All Oak Hills High School students electing to enroll in an Art and Design Department course will develop a Competitive Advantage, Appreciation of the Arts, Creative Thinking and Problem Solving Skills, Interdisciplinary Connections, Social and Global Awareness, and Career Preparation related to Visual Communication.
The Rain Barrel Art Project was created to promote the use of rain barrels throughout the Ohio River Valley area through a creative and educational medium. The Rain Barrel Art Project desires to educate people on environmental issues like stormwater runoff, watersheds, and water conservation.
Rain barrels continue to grow in popularity across the country. However, one of its biggest drawbacks is its dull appearance. Some people are less likely to use them given their negative aesthetic impact on residential and commercial landscaping, even though they conserve water and save money. The “Save Local Waters” initiative believes that producing beautiful artistic rain barrels that have unique painted details will make them more desirable and naturally increase interest to promote their use.
Ms. Kopf’s Painting and Public Art and Ms. Schorsch’s National Art Honor Society students will be creating 5 Rain Barrels for this year’s event! Congratulations to all of the students who were selected by their peers to submit pieces for the jurying.
Completed Rain Barrels will be displayed at the Cincinnati Zoo along with the Online Auction and Artist Reception. Stay tuned to dates!
Congratulations to Jordan Tinsley, Addison Wuebbling, Cedar Krodel, Alexis Predmore, and Edith Sax on the selection of their design by the “Save Local Waters” committee for this year’s event!
“The Memory Project” portraits, created by students enrolled in the Drawing and Printmaking course (grades 9-12), have been delivered!
“The Memory Project” is a nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create portraits for youth around the world who have faced substantial challenges, such as neglect, abuse, loss of parents, and extreme poverty. Over the past seven years, Drawing and Printmaking and NAHS students have created over 440 portraits for children in Madagascar, the Philippines, and Syrian refugees in Jordan, Puerto Rico, the Rohingya in Rakhine, Columbia, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone. This year, students at OHHS created portraits for 30 Columbian children.
The children in this project all live in a very poor shanty town. Over the past decades, many Colombians have fled to such shanty towns to escape the drug- related violence, murders, and kidnappings in their country’s more rural areas. Systemic poverty in these shanty towns leads to many on-going social problems, especially for women and children. Fortunately, these children are being helped by an organization that provides them with healthy nutrition and early childhood education.
“Celebrating Art” is devoted to the promotion and appreciation of student art. The intent of their student art contest is to motivate student artists. The top entries are published in an anthology that will record the creative works of today’s student artists.
Students recently submitted work and 84 OHHS Art and Design students were invited to be published in the Fall 2023 “Celebrating Art”! Only the best art is selected to be included in the full-color hardbound art book, “Celebrating Art”. Additionally, final judging for the “Top Ten Artist” and “High Merit Artist” awards will be completed and announced soon. The following students should feel honored. This is not a contest where every entry is invited to be published and is a highly selective competition. Thousands of entries were not invited to be published. Being published represents a lot of talent, hard work, and dedication from students.
Congratulations to the following students:
From Schorsch’s Drawing and Printmaking, Art Foundations, and Studio Art AP 2D Design and Drawing classes:
OHHS Art and Design students enrolled in Schorsch’s Drawing and Printmaking class had the opportunity to participate in the ARC program this year. The Taft Museum of Art’s Artists Reaching Classrooms (ARC) offers an immersive educational experience to Greater Cincinnati high school students that includes a range of activities, including museum visits, classroom sessions with professional artists, and studio tours.
Throughout the first semester, students had the opportunity to engage in meaningful interactions and mentoring with artists Kay Hurley, Cedric Cox, Kevin Muente, and Saad Ghosn. The students built an understanding of artists, art, and society, working artists’ methods, exploration of various careers in the arts and culture sector, and appreciation for the Taft Museum of Art as a local resource with a rich history.
The experiences culminate in the creation of original artworks, 5 of which could be selected for a juried exhibition at the Pendleton Arts Center Annex Gallery. Students were challenged to consider their interpretation of “Wonder” and generated works that demonstrate their approach to the term after brainstorming, project planning, and setting up their own resource images.
Congratulations to the 5 Drawing and Printmaking students who were selected for this year’s exhibition:
Miles Frisch (10) Aubree Fuson (9) Austin Haarmeyer (9) Jackson Mundstock (9) Michael Smith (9)
In addition to having the works professionally framed at Suder’s Art Store, the Taft will be awarding 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place overall as well as Outstanding Wonder for each school. The Exhibition opening will be SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18th, 2024, from 1PM-4PM at the Annex Gallery (1310 Pendleton St, Cincinnati, OH 45202). Remarks will be at 2PM. Winners will be announced at this time.
The Overture Awards is a program that recognizes, encourages, and rewards excellence in the arts among Greater Cincinnati students in grades 9-12. Its mission is to encourage arts education as an integral part of a student’s academic experience and to create an environment that encourages training in, and appreciation of, the arts. The Overture Awards Competition is the area’s largest solo arts competition and offers awards in six artistic disciplines: creative writing, dance, instrumental music, theater, visual art, and vocal music. For the 2024 competition, students may win $3,000 (one awarded in each discipline) or a $1,000 finalist award. Judges at all levels of the competition are drawn from the professional arts community.
Best of luck in the Regional Competition to OHHS Art and Design students Anna Caito and Rylee Dissinger who were nominated by Ms. Schorsch to participate in this year’s competition. Check out a sampling of their portfolio of work submissions below:
Anna Caito, “She Lives Inside Me”Rylee Dissinger, “Doppleganger”
OHHS Art and Design 