With so many extracurricular choices at Santa Monica High School, the campus’ robust visual arts department can sometimes stay under the radar as students hone a variety of craft skills. Going into the winter season, the department is undetected no longer, as locals flocked to the Samohi Roberts Art Gallery on Dec. 7 for the Samohi Spotlight Exhibit.
Given a blessing by the arts department, Samohi senior Flynn Latta was able to adorn the gallery with selected pieces from Samohi advanced art students in art forms like photography, digital art, ceramics, acrylics and sculptures, along with more traditional paintings. Latta and the gallery’s student-led installation team were inspired by the works of Vincent Van Gogh, filling the otherwise-white room with the artist’s signature dark blue and gold color palette. Latta herself got into the Van Gogh spirit, creating a mirror inspired by “The Starry Night.”
Sometimes an underutilized part of Samohi’s campus, the gallery added the Spotlight Exhibit event for the winter after a Dia De Los Muertos celebration in the fall. Latta said it’s both a chance for students to show off for the community and a chance for the department to make itself more known in the Samohi landscape.
“I feel like our arts program is so amazing here, but nobody knows about it, so we have to broadcast it [somehow] … a lot of people [here] graduate and go onto art school,” Latta said.
The senior hopes to be an art teacher in the future, gaining crucial experience as project manager for the exhibit. Along with just showing off their works, Samohi students had the option to sell art pieces to gallery visitors, of which there were many during the two-hour showcase. Some items are staying within the department, however, such as quilt squares created from the question “how do you perceive love?,” which Latta says will be sewn together into a bigger quilt.
Student-artists submitted information about their pieces along with the work itself, displaying their thought processes to the infatuated public.
“I like to see both color and darkness in the world,” stated Samohi artist Adessa Rigg about her black-and-white piece depicting a crying female holding various flowers. “The balance of good and evil, hope and hurt, joy and pain. I try my best to achieve this through my artwork, incorporating delicate and soft details coupled with harsh and foreboding feelings … my goal as an artist is to resonate with people, spark emotion, and to put a piece of myself out into the world for others to see.”
Another standout project came from Samohi artist Grace Cao, with a piece showing two hands from opposite sides coming together in front of a blue backdrop.
“In my art pieces, I like to play with the idea of dulls mixed with vibrancy,” Cao stated. “While there are many details that go into my art piece, I like the idea of someone looking over it, and seeing the bigger picture, with all aspects coming together … to me, art is really just one big experimental process, with no destined end goal.”