University Museum welcomes high school artists

armington High School sophomore Caroline Crecelius, whose father is a blacksmith, created an abstract forged metal sculpture as tall as a person. Dimension and unusual medium also attracted New Madrid County Central High School's April Nelson, who wove an enormous headpiece made of raffia, a fiber from the leaves of a palm tree.

Jonathan Fournier, another Farmington student, went the other direction and drew an intimate portrait of a father and child's hands.

There's little "high schoolish" about the annual High School Art Symposium opening Sunday at Southeast Missouri State University.

A reception for the artists will begin at 1 p.m. Sunday at the museum. The 22 awards, including Best of Show, will be presented at 2 p.m. Prizes will be awarded in seven categories: drawing, fibers, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.

Nearly 750 works from 30 schools in Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois and St. Louis were submitted for juror Robert Boyer's consideration. Farmington High School is well represented in the 108 works that made it into the exhibition. Farmington art teacher Michael Lamb, a Southeast graduate, enters his students' work in five different shows during the year.

"It gives them self-confidence and experience. I'm hoping half will go on to be art majors," said Lamb, a graphic artist and illustrator.

It is valuable for students to see what other students are doing, he said. "You can't learn everything in the classroom."

This is the 25th year for the show titled "Exhibiting Excellence." Dr. Edwin Smith, who founded the symposium when the late Jake Wells was chairman of the Department of Art at Southeast, said it originally brought artists to the campus to give lectures. In the past 10 years it transformed into a juried show that also includes discussion of the work. Busloads of students and teachers come for the reception or at a later time during the month.

"It truly is an art symposium," Smith said.

Sculpture and three-dimensional ceramics are better represented in this show than they have been in the past.

Computer art is one category absent from the Southeast show that some others offer. Lamb said the current nosedive in state funding for education makes it impossible for most schools to teach computer art. The cost of starting a computer art class and keeping it going would be tremendous, he said. "We don't have the money to keep that technology on the cutting edge."

Juror Robert Boyer is a Southeast graduate and former art teacher who now is a counselor at Hillsboro High School. He found strong work in most of the categories, including a traditionally weak one, printmaking. The difficulty was narrowing the work to the award winners. "There were just so many that were good," he said.

Lamb said he has five or six very good art students and five or six who have the potential to be very good. "I tell the kids, Even if you just made it into the show it's pretty prestigious," he said. "Even if they didn't get into the show it's still an experience."

The show will remain on display through Feb. 23.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182