Renee Berumen, the Visual Arts Department Chair, describes the work, obstacles, and extensive planning that went into a successful open house art show.
Q: When did you begin organizing this year’s art show?
A: We probably started about six weeks ahead of time, but really we started talking about it at the beginning of the new semester in February; it’s a long time.
Q: As the Visual Arts Department Chair, what were some of your specific responsibilities for the art show?
A: Probably emailing with Mrs. Main back and forth; everybody actually really takes responsibility. Most department members take responsibility regarding what their needs and ideas are. Everybody has input and anybody can put their 2 cents in.
Q: Were there any changes compared to last year’s show?
A: Our fencing was a little different, but we still hung on fence. We had one bleacher wall that would push in but we still managed to work with it. We always go with the flow and manage to work with whatever happens to come our way. There was a big change; we couldn’t get into the gym until the day before open house, because of testing so that was a huge difference. It made our set up time window really short.
Q: How many art classes contributed to this event?
A: Well, it would be really 8 teachers. It’s 6 visual art teachers and two photo teachers, and three of the visual art teachers teach six classes and the photo teachers have six sections of photos. It was a lot of students contributing and work has to be weeded through, so you can’t show everything that you would like to displayed.
Q: Do you personally have a favorite section in the art show?
A: I love print making and I just absolutely love Mrs. Carbojal’s Zentangle that have prints mixed into them. They were hanging on the three panel and I just kept going back to them. I just really like it, because I love Zentangle first of all and I love to play with them—just doodling. I also love print making so it just combines two things that I really like. I just thought they turned out really nicely.
