Thanks to the Texas Panhandle Art Education Association and the Amarillo Museum of Art (AMoA), many forms of student artwork are currently on display on the museum’s walls in an annual showcase of budding young artists.
A special reception for the ongoing Texas Panhandle Student Art Show will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 15, to honor participating students and award winners.
According to AMoA Curator Alex Gregory, the show has been going for at least 20 years.
“It’s been an ongoing exhibition annually for a long time,” Gregory said. “It’s a way for students within AISD and the Texas Panhandle to bring student work up and get it on the walls of the museum for a couple of weeks.”
Gregory said that teachers from West Texas A&M University and Amarillo College come to the exhibition, look over the pieces and pick awards. Then, with the graduating seniors, they interview them and give scholarships — to attend both colleges.
“Having the show here, as an institution with clean white walls and lights and rectangular configuration, it’s all about seeing the art,” he said. “Normally they make their things, probably don’t frame it and just hang it somewhere or stick it up in their bedroom.”
Gregory said it’s up to the teachers to gather their students’ work and put it out there so everyone can come look at it and be inspired by it.
The curator said that art has changed over the years, and now that everyone carries a cell phone with a camera, the selfie thing and bubble lenses or perspective skewing is a new kind of fun.
“There’s still some landscapes and still life,” he said. Gregory explained that there were two rooms, one on the south having younger students, and one on the north for seniors’ work, which can contain all their work through their whole portfolio, including art from when they were freshmen.
“You’ll see more creative work on the senior side that you might not see on the other side,” he said.
The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, printmaking, computer art, collage, jewelry, ceramics, sculpture and mixed media work.
Awards will be distributed for 10 individual Best of Show awards and Best of Show Portfolio, with each winner receiving an honorarium from Amarillo ISD’s Art Department.
AC and WT will award scholarships based on portfolio review with interviews conducted during Scholarship Night.
The Education Credit Union also sponsors two Georgia O’Keeffe Excellence in Art & Creativity awards — one for middle school students and one for high school students along with one senior portfolio student.
The museum is located at 2200 South Van Buren on the Washington Street campus of Amarillo College and is open Friday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. For more information, visit www.amoa.org, email amoa@actx.edu, or call 806-371-5050.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: AMoA hosts exhibit of student artwork, to hold special reception
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
