Five Memorial artists will attend the state Visual Art Scholastic Event (VASE) in San Marcos on April 25 after competing at the regional level.
Senior Hunter Sparks, juniors Leila Dillard and Hiromi Flores plus freshmen Jose Villanueva and Madison Bodine are advancing to state. Memorial artists earned 44 gold medals at regionals. Sparks’ piece was called “Metamorphosis in the Moonlight.”
“My inspiration was how butterflies are construed as more beautiful or as more valuable than moths because moths are more viewed as a bug than a natural, beautiful creature,” Sparks said. “So I wanted to do a piece that represented that because I know a lot of people like myself are deemed not as worthy or not as beautiful as a butterfly. So I wanted to connect the two and I did a realistic portrait.”
Sparks contributes her mixture of realism with more vibrant colors as what set her work apart from the competition.
“A lot of the other pieces were charcoal and colored,” Sparks said. “For mine, I boosted up the saturation, and I also added more mixed media than others. I worked with colored pencils and oil pastels, and I made a fully adjustable moth out of foam.”
On the other side of the spectrum, Flores’ piece was mostly graphite, having a darker palate.
“My piece was called, ‘Reflections of Friendship,’ and it was a picture of my friend, me and her sister reflected in her eyeglass lens,” Flores said. “I wanted to connect to show our friendship because we’ve been friends for years.”
This was Flores’ first year competing, and her progression was a happy surprise.
“I was really surprised when I saw I made it, because afterward you could see all the pieces and there were so many good pieces,” Flores said. “But afterward, I was really happy. I tried to put a lot of detail into it, as much as I possibly could, into my work.”
One key aspect of the competition was an interview on what motivated and inspired each artist.
“You showed up at MSU’s Fain Fine Arts Center, and then you brought your piece in front of a judge and they critiqued it and gave you a couple of tips,” Sparks said. “Then they sent you out. After all the interviews were done at three, you could go in and see what pieces advanced.”
The competition is focused around showing each artist’s individual creativity, and almost every step of the process is guided by the artist.
“It has to be an original piece,” Flores said. ”You can use a reference picture, but it has to be taken by you, and I’m pretty sure you can use another picture that someone has taken, but you have to get permission and you have to be in the picture.”
Memorial art teacher Christopher Mayfield was busy not only helping the Memorial art competitors, but managing the event as a whole.
“Competition day for me is very busy. I’m the regional director, so I’ve got to organize the whole thing from the ground up,” Mayfield said. “But of course I get kind of nervous for the kids, and I get excited and I want them to do well. I was pretty confident that they were going to do well, but of course you’re still definitely nervous that things will go OK.”
The event drew in a wide variety of competitors, which was intimidating to some students. However, Mayfield believes seeing all those other artists will help drive them to improve.
“I think when the kids get to see work from other students, it kind of opens the world a little bit for them, because they can see new ideas and new ways to do things, and maybe new techniques,” Mayfield said. “I think it definitely changes how they deal with things in their own art.”
