Creativity abounds at Mt. Lebanon High School Art Show
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Hannah Frink’s portrait of classmate Alayna Hollist draws on a prompt for “daily ritual.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Madeline Kelly’s self-portrait in 3-D origami
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Self-portrait by Alayna Hollist: Note the semicircle of color to the right.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Hannah Frink’s primary-color triptych
The explanation of how she does it sounds simple.
“I take a sheet of paper and I cut it into all these little squares, and then I fold them into this little triangle,” Madeline Kelly disclosed. “From there, you can just kind of piece them together, like Legos. And I use a little bit of glue to make sure they hold.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Madeline Kelly folded hundreds of pieces of paper to produce a 3-D origami swan.
That’s easy for her to say. But when she shows someone her artistic creations and mentions they’re made of paper, she usually hears something along the lines of:
“Oh, my goodness. Are you for real? This is insane!”
The insanity, so to speak, represents the capabilities of 3-D origami, the latest generation of the ancient art of paper folding. And if you want to see Madeline give a brief demonstration of how she comes up with the likes of a pink swan or black-and-white self-portrait, make plans to attend the annual Mt. Lebanon High School Art Show.
The free event is scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m. April 5 and features more than 650 pieces on display throughout the building. As a featured part of the show, 20 students in advanced placement art will have personal exhibits of their portfolios.
“They will have the opportunity to talk to the public about their art and their ideas behind their art,” visual arts teacher Jennifer Rodriguez, who chairs Mt. Lebanon School District’s fine arts department for secondary students, explained. “Really, the whole point is to show growth and concept along with a high level of skill.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Alayna Hollist works on her self-portrait.
Madeline, a senior, developed her skill in origami as something of a therapeutic exercise. She started by giving the old-fashioned version a try and then went three-dimensional after seeing examples online.
“I usually start in a circular pattern and then just keep adding them on and on and on. And then I’ll get to a point where I change the colors or start an arc upward or outward,” she said. “Most of the time, I don’t even plan it when I go into it. I just kind of feel it in me, and I go with what I think is best.”
Her AP art classmates have creative ways of expressing themselves in other media.
Junior Alayna Hollist, for example, is a painter who plans to show a self-portrait at the show. But it’s one with a twist.
“I had a photo of me, and I made it old-fashioned, to kind of look more like the ’50s,” she said, with a black-and-white publicity shot of someone like Lauren Bacall coming to mind. “Then I got a plate and traced it to have part of a circle, to make it look like a lens was over the picture, and make it more modern and colorful.”
Her face also features prominently in a couple of projects by Hannah Frink, another junior in AP art. For a prompt, or assigned theme, of “daily ritual,” she painted a teary-eyed Alayna.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Laura Jane Sutherland works on finishing a painting prior to the show.
“I wanted to make a commentary on the pressure of daily life as a student and how sometimes it just gets to be too much,” Hannah said. “Every day, some people sort of break down a little bit under the pressure.”
Alayna also is the subject of Hannah’s triptych, a work spread out over three panels.
“I was trying to think of things that come in threes, and the main thing that stood out to me was primary colors,” she said, and so the panels are yellow, blue and red. “I also wanted to stick to my theme of portraiture, so I drew three of the same person in slightly different positions.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
The 10-foot-tall “upcycled” octopus
Along with the AP students, artists in other classes are represented prominently at the show, including those who worked on what turned out to be a 10-foot-tall octopus made of recycled materials such as cardboard boxes, bottle caps, discarded paint cups and nearly disintegrated scraps of tissue paper.
Using the same process, the students also created a variety of similar sea creatures that will be on display in the octopus’ vicinity.
Sticking with the “upcycling” theme, some students painted titanic portraits on eight-foot-long boxes. And a whole bunch of folks contributed to the art show’s most expansive display: a series of knit yarn pieces along the stairway leading up from the school’s Horsman Drive entrance.
“This was a collaboration between anybody and everybody in this school building and beyond who wanted to come together to learn a new skill and to create something unique,” Rodriguez said. “In the end, this project isn’t just an art installation. It’s actually going to be disassembled in the fall and reassembled into blankets for charity.
“It’s a metaphor for connectivity and unity, using colors and different textures and different styles. But at the same time, it’s a service project for our school.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Creative uses for yarn