She finds a way to angle her brush and leave the brush strokes exactly as she saw them from the streets of Vietnam this summer.
Senior Brittany Duong is one of about 50 students who have entered the Visual Arts Scholastic Event (VASE) and will show their pieces on Feb. 21 at Coronado High School in Lubbock.
Senior Anna Harder talks about her two pieces ‘Sinners’ and ‘Self-sabotage’.
“‘Sinners’ represents my personal battle with sin as a Christian,” Harder said. “Self-sabotage shows a cat eating a lemon while a hand tries to take the lemon away. The lemon is toxic to cats, but the cat’s claws are into the lemon.”
Art teacher Brice Autry goes through the process of what happens at VASE.
“When we get there, students go through a check-in to see if the pieces qualify and if no Artificial Intelligence (AI) was used,” Autry said. “Students are later interviewed about their pieces, and they can go to workshops while they wait for the judges to finish.”
Although Duong has entered in VASE throughout high school, she still gets intimidated by the judges when interviewed.
“I get really nervous,” Duong said. “I’m shy, so when the judges don’t ask questions, I start ranting.”
Senior Ashton Booth went to state last year with his sculpture piece Fixing Broken Dreams. He has four pieces to show this year.
“I’m doing a hand holding a flower made with wire, a ceramic piece, a broken mirror and a sculpture,” Booth said. “A lot of them describe a great some of emotion that the judges might haven’t gone through.”
Having qualified for state her freshman and sophomore years, Harder focused on improving.
“When I first started, I would doodle things, and it would progress, then I would turn it into a painting or make a sculpture,” Harder said. “Now I start with a meaning before starting and make it look better throughout.”
Artists have been preparing for as long as 10 months, but everything they do must be supervised by an art teacher.
“Students have time to prepare for VASE as soon as the last VASE is over,” Autry said. “Usually students start to plan their pieces at the end of October and have the rest of their time to arrange and build their pieces.”
Categories range from paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography and animation.
“I’m doing an oil painting and a watercolor one,” Duong said. “The oil painting was based on my cousin; her name means cloud, so the title is On Cloud Nine.
