Upper School Artists Shine at Guild Exhibition
Each February, high school teachers within a 150-mile radius of St. Louis are invited to submit artwork from up to 10 students for the Young Artists’ Showcase, which is sponsored and curated by the venerable St. Louis Artists’ Guild. Work of any media is considered, and the variety of talent displayed each year is impressive. Pieces can range from bronze sculptures, ceramics, and drawings to paintings, prints, and photographs.
Principia Upper School arts teachers regularly take advantage of this opportunity for our students to gain wider exposure to the field and to peer work. This year, the Guild received nearly 400 entries for the Young Artists’ Showcase. Of the 142 pieces finally accepted into the exhibition, seven—or just about 5 percent—were created by Principia students. That’s an impressive contribution, given our student-body size relative to the 31 other participating schools, which include MICDS, John Burroughs, Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, and four high schools in the Parkway School District.
Both the studio art teacher Caitlin Heimerl (US’06) and media arts teacher Dana LePoidevin (US’81, C’89) chose pieces for submission. “In selecting student work to send in this year,” says Heimerl, “I looked for pieces that demonstrate confident command of a technique and reflect the artist’s individual voice.” Senior Tia Goebel’s charcoal and chalk still life is a good example. She worked hard to attain both depth and detail, “which took more time than I had expected,” she admits. But in the end, she seems to have achieved her aim of making the work “look real” and having it “represent some of the basic joys of art: proportionality, light and dark, and form.”
At the opening ceremony of the exhibition, juror and renowned local artist Jessi Cerutti stressed the importance of art as a lifelong pursuit and encouraged students to stick with their creative practice. In explaining her selection process, Cerutti said the award-winning pieces “present fresh compositions, unique perspectives, and refined skills. These works exhibit a good amount of intuition and instinct, a resistance to cliché, and attention to details.”
Upper schoolers’ works showcased in the exhibit include a linoleum block print, a scratchboard etching, a wire sculpture, and photographs, among other media. And a highlight this year is senior Gracie Buchanan’s oil pastel portrait, Tatyana, which won the $500 Frani Weinstock Scholarship Fund Prize.
Since the Artists’ Guild’s establishment in 1886, many professional artists in the area have gained their first public recognition through the various competitive exhibitions it sponsors. The mission of the Guild is “to be a resource and advocate for creative expression, serving the Midwest as a center that exhibits, supports, and promotes the visual arts.”
(For local Principia families, and those who may be in town for Upper’s School’s annual Spring Production, the exhibition runs through Saturday, April 6, at the St. Louis Artists' Guild in Oak Knoll Park.)