Northwood placed first in the East Regional of the Art Showcase, earning an overall score of 4.6 out of five. Results were released Apr. 21. All works submitted by the school will advance to the State Final in Winston-Salem May 9.
Participants were required to create artwork inspired by the poem “Brooks Brothers Shirts” by N.C. Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti. Students could submit work in one of seven categories: Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, Mixed Media, Collage, Computer Generated Art and Photography. Northwood submitted seven works—one from each category. Those who had their artwork submitted included junior Angel Ellis in the painting category, senior Francisco Guzman-Perez in the Drawing category, senior Elise Crawford in the Printmaking category, junior Olivia Draper in the Collage category, senior Bailey Revels in the Mixed Media category, sophomore Nicholas Schwankl in the Computer Generated Art category and senior Kyndal Hutchinson in the Photography category.
“It was a very challenging prompt because it was based off a poem, and students had to interpret what it meant to them and create art from it,” art teacher Leslie Burwell said. “The poem referred to the father, who was a crane worker, and the mother, who was a tailor at Brooks Brothers. It was all about how these parents worked so that their son could attain the American dream and have a better life. To me, our artists did an amazing job of interpreting what that meant, so I was really proud as a teacher.”
Schwankl described his interpretation of the poem.
“I felt that the poem was very much an embodiment of the idea of going toward success,” Schwankl said. “I made two art pieces and they chose my best one. One was the idea of a hallway with a person going into the light and pieces of clothing scattered about. It was kind of a darker and underground looking building. The other piece was a modified image of another classmate who was looking into a tree that had a chair in it. It was mostly a black and white image with a red shirt that he was wearing, and the chair in the tree was red. It was kind of the idea of looking toward the future and toward a higher standing.”
Hutchinson had a different perspective of the poem. She took a photograph of tools such as wrenches, buttons, scissors and a needle and thread laid out on a blue collared shirt.
“I woke up on a Saturday and I was like, ‘I have this really great idea,’ so I laid out all the materials and I decided to do the structure of a human body, but based on what his parents were,” Hutchinson said.
For the Mixed Media category, Revels took a totally different approach to the prompt.
“It was a high relief [art technique in which the modeled forms extend out from the background], so I used chicken wire, screws and other different pieces of metal and made a big hand,” Revels said.
Although the competition was open to all students, it was mainly art students who participated.
“I encouraged people from the Art Honor Society to submit work, and I had some students in photography submit pieces,” Burwell said. “I gave my Honors Art class the prompt as an assignment, but anybody at our school could have entered.”
The physical pieces will be judged when the students travel to the State Final May 9.
“They just judged digital images,” Burwell said. “When we go to Winston-Salem, they are going to judge the hard copy; they are going to have the physical artwork in front of them. That makes it very different, because there were two people whose artwork, for me, didn’t show up as well in a photograph…. Sometimes that helps your score, and sometimes it hurts it. Even though we placed second in the state with the regional scores, we can go compete and still get first, second or third.”
Students reacted well to the results of the competition. Hutchinson and Guzman-Perez earned perfect scores of five on their pieces.
“I was honestly shocked, and I was so happy for myself, because I never thought that I would be able to take a photo as good as what my sister used to do,” Hutchinson said. “She used to do the same thing; she entered in a competition for photography, and she won it too. I never thought I was going to amount to that.”
Last year, Northwood placed first in the region and third in the state. Burwell hopes to improve the school’s state ranking this year when the pieces are rescored at the state competition.
– By Becca Heilman
