Artists from all three class levels of Drawing and Painting opened their gallery exhibition “Rainbow Connection” on Jan. 25. The show was held in the Feldman Horn Gallery and was the first of the year due to the gallery being used as a substitute library during the library’s remodeling.
Charlotte Appel ’25, who takes Drawing and Painting I, said the piece she created was personal to her and inspired by her dad.
“I created a piece about tonal colors,” Appel said. “I wanted to do something dedicated to my dad. I took a lot of objects from his past and his present and meshed them together. He inspires me to do a lot of art.”
Appel said she was grateful to be featured in the show amongst her fellow student artists because of the community.
“I feel good to be a part of [the art show],” Appel said. “I feel like there’s a lot of talent present here, and it’s good to see everything come together.”
The art exhibition featured a collaborative piece that invited all members of the school community to work together. Visual Arts teacher Conor Thompson said that this painting was meant to be an immersive experience that reached others.
“I always love doing the giant collaborative paintings,” Thompson said. “This year we’re doing Diego Velazquez’s ‘Las Maninas.’ It’s gonna be a painting performance that happens during the three-week run of the show. Everyone’s invited [to collaborate], not just Drawing and Painting students, anyone on campus can add to it.”
Thompson said that his goal with the piece was to show students that art is a collaborative process for students.
“I think it teaches our students a lesson about working in a group,” Thompson said. “Painting doesn’t have to be this idea of this solitary genius, it can be this idea of something open-ended and communal that everyone works on. It’s also just fun.”
Charcoal sketches of Kermit the Frog by students in Drawing and Painting I were featured on the wall of the gallery and were a main focal point of the show although it was originally not going to be included in the showcase.
“[The Kermit drawings are] an exercise that we do while learning tonal value and tonal rendering in Level 1,” Thompson said. “Typically we wouldn’t show them in the gallery, but [Visual Arts teacher Whitney Lasker] came up with the idea of putting them all together like one giant painting. That was super fun this year.”
Caroline Riemer ’24 said that although creating the art was a long process, it was worth it.
“Making the art for me probably takes about a month for each piece,” Riemer said. “But it’s been this fun process, and we’re so happy to have the gallery back.”
