Young Artists' Work on Display

You don't have to be a professional artist to have your work displayed at the Blaffer Gallery, as some local high school students have realized.

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, is hosting the Young Artist Apprenticeship Program: Alternating/Current through the end of March. The exhibition is the culmination of the six-week Young Artist Apprenticeship Program, a comprehensive art workshop held each fall and spring semester for a group of area high school students.

Artist mentors Audry Herber and Patrick Renner led the group of 12 students in individual and group projects inspired by Blaffer's current exhibitions. The students worked with the subject of industrial landscapes found in Texas Oil: Landscape of an Industry and experimented with different ways to work with clay and paint, the materials highlighted in Electric Mud.

Participating students, chosen from Austin High School, Chavez High School, Eastwood Academy and Milby High School, include Joann Castellanos, Desiree Chagoya, Yolanda Cruz, Monica Cuellar, Minelya DeLeon, Consuelo Gonzales, Marisol Hernandez, Monserrat Olmos, Priscilla Ordaz, Janett Reyna, Michael Tran and Yesenia Vasquez. The artist mentors will award two students a Martha Meier Scholarship for excellence in art at the opening reception.

“With Alternating/Current, Patrick and I challenged the YAAP students to find the beautiful or unique by observing and drawing a landscape considered unremarkable, ultimately exploring the notion of what is hidden both above and below the surface of their neighborhoods," stated Herber. "Experimenting with diverse techniques such as bisque-fired ceramics colored with oil pastels and painting with clay slip on canvas paper, the work that was chosen represents the individual excellence of these talented students."