For one night every spring, art takes over at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. The corridors become a labyrinth of galleries with hundreds of works in almost every imaginable medium, all created by teenagers in the school’s department of Art, Design and Technology.
The annual Evening for the Arts, held last Wednesday, gives young artists—including designers of buildings, games, fashion and even cardboard furniture, as well as those who practice traditional studio arts—an opportunity to share their work with the Island community.
In corridors and lobbies, displays of photographs, paintings and sketches reached nearly from floor to ceiling. Works in ceramic, 3-D printed plastic and mixed media stood on tabletops and stands.
Performing artists also had their showcase, drawing a standing-room-only crowd to the Green Room of the performing arts center. Guitarist James Murray, a junior, played solo acoustic melodies in the gallery area.
The performing art center lobby held a pop-up shop selling student-crafted gifts and an assortment of interactive installations: a Paint by Letters mural, a do-it-yourself Dada/Surrealist art station and a group of surprisingly comfortable chairs built from corrugated cardboard, with matching end tables.
Elsbeth Todd, who teaches design and architecture, relaxed into one of the chairs while explaining the assignment she gave her students.
“This was my advanced class,” she said. “They used the design process. They had to research methods of connecting things.”
Her rules were simple: Nothing but cardboard could be used; glue was permitted only to laminate multiple layers; the chair must hold a minimum of 200 pounds and “the design should be comfortable and attractive.”
After coming up with their designs, they made sketches and scale models before building the final pieces. Ms. Todd then had each designer photographed with his work, and created posters for the Wednesday night show.
“It’s like an album cover,” she said.
Monina von Opel, curator of the art collection at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, comes yearly to the high school exhibition to scout for talent—iPhone in hand, she praised the quality of the arts education at MVRHS.
“Look at the pottery. It’s amazing,” she said.
Ms. von Opel was also keen to see photography by Davin Tackabury, a junior who is one of 19 students recognized earlier this year in the 2019 Boston Globe Scholastic Art Awards. Mr. Tackabury received one Gold Key, two Silver Keys and two honorable mentions in the statewide contest.
Junior Avalon Weiland brought home a Gold Key for her ceramic soup tureen and an honorable mention for a petaled bowl.
Tenth-grader Sophie Nevin’s black and white photograph Two-headed Monster, a close-up of two girls eating cake, earned a Gold Key in the statewide contest and went on to win a silver medal in the national Scholastic Art & Writing Awards this year.
Julianne Joseph, a 17-year-old junior, earned first place in the Vineyard Conservation Society’s 2019 Art of Conservation contest with an allegorical photograph representing humanity’s relationship to planet Earth.
“We are a part of nature, whether we admit it or not,” said Ms. Joseph, who with the other winners of the VCS contest accepted her award Saturday afternoon at the Environmental Film Festival playing this weeked at the Film Center in Vineyard Haven.
All the winning work is displayed in the film center lobby, said VCS vice-president Joan Malkin, who warmly praised Ms. Joseph’s photograph.
“It’s not just visually arresting, it’s original,” she said.
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