This year’s art exhibition at Carlmont put months of student creativity on display, attracting large crowds with a variety of paintings, ceramics, digital art, and mixed-media pieces.
Although Carlmont’s Open House also took place on Feb. 5, the exhibition space was still filled with students and parents.
The annual event features work from multiple art courses, ranging from introductory classes to AP studio art, giving students across grade levels a rare opportunity to display their work publicly. Many, like freshman Melody Hu, looked forward to the event.
“It feels very encouraging to have my work displayed because there are so many artists, and you get to be with them and be a part of the art community,” Hu said.
The exhibition marked the final stage of student projects developed over weeks or even months. Each piece evolved from early sketches to finished pieces through experimentation and revision in class.
For sophomore Gracie Huang, the exhibition also reflected significant growth in her first art class experience.
“The showcase makes me really proud and happy about my artwork, especially since this is my first year in a visual arts class,” Huang said. “I’m really into it, the teacher is so good at explaining, and I’ve genuinely seen such an increase in my level of skill this year.”
Beyond what the artists’ peers and parents saw on the walls, the months leading up to the event made the showcase possible. Through the projects they worked on in class, students experimented with new mediums and techniques, allowing them to push their ideas further than they did earlier in the year.
“I’m inspired by the possibilities that my artwork can go into, because you don’t know what the final form of the art will be. It’s like an exploration experience,” Hu said.
Students also found ways to make their work personal, often weaving elements of their own lives into their work.
“My artwork is a way for me to represent who I am as a person. I incorporate aspects of my own life into it,” Huang said. “In a recent piece, I wrote the numbers that represent the birthdays of my friends and family.”
While students saw the exhibition as a celebration of their personal growth, art teacher Emma Keenan-Grice viewed it as an opportunity to open the art program to the broader school community.
“The main goal of the art exhibition is to showcase and celebrate all of our students’ work, and also provide an opportunity for students who are not currently taking our classes to see the work that their peers are making,” Keenan-Grice said.
She also emphasized that many of Carlmont’s art classes are designed to be accessible to beginners.
“We have a handful of classes that are very beginner-friendly, and I think the show does a great job at showing that anyone can be an artist,” Keenan-Grice said. “We really want to provide a space for students to explore their creative side.”
Ultimately, she viewed the showcase as a tangible way for students to demonstrate what they had developed.
“You might talk to your friends and be like, ‘oh, yeah, I’m in ceramics,’ but this is your chance to be like, ‘this is what I made in ceramics,'” Keenan-Grice said.
As parents and students navigated the crowded art classroom that night, the exhibition offered a visible record of how much progress Carlmont artists had made.
