Fine Arts: Meet Some of LCHS Award Winning Artists

On March 1, 2012, La Cañada High School opened its doors to celebrate Fine Arts month with an annual art show displaying works of art from students in Beginning and Advanced Ceramics, Art Foundation, Advanced Art I and II, Independent Study, Art Portfolio and ROP Photography.

I met with three of the teachers that motivate and inspire the students to create masterpieces.

Photography teacher, Gayle Nicholls-Ali has been a teacher at LCHS since 2007. She excitedly introduced me to a new student, Michal Hron, from the Czech Republic. He is here for one year as an exchange student.

“I’ve never had an exchange student in my class,” said Nicholls-Ali. Hron never took a photography class until he came to La Cañada. “Michael won an honorable mention in an Scholastic Art and Writing contest sponsored by Time Warner,” said Nicholls-Ali.

He is a staff photographer for the high school newspaper and has traveled to Yosemite twice to take photos of the waterfalls, nature and endless domes and spires.

Nicholls-Ali spotted Hron in the crowd and introduced me to him. With a camera around his neck, we stood together and admired his award winning photograph of hundreds of bright red ladybugs. Hron went to Yosemite the last week of 2011 and found them clustered together.

“They wanted to hibernate, yet it wasn’t cold enough, so I captured them waiting together for the cold winter to arrive,” he said.

Ceramics

I also met Joe Lee, the ceramics teacher who graduated from LCHS graduated in 1996. After earning his business degree at USC, he started teaching at LCHS in 2001 to 2004. Due to cutbacks, he left La Cañada and traveled to Korea to get his Masters in Fine Arts. He stayed for nine years, but luckily when he moved back to LCF, the high school asked him to come back and teach ceramics again.

Lee is very excited about the upcoming National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference in Seattle this year. Besides workshops and exhibits, the council presents an art show of some of the best K-12 ceramic pieces from all over the United States. Lee has entered a few of his student’s pieces into this show.

“Over 11,050 pieces from across the nation are sent to this show and about 150 are placed into the show and judged,” shared Lee. Last year, La Canada High School had four pieces at the conference. One won an honorable mention. Lee walked me over to a ceramic piece created by Elliott Orloff. It is prominently displayed at the high school art show. It’s a very creative self portrait of the artist into a big ceramic kiln. 

The NCECA convention this year begins on March 28 through March 31. Lee is hopeful that some of his students' pieces will win national recognition.

Art Foundation

Serafina Kenwood has been an Art Foundation teacher at LCHS for more than 15 years. She enjoys teaching the entry-level, beginning art classes to some of the middle school students and high school students.

“The younger kids have a different energy and work well in groups,” Kenwood informed me. She took me over to the display wall of drawings and pointed out one particular picture. Luckily, her student, Andrea Jongeling, was standing next to it while proudly showing her drawing to her family.

“The project given to my students was pointillism. Andrea’s piece is incredible, I thought it was a photograph,” said Kenwood. "Pointillism is a drawing with distinct dots, instead of shading.”

Jongeling’s picture is three-dimensional. “She took her time and was meticulous in perfecting this drawing,” shared Kenwood. “It’s so good, that I told her to take the original home and made a Xerox copy to display at this show,” admitted Kenwood. Jongeling is a self taught artist. This is her first formal art class.

Watching students like Jongeling blossom is the best part of her job, Kenwood said.

Correction: An earlier vision of this story incorrectly reported Joe Lee's last name. LCF Patch regrets the error.