Page 24 - the NOISE January 2016

STUDENTS RING IN A NEW YEAR AT BRANDY’S
LEFT TO RIGHT: Cree Brothers-Watahomigie, Liliah
Boatman and Wyatt Clark are among the STORY BY
Flagstaff Arts and Leadership students displaying their work at Brandy’s this January.
CLAIR ANNA ROSE
When I walk into Janeece Henes’ classroom at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy, students in her Draw, Paint, Print class are already beginning their latest project.
Using charcoal they are creating a completely darkened background to begin a study in white pastel. The palms of their hands are coated in charcoal, and a few tricksters have left a black handshaped print on their neighbor. The students are quiet as they work, though one calls out for music to be on while they draw. It is a relaxed, creative atmosphere and the students are engrossed in their project.
In the center of the room on a table is a collection of animal skulls that will be the subject of their still life study: deer, cattle and a small skull of an unknown animal sit under a spotlight, casting shadows and dramatically lighting the skulls.
Ms. Henes offers a lot of artistic freedom in her classroom, room for new ideas and taking prompts in a different direction, however, with this project she has specific guidelines for the students to follow.
“Do we have to draw exactly what we see on the table?” one student asks.
“For this assignment I really and truly want you to draw from observation. Thereisareasonwhy,”Ms.Henesexplainstothe students. She tells them the importance of building their foundations as an artist in order to build their skills, and lets the students know there will be more opportunities to draw from imagination in the future.
“I am challenging you to not always go for the comfort. It’s going to be better for you if you get up and move around. I challenge you to get out of your seat,” she instructs.
To begin, the students take out their visual journals to do a few small, quick sketches so they can determine what angle they want their drawing to be from.
“I have two sections of Draw, Paint, Print and there are some advanced students in there,” Ms. Henes tells me while the students work. “They just finished a project a week ago that’s called ‘Art and Text.’ They could pick any subject matter that they wished.”
Hung on one wall are all the finished works from the text project inspired by a TED talk. From across the room they look like any other detailed drawings with a good demonstration of dark and light values, but as I get closer I can see hundreds of words covering the pages, some words are layered on top of others, and others are so faintly written they can’t be deciphered.
One of the only pieces done in color, by Sedona Barton, is a rendering of the cartoon character Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons. Every word she used to create the values in her piece are quotes from the character spoken in episodes from the TV show.
Ms. Barton tells me she grew up with art in the house, “It was always a big part of my life, and I started drawing as soon as I could move my hands.”
Ms. Barton also takes the time to show me the artistic journal she is keeping this semester, and has fun asking me what I see in some of the abstract works she has created in her spare time.
She shows me a drawing of an elephant with tentacles where its tusks should be. She makes a note to do a sketch of the deer skull in a similar fashion — with tentacles for antlers.
“I like the fluidity of how they look and how they can look like almost anything,” she tells me about the reoccurrence of tentacles in her art. Lately she has also been drawing a lot of cartoons and portraits. “I practice everything. I do as much as I can.”
This semester Ms. Henes is also teaching a Mixed Media class. “We just did a unit on Mexican art and culture, we did offerendas and a day of the dead service project with the kids at Sechrist,” Ms. Henes says. “They made these really amazing offerendas.”
Sophomore Chiara Rose Skabelund found a black water jug in the desert that had been used by a migrant on a class trip to the Arizona/Mexico border. Cutting a hole in the front of the bottle, she created an offerenda to immigrants who have lost their lives trying to make their way across the Sonoran Desert, naming one immigrant in particular, Josseline Quinteros, who was only 14 years old when she died trying to make her way to her mother in Los Angeles in 2008. “I definitely want to focus on art pieces related to specific issues happening in this world,” she says. “That is why I chose to make my offerenda about Josseline, I wanted to raise awareness about the border issues. I am inspired by people’s stories and I want to share those stories through my art. There are so many issues in this world that need to change and one way of doing so is through art.”
Cree Bothers-Watahomigie is a senior and is new to FALA this year. She grew up in Grand Canyon and has always been interested in art. She has been drawing since her first memory of making art in Kindergarten, and began painting this summer when her father gave her a watercolor set. Finding out watercolor was not as concise as drawing, she didn’t like it. She continued to paint, and began working in oil and acrylic, and now she paints all the time. Ms. Watahomigie is also interested in music and is taking film class this semester.
One piece she created this semester is The Millennial Virgin Mary. “I made the Virgin Mary in 2015, so she had a rainbow colored cloak and tattoos,” Ms. Watahomigie describes. In her independent study Art Lab, she has mostly been focusing on portraiture, but may start giving herself other assignments.
It seems natural students drawn to FALA have been interested in art as far back as they remember, and Naomi Francis is another example. A senior this year, Ms. Francis
has recently become passionate about creating art using mixed media.
“Last semester I created a mixed media piece (wax, paper, oil pastel, acrylic), a reflection of my childhood and the place where I grew up, a house in the desert cinder-hills out past Sunset Crater,” Ms. Francis shares. “My family recently moved into a new house in Flagstaff — the first time I’ve ever moved
— and I wanted to encompass what living at my old home felt like, the essential feeling of my childhood.”
Explaining the inner workings of her creative mind, Ms. Francis says, “I often have very vivid images or abstract ideas and emotions in my mind and the only way to express them is visually. I can be inspired by anything: an experience, a dream, a random thought.”
This semester she has enjoyed working in her visual journal. She uses this tool to experiment and visualize ideas. She describes her visual journal as an artist’s lab book.
Though she started with photography as her main interest, Senior Malia Akela Tong has branched out into mixed media, primarily paper and ink. At the time this article was being written, she was working on a collection of small terrariums in recycled glass bottles using cacti and succulents.
Ms. Tong tells me about a ceiling tile she decorated for Ms. Henes’ classroom. “This summer I traveled to Hawai’i to get in touch with my roots and experience my culture more holistically,” she says. “So, the instant I got back I wanted to leave a bit of that culture at my school. The tile has the islands of Hawai’i in watercolor and is placed on a green-painted background. On either side of the islands are recycled paper bags with traditional Polynesian tribal patterns on them.
Logan Anderson discovered a passion for art, specifically photography, when he began studying at FALA. One of the pieces he is proud of this year is his “movement” assignment, where he experimented with long exposures tracking stars and people in motion. “Art activism inspires me a lot, and people who can take their art and make a social statement that comes with a lasting influence on society or a culture,” he says.
While I only talked to a few of the students at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy, the school is abundant with talented artists. A selection of artwork by FALA students will be on display at Brandy’s Restaurant and Bakery, 1500 E. Cedar, beginning on January 12, 2016. There will be a reception on Thursday, February 4, combining poetry and art. Students will read poetry accompanied by a visual representation by art students.
| Clair Anna Rose is inspired by the next generation of artists. clair@thenoise.us
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