On Friday, April 27, the B-Side addressed the underlying question of what it means to be human when it hosted one of its two annual art shows. Titled “Human: The Art of Being,” the show featured a number of teen works that fit the “human” theme. The art displayed for the show was just as varied as humanity itself; some artists used faces or figures to express their feelings, while others let abstract imagery or simple statements convey their ideas.
“I wanted [my art] to be abstract and minimalist because I kind of wanted people to, you know, whatever religion or spiritual beliefs that they have — or if they have none — I wanted them to be able to put that into what they looked at in the art,” said Jessica Irwin, a junior at Clonlara, a private school that collaborates with homeschoolers. Irwin’s featured pieces were centered around abstract concepts instead of human figures. “I didn’t want to do physical descriptions of people because I was more focused on…people being able to read into it,” Irwin said.
Artists Sonny Spearmento and Kylah Thompson, both students at Community, chose to use more figures and faces in their pieces. “I did [my art] in watercolor,” said Spearmento, “so I’m just trying to capture the figure and… kind of the feeling of the person.”
“I was really thinking about human relationships,” said Thompson. “I think… a big part of being alive, and… being human is having relationships and having… intimacy with another person and being connected to them emotionally and physically…. I think another part of being human is… addiction, like that tendency to be addicted to things… So I wanted to do some pieces about that.”
According to Sophia Ketchum-Goulding, the teen facilitator of the Visual Arts Council at the Neutral Zone, the process of setting up for the show starts at least one or two months in advance, when the theme for the show is chosen. “We just brainstorm a bunch of themes that we would like to do art for and that would inspire us,” Ketchum-Goulding said. “So [the “human” theme] came off of a list of probably 20-30 themes that we had come up with… and then we narrow it down. And I think this one really stuck with us; it seemed really cool.” Ketchum-Goulding added, “What really helped this time — and we were more prepared for this show than any other — was that we handed over the music [to the B-Side]. We used to plan the music by ourselves, but handing over the music really cleared things up for us, and made things easier.”
While Ketchum-Goulding worked to choose a theme and bring the show together, Trevor Stone, Visual Arts Coordinator for the Neutral Zone, helped to set up the show by overseeing the hanging and arranging of artwork. “My job is to train [the teen artists] to do it themselves. So in the most ideal sense, hypothetically, if I couldn’t make it on the last three days or whatever, they could completely do it themselves,” Stone said. “I try to show them how to hang work, and I talk about possible reasons you might put art together on the same wall. Like… matched up because of color, matched up because of theme, matched up because it’s different. You compose the wall like you would an individual painting, with contrasting elements.”
Students from many different Ann Arbor high schools attended the event. Lydia Brown, a senior at Community, said she decided to come when her friends in Chinese Lit told her about the show. “Everyone was like, ‘hey, there’s this art show, you should come!’” Brown said. “And I was like, ‘oh, that sounds like fun, I think I will.’”
