Art Honors and Art 2 classes are conspiring to create outdoor sculptures “with the theme of light somehow incorporated” into them for display around campus at open house, according to junior Alex Paterno.
“We were assigned to make a sculpture or structure incorporating any types of lights and make it visually interesting,” said sophomore Juliet Arnswald. “My group decided to use logs and paint the tops with neon paint. Our piece will be on the right side of the library.”
This is the first year that art teacher Jill Langston’s has used this assignment in her classes. “It was [created] partly because last year at open house it was so very dark. It’s really dark, so we felt like we needed more light,” said Langston.
Langston also took inspiration from a fashion show which she and her students occasionally watch in class. “I have to admit there was a Project Runway episode where they lit up. It was all stars, and they lit up the runway with their outfits so I thought it was an interesting idea and I thought we could use it for open house,” she explained.
Arnswald’s group, referred to as the “Stump Group” by Langston, is going the abstract route. “We will hang black lights around the logs; the logs will glow when places underneath the lights. We also will add green glow sticks to represent grass. The logs are placed length upright and at different heights so it’s probably abstract,” she said.
“We were going around the school and looking for ideas and we had come across the garden and saw some garden stumps,” said sophomore Anthony Kim, a member of Arnswald’s group. “We thought that it would be cool to paint them with glow-in-the-dark paint because open house happens in the evening,” he added.
Sophomore Charlotte Ketley’s group is using wire to create a scene with 2 sheep and flowers surrounding them. “We first wanted to do a tree but then we couldn’t do that. So we kind of just started thinking of animals, and then we looked online and they looked kind of cute to do,” she explained. “We’re using christmas lights and these little spotlight things. We’re doing wire, another group’s doing like tree stumps and flower pots and glow sticks.”
“I think its kind of cool because you’re allowed to do whatever you want and it’s like you work in groups so it’s pretty fun, if it works,” Ketley said. “The heads [of the sheep] are made out of paper mache so hopefully it will stay together.”
Other groups are designing their projects around objects already in place on campus. “We thought the tree outside of G hall was artsy and wanted to work our project around that,” said Paterno.
“We are using Christmas lights and fake paper leaves and then draping them on a bare tree to make it look like a willow tree,” he explained.
Paterno, whose Advanced Art class started the project about a week ago, is “super pressed for time.” He added, “We recently decided to put all other projects on hold in order to focus on this one.”
However, Ketley said that her Art 2 class started the project several weeks ago. “It was like an ongoing thing. We had another project going on, but now we’re just focusing on that,” she said.
“We spent about two weeks coming up with ideas and two weeks preparing and creating our project. I think that most people will finish on time. Most groups are on schedule,” said Kim.
Langston said that she has “no doubt” that the projects will all be ready for open house, and knows “a bunch of groups that are already finished.” She added, “I do think that different groups have different demands based on their projects and their materials and it depends on how well they use their time.”
One of the most impressive creations, according to Langston, is a large Campo “C” created out of Christmas lights “that’s going to suspend from just in front of the library. We’re gonna have to hoist it up. And it’s coming along beautifully, and we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that it’s going to get hoisted just fine.”
Some groups will have more difficulty managing their projects the day of open house, said Kim. “The groups that are using glow sticks though, may have some trouble because they have to prepare the day of open house,” he explained.
Kim said that most members of the groups will attend open house to set up.
Though the project may be time-consuming, Kim believes that the finished product will be worth it. “I think people will be pretty interested by our projects, and will want to know more about these projects and possibly the art program at our school,” he said.
“I hope it will [inspire students to take art] and I hope people will just wander around and think ‘that’s cool. I hadn’t thought about doing art that way’,” said Langston. “It’s really good for my students also to think a little bit differently on a different scale and in a different way than they usually do.”
