Teenage artists have their own show
By Shari Kaplan
Although this is the sixth year the Los Gatos Museum of Fine Art and Natural History has exhibited the works of art students from Los Gatos High School, the river of creative talent that flows from the school fashions a new and different show every time.
As in the past, this year features mixed-media art projects from beginning through advanced classes of art teacher and department chair Scott Downs, with works by ceramics teacher Ralph Aguayo's students.
While in high school, Downs says he didn't learn as much about art as he wished he could have--"It was probably more me than the teachers!" he adds, chuckling. In light of this, he says, for the past 15 years or so he has helped students have the best possible experience, especially if some are considering careers involving the creative arts.
"I try to give them techniques and ways of seeing things that will serve them later in life," Downs says. "What I teach are many of the projects that were my favorites in my college art classes. I often think, 'what if I'd gotten this stuff at 15, 16 or 17 rather than later--it would've given me a great foundation.' "
Among these projects is glazing and impasto paintings made with acrylics--impasto roughly translates to "thick paint" in Italian. Monochromatic oil portraits, including Suzanne Humbert's golden retriever puppy and Nicole Stokes' and Megan Geldman's images of children making fish faces; and copies of famous masters' paintings done in oils, from Theresa Rehder's take on Georgia O'Keeffe's famous flowers to Courtney Christiansen's less familiar but no less beautiful portrait of a raven-haired woman leaning against a tree, wrapped in a flowing lavender cloak are a few of the projects..
There are also penciled grid drawings such as Ashley Neal's suggestively dancing couple and Lyndsay Erickson's friendly farm animals; and watercolors like Heidi Zoellner's kite-flying child silhouetted in front of a sunset, or Christine Gallagher's windswept coast.
Color wheels are projects in which students use tempera paints to portray a spectrum of the primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The ways in which they incorporate the spectrum are of their own choosing, from Eric Ouyang's beautifully symmetrical astrological "chart" to Amber Aureden's surface of water gently broken by fallen leaves, water-striders and an unnerving clenched set of fingertips.
The scratchboard and photography pieces speak for themselves, while the mixed-media "metamorphosis" project almost defies explanation: it begins with a letter of the alphabet, crafted of colored foam and associated with the topic it later becomes five squares later.
Aguayo's ceramics students have filled almost every horizontal surface in the museum with their attractive, kiln-fired works, ranging from practical pitchers and bowls to whimsical characters and images.
The exhibit runs through April 29. The Los Gatos Museum of Fine Art and Natural History, at 4 Tait Ave, is open from noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. For more information, call 408.354.2646.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
