Amarillo Museum of Art hosts 2021 Texas Panhandle Student Art Show
4 min read
At two of the exhibit halls at the Amarillo Museum of Art, pieces of art fill the walls, featuring different styles and various subject matter, giving members of the public the chance to see the artists’ respective visions.
Visitors to this Texas Panhandle Student Art Show, however, are going to be exposed to the visions of numerous student artists through the more than 700 pieces of art featured in this exhibition.
Students from the Amarillo, Canyon and Bushland independent school districts are featured in this end-of-year student art exhibition, which runs through May 20 at the museum, located at 2200 S. Van Buren St., on the Washington Street Campus of Amarillo College.
The Texas Panhandle Student Art Show was not able to be hosted in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Denise Olson, director of arts education in Amarillo ISD, said it was “pure joy” to see the students’ work this year, and even seeing the teachers come and hang the artwork up.
“It was wonderful to be able to hang up student work, to see the teachers when they came out to hang the work and to highlight what our students have been doing during the year,” Olson said. “It’s always amazing to see their artwork. They are very talented.”
The two exhibit halls that make up the Texas Panhandle Student Art Show consist of two parts of the show. One of the halls features individual work from the various districts, with the artists ranging in age from elementary to high school. Olson said art teachers from across the Texas Panhandle had the ability to hang up to 25 pieces of student artwork for that portion of the show.
Olson said that the middle and high school students featured in the individual gallery portion of the show are eligible for awards, to be given out at a ceremony at 6:30 p.m. May 20. According to a news release, the artwork will be judged by Amarillo College art professors for 10 Best of Show awards as well as Education Credit Union Georgia O’Keeffe Excellence in Art & Creativity Awards for one high school and one middle school entry.
The second portion of the exhibition consists of portfolios from graduating seniors in the Amarillo area. According to the release, those students will be eligible for one Best of Show Portfolio award as well as the ECU Georgia O’Keeffe Scholarship. Scholarships from the Texas Panhandle Art Education Association as well as the Amarillo College and the West Texas A&M University Art Departments will also be awarded.
Deana Craighead, curator of education at the Amarillo Museum of Art, said she believes exhibits featuring work from students throughout the Texas Panhandle are important for many reasons. But the senior portfolio portion of the show stands out to her.
“You have the senior portfolios, so you have students competing for scholarships and school awards and things like that. So to highlight a years’ worth of work and be able to put together a portfolio and display that is really important,” she said. “…You’ve got kids that are putting up things on the wall and bringing their families in, being able to look at their work on a museum wall, and that’s powerful.”
What the students are taught that particular year affects what the exhibition looks like each year, Craighead said. For this year’s exhibition, she said she noticed that there was a lot of work addressing what the community has gone through over the past year with photographs, drawings and collages, as well as artwork like ceramics, printmaking and paintings.
For the students participating in the individual student work portion of the exhibition, Olson said she hopes they are inspired and uplifted by seeing the potential of what they can do when they get older.
“It’s always wonderful for all students to see what other students (do)… to be inspired to really just understand and appreciate that they are in the midst of a lot of other students’ wonderful artwork,” she said.
Olson said she also believes that visitors will be inspired by the work, if they are connected to a particular student, school or district, or not.
“We have some amazingly talented students,” she said. “The artwork is beautiful and I think they will enjoy seeing the artwork itself. But I believe it’s really nice for the community to see what our students are doing and how they are expressing themselves.”
The amount of talent that area students have is something that surprises Craighead every time the museum hosts an student-centered exhibition like the Texas Panhandle Student Art Show.
“I always think that it is really surprising what I see coming into the galleries during these student shows,” she said. “It’s just so interesting to see the talent that we have, the diverse points of view that we have in our community, but I do think it’s important to realize that we do have a strong arts community in our schools.”
The museum is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday and from noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. For more information about the museum, visit www.amoa.org or call the museum at (806) 371-5050 or (806) 371-5392 on weekends.
