
DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997                 TAG: 9704040050

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS ARTS WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  187 lines

A BRUSH WITH FAME ARTISTS THRILLED TO BE PART OF STUDENT GALLERY '97

JUST HOW thrilling is it to have your work chosen for Student Gallery '97, an art competition open to any Hampton Roads junior or senior?

``I'm honored. It's very encouraging,'' says Rob Secrest, a senior at Maury High in Norfolk.

``It's exciting to me,'' says Heather Bryant, a junior at Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake. ``It's good to feel like other people recognize you and appreciate what you're able to do.''

Heather and Rob are just two of the 600 students who brought work to Norfolk's Scope on March 15 for the Student Gallery '97 preliminaries. Just 60 of the entries were chosen as finalists; an additional 29 were selected as honorees.

The honorees' art will be unveiled tonight at a private reception at Crestar Bank Gallery in downtown Norfolk. The show opens to the public Monday.

On Sunday, the finalists' art will go on view at The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, and $2,650 in cash prizes will be awarded to a dozen winners.

The judge is New Yorker Jerry James, a veteran art instructor now with Lincoln Center Institute's visual literacy program at the Museum of Modern Art.

This year, Student Gallery celebrates its 25th anniversary and is part of the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival.

The Virginian Pilot talked to four of the artists about their work and what it means to them.

Heather Bryant

Oscar Smith High School, Chesapeake

Heather received a double dose of encouragement at Student Gallery preliminaries last month: the Oscar Smith junior was named a finalist and was handed the Students Popular Choice award by her peers.

``I was really surprised. I knew I was good, but sometimes you just kind of wonder. You don't feel but so sure,'' she says.

Heather was so honored for two large-scale, realistic pencil drawings. Her process is to find photographs in magazines, then spend six to eight weeks translating them to graphite on paper.

Over years of drawing, she developed her own unorthodox method. ``I draw section by section. I'll draw in an eye and then the other eye. And then the nose. And I complete each area as I go.''

Most artists lightly sketch in the entire image first, but Heather says her way is ``a lot easier for me. I feel I can get everything in proportion that way.''

Although she deals with the surface appearance of people and objects, Heather tends to look below the surface.

Her drawing titled ``The Soul of a Man'' portrays an old man holding a violin. She was attracted to the figure ``because he looked really driven'' - a condition to which she can relate.

``I can think about different things I want to do, and where I want to go with my artwork. I just feel like I'll be determined to go there - to be as good as I can possibly be - and achieve my potential. I'm not going to let myself down.''

Heather finds refuge in art. ``When I draw, unlike in my other schoolwork, I feel more content. I don't think about the act of drawing. It's not stressful at all. I'm able to fully relax.

``I don't feel like I'm going to do something wrong. It's not like a math problem where there is a right answer.

``It just is.''

Rob Secrest

Maury High School, Norfolk

Listening to Rob Secrest talk about his ceramic sculpture ``A River Runs Through It,'' a person might sense that the work has psychological content.

The piece, one of two that earned him finalist status, consists of two small clay mountains atop a pedestal that is split in two, as if from an earthquake.

``The same time the mountains are together, they're also pulling apart from each other. Just like in real life, just like in the mountains,'' Rob explains.

In his artwork, Rob suggests that human relationships and endeavors are mirrored in nature, because we are inescapably part of nature.

The artist has a knack for projecting human feelings onto his work. Listen to how he talked about the mountain sculpture: ``It's eroded. It's stressed. It's been through a lot. It's been through millions of years of hurricanes and earthquakes. It's seen more than any human has seen.''

Rob painted the ``split'' inside the pedestal an ocean blue.

``The land may be eroded and dried up, but there's life there. There is life in the blue water,'' says the Maury senior.

The water beneath the surface could be interpreted as a human resource; it's a reminder that while a person may feel exhausted of spirit, there is more life within that will rise in its own time.

The artist has studied clay sculpture for four years at Maury with Wendy Farnham. He particularly wants to credit her, saying: ``She has definitely pushed me, helped me, reassured me, kept me going. She's a wonderful teacher.''

Landscape has been a main interest from the beginning. He loves the outdoors, especially mountains, and spent three weeks last summer hiking the Appalachian Trail.

With these latest landscapes, ``I'm glad I finally figured out a way to create what was in my mind - to make it appear, as close as possible, to the vision I had.''

Edward Hohlt

Nandua High School, Onley

Don't think that Edward Hohlt is a budding Egyptologist just because he has portrayed hieroglyphics on his clay pot and woodcut print.

Edward's use of ancient Egyptian writing in his art began when he made a 22-inch-tall ceramic vase, ``thrown'' in two sections on a potter's wheel and then carefully attached to look like a single vessel.

Once the pot was made and drying, he stared and stared at it, waiting for inspiration on how to decorate it.

``And it came to me that it resembled an Egyptian pot,'' says the Nandua senior.

He was familiar with hieroglyphics, having studied them in art class. He carved letters into the surface of the pot, then brushed iron oxide over the entire stoneware pot to bring out the letters.

Next, he created a companion piece for the pot - a woodcut with a bold design that incorporates hieroglyphics in the background.

The woodcut shows a man kneeling at a table, preparing a dead animal that has just been sacrificed. Another animal awaits its death.

The artist's choice of an ancient image has some basis in his life.

Hunting is a popular sport on the Eastern Shore where Edward lives. ``Usually, when I'm out deer hunting with other people, everybody else gets a deer but me,'' he says. ``They want to get a high number. At the end of the year, they want to say they have the most.

``But I want to save some of the animals and only take what is due to me. I don't want to take more than we should. I don't want to see them become extinct.

``And I don't feel the world is listening: The animals have been around longer than we have. They could teach us something.''

Tammar Chisholm

I.C. Norcom High School, Portsmouth

Art is a process of creation that involves labor, thought and vision. Anyone who works at it is likely to improve. And yet, Tammar, a skillful portraitist, is mindful of a factor greater than her own efforts.

``I think my artistic talent comes from God,'' she says. ``I recognized my gift at a very early age. I believe that everyone is artistic in some way, and that is why everyone can appreciate good art.''

She feels so strongly that her ability to recreate the appearance of people and objects is God-given because it comes so easily to her.

``I don't have to work at it,'' she says. ``When I was younger, I could not draw people at all. Then, out of the blue, I started to draw people realistically.

``So I give credit to God.''

A senior, Tammar so far has been accepted for admission in the fall by two art schools, New York's Pratt Institute and the Art Institute of Boston. She is committed to studying art in college but has not decided which school she'll attend.

She earned honoree status for three small watercolor-on-canvas portraits. Watercolor is an unusual choice on canvas, but Tammar said she prefers it ``because it's more free-flowing.''

One entry, titled ``Family,'' consists of two portraits - a mother with her baby, then the father with the infant. Tammar was commissioned by the couple to create the pendant portraits.

She was striving to capture the feeling of pride in each parent's eyes, she says.

Her other entry is a portrait of a young couple, smiling and in love. ``It captures the mood I usually see them in. We sort of grew up together. And all we did was play, kick back, laugh and have good times.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot

Artists with works in Student Gallery '97 include, from left,

Heather Bryant, Tammar Chisholm, Rob Secrest and Edward Hohit.

Tammar Chisholm's specialty is portraiture.

Rob Secrest's ceramic sculpture suggests the rifts that develop in

relationships.

Edward Hohit used an Egyptian theme to decorate a ceramic vase and

accompanying woodcut.

Heather Bryant's drawings are made with an unusual method.

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

What: Exhibit by 29 honorees