Paintings, performances and awards marked this year’s annual Visual & Performing Arts High School Expo at the Loews Theater Thursday as more than a hundred local students gathered to celebrate the completion of another intensive year of training.
Select students throughout Jersey City, in public high schools and parochial, attend the hour-and-a-half daily program at the New Jersey City University campus. Known as a magnet program, the courses are designed to nurture childhood talent so that students have the ability to compete for scholarship dollars in prestigious collegiate art programs around the country. This year, teachers boast, the program’s seniors amassed $970,000 in scholarship money.
To get into the program takes serious interest and some raw talent, as teachers from visual arts, music and drama programs begin to scout students at the beginning of eighth grade. An application process and portfolio serve as the main criteria for incoming freshmen.
“A lot of students are interested in art, but we want to get the ones that have the most drive, ambition and potential,” said Carolyn Frazier, an art teacher.
But getting into the program is only the first step, as students compete against each other to retain that spot.
“There’s no guarantee if you come in freshman year that you’re going to be there senior year,” Frazier added. Each year ends with an interview process that includes a review of the student’s progress for the year to determine who moves on. Beginning with up to 45 students in the freshman year, the senior class is eventually reduced to merely 15 students.
Art instructor John Bradford said the results show staggering success rates as the majority of the students receive scholarship money to pursue a higher level of art education. From this year’s graduating class, students were accepted to the Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School, and others.
“The focus of the program is to get them to do professional work,” Bradford said. While the first three years concentrate on history, technique, and modes of art, seniors are encouraged to use their skills to explore their own personal interest and vision as an artist. “I want them to realize their own energies and find what’s unique to them,” he said.
In order to make that transformation from student to full-fledged artist, the visual artists are required to assemble a one-person show and exhibit it somewhere in Jersey City. Not only does the process force students to pursue a particular theme that represents their artistic interests, but it teaches them the procedure of finding a gallery space to exhibit the work and, subsequently, curate a show.
An abbreviated version of those one-person shows now hangs in the lobby of the Loews Theater until Sunday for public viewing. Abstract landscape paintings, culturally inspired self-portraits, and theatrical mannequins are some of the subjects that students have explored.
After mastering the rudiments of painting realistic portraits, Sid Bodalia said he was turned onto more conceptual art after participating in an intensive four-week summer program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. “It got me to think about the painting and not just paint it,” Bodalia said. Since then, he was inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock to take his concepts a step further. “I had no idea I was going to abstract paintings,” Bodalia said of his initial years at the Magnet program. “It’s the most complicated painting.”
Bodalia added another layer to this abstraction when he learned the art of printmaking, taking his drip painting landscapes to another level. His teacher, Bradford, proudly calls Bodalia his most “inventive and creative” student for taking risks that are usually marked by more mature artists.
Other students stuck to the more traditional concepts of self-portraits, but infused modern styles to gain a fresh look. Hetal Rathod explored her Indian heritage by using representative symbols of her culture, like the swirl-shaped Henna, throughout the painting. “I incorporate designs that represent my Indian culture,” Rathod said. Of her focus on self-portraits and watercolors, she said, “I’m going to continue to do what I do, but I don’t know where I’ll end up.”
The exhibition runs through June 2 and is open from noon to 7 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday for public viewing.
Music and drama
In addition to visual arts, a performance component is also part of the magnet program. Robert Gray, who teaches instruments to students, led his orchestra in performing Gershwin’s “April in Paris” during the art expo. Wanting students to play the classic and the popular, Gray also included a Santana medley piece that he said was “quite difficult.”
Gray, who just completed his first year with the Jersey City Public School system, said that he has created a four-year curriculum for instrumental instruction that brings students from the basics of music theory up to conducting. “By the time they graduate, the idea is to have them get into top music schools in the country and get scholarships,” Gray said. To prepare them for the cutthroat competitive nature of the audition process, Gray said he has students perform their exam pieces in front of the class. He makes the audition process an integral part of the program.
The students also travel around the city performing in high schools, the Jersey City Medical Center, and Harborside Plaza.
Similarly, the drama program encourages its students to get ready for the collegiate level programs that are available. “The mission is to provide a drama program that we consider to be advanced training for younger actors,” said Tim Craig, an instructor. Concentrating on history, structure, form and technique, Craig said that he wants to give his students “everything they need to know or have in their bag of tricks to be their best.”
To showcase the program’s talent, Craig invited three students to deliver monologues to the magnet program’s other students during the awards ceremony.
Alfonso Patterson, a sophomore, delivered a monologue called “Your children are not your children.” Moments later, Craig awarded him a trophy to commend his improvement in the past year.
Patterson said the program has improved upon his childhood ambition to act. “They help me get where I want to be at,” Patterson said. Looking down the road, he said he wants to be at college where he can study acting further.