Willow Glen Resident

Cover Story

Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Spin a Tale: Laura Von Stockhaisen, a senior at Willow Glen High School, created a sculpture that was displayed in the annual art show. The spider web illustrates the complexities involved in the relationships among people she knows.

Artastic

Willow Glen High School art show has wow power

By Mayra Flores De Marcotte

A spider web resembling a wall of spun sugar, charcoal drawings depicting religious deities and a papier-mâché dog that was constructed to immortalize one that died were among the art projects on display at the Willow Glen High School annual fine arts festival.

More than 100 students and art teachers Jef Wind and Eric Stachnick helped create an awe-inspiring art show.

An estimated 300 people crowded into the high school classroom-turned-gallery on May 25 to view pieces that fit the school's "standards of exemplary art."

The fair showcased work from the school's art classes, including the advanced- placement three-dimensional design portfolio class in sculpture and the advanced- placement two-dimensional design portfolio class in painting and drawing. The programs have existed at the high school for the last four years. Each piece in the show is judged by a committee of fine arts teachers.

"The show was incredible," Wind says.

One of the requirements for the students in both classes was to create high-quality pieces that could be exhibited at a gallery showing.

"The kids need to take artistic responsibility for their pieces," Wind says. "These pieces are visual statements; they're sentences; they're paragraphs."

The work needs to have an impact on its audience, either by connecting to a life experience or by evoking an emotional response, Wind says. Understanding how to create this connection through art is a fundamental classroom component.

The class is not based on trying to make students into artists, Wind says. The art class is a way for the student to take his or her experiences and opinions and create something visual that brings out the individual.

"It's a self-esteem builder," Wind says. "This isn't one of those classes that the equation is one-way."

Wind says art classes are much more robust.

Those times have changed, however.

"Students have as much writing and reading in their art classes as they do in their other classes," he says. "The kids who are succeeding here do well because of the environment and style of learning."

Wind says his students are both visually and spatially strong. His classes focus on project-based learning rather than traditional instruction.

"It's a lot better system," Wind says.

The project-based system won over senior AP student Laura Von Stockhausen.

Laura remembers seeing the art projects her older sister brought home and knowing this was a class she wanted to take. The popularity of Wind's classes, however, deterred her from trying to enroll her freshman year, and rather than risk not getting into an art class, she took a drawing and painting class instead.

After taking the class, she realized two-dimensional art was not for her.

Laura enrolled in her first sculpture class with Wind during her sophomore year. Now as a senior, she is Wind's teacher assistant, takes his AP class and is also involved in independent art projects.

She spends three periods a day with Wind and spends at least two hours a day with her art projects.

"Art transcends who I am," Laura says. "It gives me a chance to create something that I am passionate about. I can take my real life stuff and put it in my art. That's really cool, and it will stick with you forever."

The senior says sculpting ties the creative process together, from the drawing of the design to the finished piece.

"It's the less respected of art mediums, but more effort goes into it, making for a cooler product," she says.

Laura enjoys being given a topic to build from.

She says it's easier to create when given an outlines, but at the same time, there is the challenge of creating something different from her classmates.

"Sculpting allows you to change as you go," she says. "Sometimes a piece is not strong enough; maybe a project out of clay doesn't dry properly or explodes in the kiln."

These unexpected turns in the work often result in a better piece, Laura says.

Like Laura, Willow Glen High senior Caitlin Chaney started out in sculpting three years ago as part of an art requirement. But the requirement turned into a passion and a creative avenue for self-expression.

"Sculpting is a lot different from other art mediums," Caitlin says. "It's something that's very individual."

Caitlin and her friend can start with the same idea, but the finished piece will come out differently.

Caitlin also finds the unpredictability of the sculpting the biggest challenge the artist faces.

"Creative problem-solving is a hard one in sculpture," Caitlin says. "If the clay explodes, how do we fix it, or if the papier-mâché doesn't dry out completely, what do we do?"

Her medium of choice is papier-mâché.

Before she took the sculpture class, she thought of papier-mâché as something that was used to cover balloons or to make dioramas.

"But papier-mâché can be a fine art as well," she says. "It's all about the technique."

For freshman Taylor Lundquist, just being a part of the show was extraordinary.

Taylor became interested in sculpting when her older brother, junior Kyle Lundquist, brought his projects home.

"He had so much fun in professor Wind's class that I decided to take it, too," Taylor says.

Taylor likes sculpting because it's more interesting working in three-dimensional art than when it's "flat," such as with paint. But coming up with the initial idea is difficult.

"I think you don't realize how hard it is until you do it," she says, "but it's really rewarding when you are done."

With this first show under her belt, Taylor looks forward to building on the experience and creating gallery-worthy pieces in the future.

"It was cool for me to go see what some of the more advanced students have done," Taylor says. "You see it and hope you can do something as cool as that some day."