By Sarah Smithson

“I believe very much in mixing and mingling.”

The 2016 Collegiate Art Walk was last Monday, and Pam Sutherland, Upper School art teacher, is standing in button-embellished red boots by her desk, fixing the frame of one of her pieces that fell. Although many members of the Collegiate community love going to see alumni and students’ work each year, Mrs. Sutherland notes that “the nature of visual arts is that it just does not draw a crowd.” Despite the fact that the show was not as well-attended as she and the artists may have hoped, they’re all persisting and creating, with the Honors Art class planning on having a class-wide critique today, focusing on their respective installations. One of the biggest obstacles for the older artists at Collegiate was creating content appropriate for a K-12 audience, because “what might be developmentally appropriate for an 18-year-old isn’t for someone younger.” Looking forward, the Honors class is hoping to have a critique exchange with Henrico High School‘s Center of the Arts. The class is looking forward to this opportunity get feedback from people they don’t know, because they’ve spent the whole year in class with each other. At this point, they’re working on pieces for the critique independently, with little instruction from their teacher, because by now, “they have a greater sense of who they are and what they like to make,” according to Sutherland. 

The red boots.

Photos by Sarah Smithson.