Featured Student Artist: Seoyoung (Samantha) Kim

Samantha Kim was selected as a Top Ten Winner in our Spring 2014 national art contest. Her art, “Gift from the Wind“, is shown above. At the time of her award, Samantha was in 11th grade at Memorial High School in Texas.

Samantha loves painting portraits of dogs. For her Top Ten piece, she painted realistically to show the details of the dog’s hair.

Currently, Samantha plans to major in Fine Arts in the future. “There are many things I want to do in the future,” Samantha explains, “but the main thing that I want to do is to become an art professor.”

To learn more about our national art contest, visit www.celebratingart.com.

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Featured Teacher: Ross Hines

Ross Hines is originally from Oklahoma, but made the move down to Texas after finishing college.  He holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Art with a minor in Art History from the University of Oklahoma and a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Art Education from the University of Central Oklahoma.  Ross has spent nearly six years at the Hebron High School complex in the Lewisville Independent School District, with two years at the main campus and the last four at the new 9th Grade Campus which he helped open.

We asked Ross his thoughts on engaging student artists and what helps him to be successful in the classroom. He responded with the following:

“I try to make my instruction as personal as possible.  While you can address your class as a whole, explain assignments to groups of twenty-nine to thirty-three, and ask for volunteers for contests, you get a better response when you ask the individual.  You can explain why they might be perfect for a particular contest or you can get into a discussion about the student’s style and how they can solve the current project’s parameters and keep their voice.  While I stress the basics of representational realism, I love when my students are able to speak through their art.  We work through issues that arise such as composition, color usage, or accurate depiction.  All of these skills will serve them as they proceed through high school art and in the case of a few, art schools around the nation.  I’ve been blessed to teach some amazing talent in my years with Hebron and feel honored to be apart of my students lives, helping them along the way.”

Ross has had over 130 student art pieces published in our national anthologies since the Spring 2011 contest. Even more impressively, he has had 16 Top Ten Winners since that time. This is a phenomenal number, and one of the highest of any school that has participated in our contest. This speaks volumes about the quality of his program and the work he does to inspire student artists.

To learn more about our national art contests, visit www.CelebratingArt.com.

Featured Student Artist: Claire Miller

Claire was 15 years old when her art was selected as a Top Ten Winner in our Fall 2013 national art contest. Claire is from Sartell, a small town in central Minnesota, and has always wanted to be an artist. At the time of publication, she was attending Cathedral High School in St. Cloud with her twin sister. Her first art award was a blue ribbon at the State Fair for a pastel of her twin sister as a baby. Claire loves to play tennis and she plays on Cathedral’s Varsity tennis team. She also enjoys spending time with friends, taking art classes, and participating in track and theatre.

Claire has studied art at the Riverside Art Studio, the Harvey Schroeder Painting Studio, the Atelier Studio of Fine Art in Minneapolis and the MeiLin Art Studio. She’s traveled hundreds of miles to receive the best art instruction she can because she wants to be the best artist she can be. Her college goal is to receive a Bachelor degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in painting.

“I love using color, light and movement to highlight the beauty of nature.” Claire explains, “I work in oil, pastel and charcoal. I don’t paint what I see. Rather, I try to create compassion and understanding for my subjects. For example, in The Cow, I use a possibly boring subject to show the beauty of the cow by contrasting the colors of the cow with background colors of my choosing. In this drawing, the color values change gradually to create a realistic looking cow and to create a beautiful background surrounding the cow.”

The Cow has won other awards including 1st Place in Drawing at the Visual Arts Minnesota 33rd Annual High School Art Exhibition and Competition, the Spotlight On the Arts Award (1st Place) in Drawing at the Minnesota State High School League Art Competition Region 5A, 2013, and an Honorable Mention at the Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards (Jan, 2014). “I’m most proud of The Cow winning the Celebrating Arts award.”

Claire has had ten pieces win fourteen High School awards. She has also placed second in the Great River Arts Association Summertime in Minnesota Exhibition, a statewide professional juried art competition in Little Falls, Minnesota for one of her other watercolor pastel drawings of a bee with flowers. She just completed her first solo art exhibition at the Great River Regional Library in St. Cloud which displayed eighteen of her pieces.

To learn about our national art contests, visit www.celebratingart.com.