Liz Kirchner
The Montgomery Museum is housed in a deep-porched brick manse under gracious oaks on a gardened hill above Roanoke Street. It’s nearly two hundred years old, but its pale wood floors and breezy rooms are as light-filled and elegant as any contemporary art space, and the thoughtful and youthful art it’s displaying now and throughout April is right at home.
At the exhibit opening, filling the foyer and standing on the stairs, families and friends are viewing the art of forty-six young Christiansburg High School students, some just beginning artists, some well advanced in their artistic careers.
There are ceramics, collage, watercolor, colored pencil and oil painting displayed.
Kimberly Fleet, 17, and a CHS junior, touring the show, came, like many, to see a friend’s piece. She’s an artist too.
“I do a lot in pencil,” she said. “It’s more convenient and kids in high school choose pencil because it’s more forgiving and cheaper.”
Pieces line the halls and people filled the old house admiring the works, reading names and titles and standing back to mull the artist’s intention.
One, a clever, minutely detailed colored-pencil sketch of a fig beetle in greens, golds and purples is presented on large folio as if in a naturalist’s journal. The artist used coffee to stain and age the paper. The beetle parts are annotated with spidery fountain pen notes conjuring images of a pith-helmeted entomologist sitting on a mossy log scrawling scholarly insights like, “Because of their large mass, fig beetles are clumsy when flying.”
It’s easy to forget that these artists are so young – some, barely 16. In the hall, a collage of purple puzzle pieces are fit together to make a young person’s face, and a green computer circuit board lies in a collage bed of mossy yarn and felt blossoms.
Carrie Lyons and Laura Graham, both art teachers at Christiansburg High School who, with the museum, helped pull off this year’s show, a long-standing tradition between the museum and the school.
“I think what’s neat about these young people,” said Lyons, “- we have a lot of athletes and students in drama – is that they’re involved in so many other things and they’re still taking time aside to make art. It’s a good mix of the student population,” she said.
Both teachers said students are incorporating art into full and busy lives.
“It’s an outlet,” Graham said. “Art gives them an opportunity to sit and make and create differently.”
CHS senior Alisa Boyce-James, who won an honorable mention, in black bangs, sequined Chucks, long lashes and a nose ring is art herself.
Her piece is called “Coloring Book” is a scatter of blue and purple crayons, so precisely wrought they appear three-dimensional. The real world crayons are flown over by a grinning cartoony butterfly. The juxtaposition of real and make-believe suggests that pragmatic tools like crayons can be a conduit to imaginary worlds.
“So this one is part of my concentration,” Boyce-James said. “It’s the ‘Joys of Childhood’ I like to capture fond memories from my childhood and everyone’s memory. My younger brother loves crayons, and I thought it would give a kind of joyous nostalgic feel for everyone who got to see it.”
Gathering in the museum’s library for the awards ceremony, Executive Director Sue Farrar, thanked Mish Mish Art Supply, Inc. (125 N Main St Suite 200, Blacksburg) and the Blacksburg Regional Art Association for their generosity with their time and awards.
“Artists Martha Olson and Patricia Bolton spent the better part of a morning trying to decide who would win awards, because it was so difficult.” Farrar said.
The two judges gave “a huge thanks to the Montgomery Museum and CHS art teachers Ms. Lyons and Graham” for preparing and labeling the art so well.
“We got a lot of exercise running up and down the stairs,” Bolton said as they distributed prizes and a number of honorable mentions.
Olson and Bolton, BRAA artists who exhibit in the area, used five criteria: successful composition, technical skill, originality, surprise, and emotion.
“Some of them were full of emotion, but not yet in control of their medium. Others even though they weren’t my field,” Olson, who works in colored pencils said, “You could just tell how talented they were.
Ultimately, first prize-winner was Sierra ‘CiCi’ Armstrong, a senior in advanced art studio for her swirl of koi in blues and flaming orange called ‘Philpott.’
Graduating in the spring, she’ll go to NRCC.
“I’ll probably do psychology and maybe tattooing on the side,” said Armstrong.
In choosing, the judges listed five criteria, but then added something special.
“We also wanted to see what qualities would our eye draw to the hearts and minds of the artist,” they said. “You just liked looking at it.”
