From April 2 to May 6, Oxnard Union High School District (OUHSD) held its Annual Art Exhibition at the Channel Islands Maritime Museum. For six weeks, the exhibit was open for the public to view countless artworks from students across OUHSD. Among 10 CI Raiders whose artwork was featured in the exhibit, three pieces won awards on the evening of April 23, the Artist Reception:
Lorena Lopez—“Rosa”
Senior Lorena Lopez’s “Rosa” won first place in the sculpture category. Stunning with the juxtaposition of an elephant’s dark body and a butterfly’s bright wings, Lopez’s paper mache sculpture took home a well-deserved ribbon.
Her piece also met some “took-homes” along the way. Working mostly on the sculpture during her 3D Sculpture and Design class, Lopez mentions she would take the piece with her and work on it at home sometimes.
“I think what mostly took long was the painting,” she says.
Lopez’s parents were key contributors to the creation of the piece. “I wanted to do something with an elephant because they’re so cute,” Lopez says. She wanted to emphasize the distinctive size and shape of elephants’ ears.
With Lopez’s adoration for the cuteness of “elephants” and love for butterflies, her parents gave her the idea to work with elephants and other animals she likes.
“My parents [were] like, ‘since you really like butterflies, why don’t you just combine them?’” With the two ideas down, she was able to “combine other animals and get further along.”
While not directly, her grandmother is also central to her sculpture. Lopez decided to name her piece after her grandmother.
“Since she loved butterflies too, I feel like it represents her. So I just think about my grandma.”
Maliah Mims—“The Revival”
Sophomore Maliah Mims’s “The Revival” depicts a triad of skulls made with a combination of pens,
prints, markers, colored pencils, Sharpies, and paper. Mims’s piece won third place in the Mixed Media category.
Since she was a child, Mims was always creating art. As a kindergartener who always drew in class, and eventually as a second and third grade elementary student where she started to do more art, the art of creation has always been a part of her.
Now in her second year of high school, Mims is currently in CI’s Illustration class, which is the advanced art class for dedicated creatives. With artists such as J.C Leyendecker as inspiration, she finds herself working mostly with graphite pencils and, occasionally, crayons.
However, she has one past experience that further propelled her to make art.
“My mom worked for this program where adults with disabilities would make their own art and put it in museums and sell it,” says Mims. “I would go with her there and I would do art with all the adults. That’s what mainly sparked it up the most.”
Brandi Nares—“Nova Zentangle”
Senior Brandi Nares’s “Nova Zentangle” outlines the brilliance of negative space and the intricacies of varying line weights. Her work won third place in the Digital Art category.
Creating the piece for her Digital Art class, she says that it “took a lot of time because it’s not simple,” Nares says, explaining the intricacies of Zentangles. “It has a bunch of different patterns and different line thickness with a variety of stuff in it.”
She mentions how, unlike a traditional painting you can bring with you home, digital work saved on a school PC stays there until touched the next day. “In order to transfer it over, you have to go to Google Drive, and even then, the school [chromebooks] don’t have Photoshop, so you can’t really use it,” says Nares.
Drawing digitally was new territory for Nares, especially because she prefers to sketch and paint. She admits, however, that she “[doesn’t] do it as much now.” When she does dabble into familiar tools such as typical acrylics, she often feels “horrible,” and gets really “discouraged” about it.
“You have so many ideas that you want to do, and then trying to put it how you see it in your head, it’s like ‘Oh, that don’t look right,’” says Nares.
For creatives in the same realm of stagnation, Nares gives simple advice: “Just do it,” she laughs. “Just try doing something that relaxes you, or turns over a new leaf.”
