Orange County high school artists celebrated in LCAD Gallery exhibition
A little recognition can go a long way in determining the path chosen by youth, especially when it comes to academic and career pursuits.
Hundreds of Orange County high school students submitted their artwork, and dozens had their creations juried into the “Color It Orange” exhibition at the LCAD Gallery in downtown Laguna Beach.
The art show was started 49 years ago by Designing Women, a founding support group of Laguna College of Art and Design. The program inspires students by recognizing their work, and in so doing, it honors the teachers who have helped their pupils discover their talents.
LCAD Gallery manager Bryan Heggie called “Color It Orange” one of the space’s “most heartfelt shows” because of the celebratory nature for the families involved.
“It puts it on that pedestal to see it in that new light, that maybe it’s not on their desk,” Heggie said of displaying the students’ art. “... They can celebrate that with their parents and realize they’ve accomplished something.”
A partnership has also been formed between LCAD’s “Color It Orange,” the Orange County Department of Education’s OCArts4All showcase and the Festival of Arts.
“My goal here is for the high visibility, high quality and relevance, all three pieces to be in place,” said Scott Fitzpatrick, arts coordinator at the Orange County Department of Education. “We have students in high school whose work has been juried by Laguna College of Art and Design for this particular display — “Color It Orange” — in April. They’re looking at pieces and giving us a great view, as they transition out of high school into college, what’s going to be preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow.”
LCAD president Steven Brittan, who had a background in architecture and urban design before coming to the college, is excited about the opportunity to show students the different doors available to them through their artistic abilities.
Leading up to the reception at the gallery on Thursday evening, Brittan expounded on the message he wished to impart to the students in attendance.
“The power of being an artist and a creative in this world today ... the traditional perception of an artist as a struggling artist, those days are gone. The time has come for creative minds to be able to engage in a world to help problem solve, to help the agents of change through their creative abilities,” Brittan said. “As artists, they have this tremendous, innate talent that they can leverage to be able to bring about positive change through their art.”
The “Color It Orange” art show will be on exhibit at the LCAD Gallery through April 21. The room has wall-to-wall coverage of artwork from across a variety of media, including ceramics, drawing, painting and photography.
An appetizing artful island groups creations that include a birthday picnic shared by two cats, and separately, a tray of sushi. Beckman senior Grace Lin, one of five scholarship recipients for summer programming at LCAD through the “Color It Orange” show, produced the work influenced by a childhood passion for anime, manga and video games.
“You have to consider the school you’re applying to,” Lin said of building out a portfolio for the college application process. “You have to consider the major that you’re applying to. My major, in particular, was entertainment design, so it was centered around creating a story world and doing character designs, environmental designs, vehicles, props, all of that, and it was really just creating a world from the ground up.”
Chloe Kong, a freshman at Pacifica, illustrated skillful use of different shades of gray in a pencil drawing of an everyday task, depicting a spray bottle being held up to clean a mirror.
“I was trying to practice the tiniest details because before this piece, I had trouble getting the wrinkles [of the hand] down, or the shininess of the spray bottle,” Kong said. “I was having difficulty capturing the life in the picture, so I was trying to [implement] that in a daily life scenario.”
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