Printer Friendly Version - Choice Art

Pictured are (front, left to right) Shoreline Arts Alliance Executive Director/CEO Eric Dilner, Jordan Bourne, Claire Halloran, Jane McManus, Cathrina Kothman, Cory Hassmann; (rear, left to right) Malcolm Watts, and Elizabeth Miezejeski.

It's a given that the annual Shoreline Arts Alliance (SAA) Future Choices exhibit and competition rounds up the best works by the area's brightest student artists-but this year's crop might be even more impressive than those before it, says SAA Program & Marketing Director Donita Aruny.

"I am really blown away by the caliber of work that's been juried into the sow this year," says Aruny. "I mean, each year I come in and I think, 'This is great,'" but this year is extraodinary.

"The quality of work this year is just unbelievable agrees. It just keeps going up and up," says Future Choices Co-Chair Kathleen Bidney-Singewald, adding that the students are true "renaissance people."

Indeed, many of the students whose work has been juried into the show this year excel in multiple media. Living spoke with them last week about what motivates them artistically. The Future Choices exhibition is on display to the public through Wednesday, March 11 in the Sill House Gallery at Lyme Academy College of Fine Art, 84 Lyme Street, Old Lyme.

Claire Halloran, a senior from Ivoryton who attends Kingswood Oxford School, took first prize for her videos, Owner of the Button Factory and Tomorrow Scott. She also has a photograph in the exhibition titled Matthew Cates.

Halloran has been accepted into New York University's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. She plans to major in film and television production.

Halloran explains what appeals to her about film: "I really like...the moving picture...I love photography, but something just draws me to something that's moving on the screen, and I think [film] is really able to capture so much that a picture can't."

Daniel Hand High School senior Malcolm Watts plans to attend either Massachusetts College of Art & Design or Lesley University next year. He hopes to study photography and to learn more about motion graphics and design. His black-and-white Bull won first place in the photography category in this year's Future Choices exhibit. (He's pictured here with another photograph he has in the exhibit, titled Jack & Lauren.)

Watts says the success of the photograph, which he took on George Washington's estate, Mount Vernon, has a lot to do with the situation in which he shot it.

"It's a tourist place, and everyone's always taking photos, so I could really get down on the ground or get...the kind of angles I wanted without thinking twice about it, whereas if I was in downtown Madison and I'm in a tree trying to take a photo, people might be staring at me. I think I was lying down for this [shot], and everyone was walking by me like it was normal."

Haddam-Killingworth High School senior and Killingworth resident Cathrina Kothman created her first-prize-winning print etching, Coma Dream, during a summer program at The College of St. Rose. It may be hard to believe, but Coma Dream was one of her first attempts with print making; she considers drawing her forte.

"The assignment was to make a surrealist collage...so that was where I was going with this," Kothman explains of her print. "The part of it I really enjoyed-I enjoyed it, but also hated it-was the pointillism to get the galaxy effect....I wanted to kind of take this photo of the galaxy and have it in the background and convey that in the etching."

In addition to visual art, Kothman also loves music. A flutist, she hopes to major in music in college and to find a way to to "mesh art and music" into her studies.

Daniel Hand High School sophomore Jane McManus's first-place mixed media piece, You Will Walk Differently Alone, takes its inspiration from a quote by one of her favorite authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald. McManus says she welcomed the opportunity to create the art book when she received the assignment from a teacher. It allowed her to combine her twin passions for drawing and reading.

Describing the work, McManus says, "I was trying to make something that was kind of creepy, but cute at the same time...I wanted to incorporate words in it because I really like to read...and I kind of chose things [to add to the piece]...It kind of seems like things you would find in a drawer to me."

Valley Regional High School sophomore Elizabeth Miezejeski's first-prize sculpture, Cretan Bull, was inspired by her love of history and ancient cultures.

"I was looking at a lot of work [from ancient Greece] and thought it was really cool and I saw that the bull was a big influence," says the Deep River resident, adding that the contours of the bull are designed to make it "look sort of ancient."

Miezejeski continues, "I usually take influences from things I've seen, like I've done work based off of the Berlin Wall and other Cretan work."

Though she still has two more years of high school, she believes she's hit upon a future path of study: "I'm looking into anthropology. I really like different cultures and people and travel."

Durham resident Cory Hassmann, a Coginchaug High School senior, may have taken first prize in ceramics for his Three Tiers, but he actually plans to pursue graphic design next year at Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Hassmann says he's drawn to "very petite and delicate forms," and that preference is reflected in his porcelain works.

“Three Tiers...is based off of a lily pad concept, but then was also inspired by Japanese pagodas...I wanted to have movement that traveled from the base of the piece to the top...These are made to be stacked, but can also be used as functional bowls that come together as a set."

Lyme-Old Lyme High School senior Jordan Bourne, winner of best in show for her pastel Sense of Self (shown at right) as well as first prize in pastels for Uncleansed (left) and first prize in drawing for Everpresent, says, "I really enjoy putting emotions into my pieces."

While Bourne clearly succeeds in many media, she says she especially favors animation.

Whether she's finishing up a gouache painting, working on a digital drawing, or working in graphite, Bourne, who plans to attend art school next year, says it's all good "as long as I'm creating."