Anyse Doss, and Adeline Wrede of Whitmer High School, and Molly Savino of Toledo School for the Arts.
Commercial Design Grand Prize: Mike Gennari of Perkins High School.
Commercial Honorable Mention: Kayla Smith of Toledo School for the Arts, Ava Whitson of Bowsher High School, Sean Kling of Maumee Valley Country Day School, and Jessica Artman of Whitmer High School.
Baldwin Wallace University Award: Ava Whitson of Bowsher High School.
Bowling Green State University school of art awards: Max Kokensparger of Oak Harbor High School, Alexandria Olsen of Lakewood High School, and Jessica Artman of Whitmer High School.
Center for the Visual Arts awards: Molly Savino of Toledo School for the Arts and Megan Burmeister of Bowsher High School.
Lourdes University department of art award: Sean Kling of Maumee Valley Country Day School.
Law Firm of Eastman & Smith award: Julia Spencer of Notre Dame Academy.
Valko and Associates award: Alyssa Nagy of Rogers High School.
Inspiration Award: Mackenzie Griffith of Bowsher High School.
Rudolph/?Libbe Companies Inc. award: Sydney Wiciak of Central Catholic High School.
HCR ManorCare awards: Anyse Doss, Kameron Hills, and Kendra Wert of Whitmer High, Hunter Bishop of Perkins High School, and Kazimir Klein of Lakewood High School.
American Frame Rising Star Award: Breanna McConnell of Toledo School for the Arts.
A moment of silence was held during the ceremony to remember exhibitor Liesirrell Echols, a Woodward High School senior who died in January, just days before the deadline for submissions to the art contest, after collapsing in a school classroom. She had a known history of heart problems.