Ingrid Sant and Halle Jacobs

The Eastern Star Gallery was recently occupied by seniors Ingrid Sant and Halle Jacobs for their joint showcase. Their exhibit took place on April 26 and featured Sant’s illustrations and paintings and Jacobs’ pottery.

The central idea of Sant’s showcase was her relationships with her family and friends. She focused on trying to capture the personality of the individuals in her pieces.

“My work focuses on human interaction with the natural environment, as well as my personal relationships and the different contexts in which I know the people who are most important to me,” she wrote in her artist statement. “I experiment with the sensation of solitude and quiet within my work—focusing on subtlety in the way that personality is expressed.”

Sant values the creative process because of its ability to be an emotional outlet.

“I can’t think of a better way to deal with difficult emotions personally than to work them out with my hands,” she said. “I think making visual art just really allows you to look into yourself, and the process of making new things that have their own personality is really therapeutic.”

For her showcase, Jacobs focused on “rhythms, patterns, and progression,” as she noted in her artist statement.

Jacobs explored new styles and shapes of pottery in her senior showcase.

“For my AP concentration, I focused on redefining the shape of a bowl. I started by making traditional bowls and then began to distort the form and rim of the bowls I was making. Throughout the semester I’ve had a lot of fun throwing bowls and then playing with different techniques to make them more and more different and misshapen,” Jacobs said.”Building off of those themes from my concentration, in preparation for my senior show, I also decided to explore the same concepts on a smaller scale by making little cups — I call them tumblers — to place along the gallery walls.”

She was inspired by artist Edmund de Waal whose show she attended last spring with her ceramics class.

Jacobs’ time in Archer ceramics classes has greatly shaped her high school experience.

“I have taken ceramics class for five of my six years at Archer, and I couldn’t imagine school without it,” Jacobs said. “Ceramics challenges me to learn, think and problem solve in different ways than my academic classes do.”

Zoë Webb-Mack

Senior Zoë Webb-Mack’s love for math was her greatest inspiration for her senior showcase entitled “f (x, y, z).”

“I took a math course over the summer that involved three-dimensional functions.  My frustration with my difficulty visualizing such functions inspired me to represent them through my artwork,” Webb-Mack said. “The goal of my show was to humanize math and express the ways in which I, as a math enthusiast, relate to math on an emotional level.”

She sees art as an integral aspect of Archer because of its ability to empower the students.

“Since Archer is all about empowering its students, art is essential to Archer’s mission,” Webb-Mack said. “In pursuing passions and interests, expressing feelings and thoughts, and developing personal voice through art, empowerment is what art is fundamentally about.”

Her showcase took place in the upstairs gallery on May 26.

India Halsted 

India Halsted ’17 describes her photography as “a dialogue with concepts of femininity, identity, movement, form and performance.”

Her showcase was a culmination of the photos she has taken in high school.

“In my portraits, I am both a documentary and conceptual photographer, exploring aesthetics and performance, among other subjects,” Halsted said. “I also tend to explore the fleeting nature of landscape in my art pieces.”

Her work often references other forms of art such as the photography of Cindy Sherman, the paintings of Millais and the writing of Virginia Woolf. 

Halsted has taken photography since the eighth grade and believes that arts at Archer are a vital part of the community.

“Art is a reflection of each person’s unique perspective and experiences,” Halsted said. “I feel that having senior art shows is an amazing way to showcase the diversity of perspectives within our community.”

Although some of her projects have been unsuccessful, she values the space photography has given her to experiment. Halsted’s show took place on April 13 in the Eastern Star Gallery.

“Not all of my photography projects have worked out, but sometimes wonderful experiments have happened such as the movements of the camera as seen in my twilight series,” Halsted said. “Photography has allowed me to develop techniques and show others how I see the world.”