Have you ever tried to draw? I’m talking about something beyond a stick figure, beyond a two dimensional house with a sun in the corner. If you have, you know it’s nowhere near as easy as it may seem. Lodi High School’s Visual Arts Classic competition team is pushing their artistic and creative abilities to their very best!
Visual Arts Classic is an art competition organized by the Wisconsin Art Education Association. During the course of the season, a team of twelve high school students compete in individual and group art challenges. The challenges include a long-term project, which students are given a prompt for and work on for months leading up to the competition. Then, an on-site project, where students have between 2-4 hours to complete. Then, a forty five minute team prompt, where all twelve students work together on a single canvas. Finally, a quiz section about famous artists throughout history.
I had the opportunity to go along with our VAC team to sectionals at carroll college, both the competition and our artists’ pieces were stunning. Allanah Moen, one of the twelve competitors on our VAC team told me all about the process of creating her long term, it’s a beautiful piece with a white picture frame and inside is a three-dimensional girl being pulled into a swirling vortex of black. Allanah said, “I put a lot of detail into my project. Every choice in the piece has a deeper meaning.” She described to me how the piece represented her mental state. The frame was intentionally painted over in white poorly to show how poorly her mental health struggles were hidden, the arms pulling her down into the swirling black, meant to represent anxiety and depression, showed how peralzing it could feel to be trapped in that state. Her piece was one of the many that made it to the Visual Arts Classic State at Edgewood College.
Also competing at Edgewood was Audrey Dallman, who had made it to State for both her long term and on-site projects. For her long term, she created a beautiful wearable necklace out of chainmail and beads. Audrey told me, “It was a challenge learning a new artform in such a short period of time.” Although she was very frustrated, she eventually learned through trial and error and created a piece so beautiful that during her on-site project, she created a matching set of earrings, just as stunning, to complement the necklace.
This year, Lodi High School sent eight students to Visual Arts Classic State. Of those students, three are seniors this year and will be graduating, while the whole team will be sad to see them go; Alanah said she is, “excited for the new artists to join the team.” She thinks that many have a bright future ahead of them in the art room and hopes to reach for an even more successful season next year.
