11 Upper School students showcased their work at the sixth annual Dallas Young Artist Exhibition on Jan. 18 at the Blue Print Gallery on Fairmount Street in Uptown Dallas.
The exhibition is an annual invitational show that is an open call for all schools in the metroplex to showcase their students’ selected pieces.
Seniors Abeera Amer, Mason Chow, Ruth Gebru, McKenna Higgins, James Melucci, Ben Schackman and Ava Spence participated. Juniors Austin Cohen, Chloe Nguyen and Cassie Rosa participated. Freshman Oliver Morales participated as well.
In 2010, a group of interior designers bought two historic buildings where they run an interior design business and gallery, also known as the Blue Print Gallery, which is where the exhibition is held each year.
The gallery is home to both national and international art pieces, making the gallery diverse. There is no size limit for the pieces, allowing the artwork to range from photographs and small pictures all the way to large sculptures.
Instructors can choose up to six pieces of their students’ artwork to submit to the exhibition. Middle and Upper School Visual Art teacher Lesley Rucker and Upper School Visual Art teacher Frank Lopez had their students’ work showcased at the exhibit.
“It is not often that students have this opportunity to show their work in a professional gallery setting,” Rucker said.
In addition to the showcase element of the event, there is also a competition element. The Blue Print Gallery gives cash scholarships to first, second and third place winners. There are also honorable mentions.
“They [award] scholarship money that students can use for whatever school they’re going to go to in the future,” Lopez said. “They’ve given thousands upon thousands of dollars to young people over the last six years.”
Nguyen won a $5,000 first-place scholarship. Her winning piece was a series of photographs taken of Rosa. The piece was organized in a three-by-three fashion, with each photo differing in exposure and positioning.
“I thought [Nguyen’s piece] was very unique,” Spence said. “It was different from all the other photos that I was seeing.
Spence says she was surprised when she found out her drawing on the prompt “Inside Out” had been chosen by Rucker.
“I didn’t know that it had been submitted for this exhibit, but I was really excited to hear that my artwork was next to some of these really talented people in Upper School’s pieces,” Spence said. “I was really shocked and I was really pumped up to go see all the other artwork.”
Morales is Greenhill’s only freshman selected to go this year.
“I was blown away,” Morales said. “It was nice to see what other kids my age are doing, and it really inspired me to continue through the rest of high school.”
With the success of this year’s exhibition, Lopez and Rucker intend to submit their students’ work again next year.
“We are all very proud of them, Rucker and myself,” Lopez said.
