Los Angeles is home to approximately 3.82 million people. Three Archer seniors are particularly proud to be a part of that group.
Seniors Grace Ryan, Ivy Woolenberg and Lili Franks collaborated on curating this year’s second senior show. “Homesick” opened in the Eastern Star Gallery Wednesday, March 19, and ran through Friday, March 21. The exhibit was centered around the importance of appreciating one’s home.
Ceramics teacher Sally Chung advised ceramics students Franks and Ryan through the curation process, and visual arts teacher Maya Alford worked with Woolenberg on photography. Chung noted the attention to detail they put into preparing for the show.
“They’ve done a really good job of making the gallery space feel like a home. They’ve got like a dining table, tablecloth, they have a couch, and so it’s quite inviting,” Chung said. “I think that was the whole purpose for them, to make it really feel like, ‘Okay, it is a little slice of like what our homes look like.’”
More than 6,000 homes were damaged during the Palisades fire, and many Archer students were displaced as a result. Ryan explained that she and Woolenberg were directly affected and used their experience as inspiration for the gallery.
“In January, Ivy’s and [my] houses burned down. It felt very apropos to continue the theme, particularly when I went to my house and the only things that survived were the ceramics,” Ryan said. “I was able to take some pieces that I had, integrate some pieces that I made this year, and kind of create this integrated, immersive room. We were hoping, while we both have lost our childhood homes, we can kind of reassemble the sense of how we feel with our community.”
Acknowledging the Palisades fires was an important aspect of their show, Franks said, to pay homage to the Archer community. Many of her previous art pieces are related to the environment, which she felt was particularly relevant after the fires.
“With the recent Palisades fires, two of our artists have actually been directly impact impacted. So we really wanted to focus in on that because it left such a mark on the Archer community,” Franks said. “I’m incredibly passionate about the environment but also really dedicated to home life — we wanted to convey those ideas.”
Franks said putting together “Homesick” allowed her to be introspective about her experience growing up in Los Angeles. She will be attending Tufts University in the fall and will miss certain aspects of L.A.
“I’m taking my home a lot more personally. It’s so easy for people to take advantage of the environment they live in. I remember not liking the area where I grew up,” Franks said. “I’m about to go to college on the east coast at Tufts, and so I’m not gonna have the sunshine. I’m not gonna have my childhood home, which I’ve lived in for all this time, and so I think all of us as seniors are just trying to really embrace home.”
Ryan said Chung was supportive throughout her creative process and allowed her to take charge of her project.
“She helped me with the technical things, like hanging up my picture frames and how I should go about the process of throwing,” Ryan said. “She’s really around to help me narrow my idea, help guide, but she definitely didn’t overstep and let us really see our vision out.”
Chung noticed a sense of determination from each artist contributing to the show, and she looks forward to their progress in the future.
“We’ve built up to [the show] so much that it’s this big thing, and thinking ‘It’s going to be some a bit weight off their shoulders,” Chung said. “It’s also such a great celebration for their whole artistic journey at Archer.”
