The Light 

A boy around the age of nine sits watching TV when a commercial for a blow pen flashes on the screen. A never-before-seen tool sets fire to the young boy’s mind and now in his junior year of high school, the spark ignited by those commercials burns a bright flame. 

Similarly, a girl growing up in an age where singing or dancing are the hottest talents grapples with the inability to sing. She turns to another creative outlet and starts her journey as an artist. 

Now, years later, art from junior Cameron Heatly and senior Kyla Groves is being displayed for a month at the Dali Museum starting on Jan.22.  

Standing in a new world Heatly and Groves are surrounded by opportunities.  

Visual Poetry 

“I knew that I was going to be taking AP 3d, so I had been sketching up ideas and all that like all summer,” Groves said.  

Groves were plotting. Her pieces, “Beauty in Decay”, “Piece of Mind- Dead Meat” and “Red Tide” weren’t just thrown together during a couple of class periods but were meticulously thought out over serval months.  

Inspired by Kathleen Ryan’s “Bad Fruit” collection, Groves uses her art as a diary that documents her personal experiences and real-world issues.

“Beauty in Decay” took Groves around two months of class time to put together. Created from a foam mannequin head, beads, and sewing pins, Groves created a visual narrative of traditional beauty standards. 

“I added the mold and the flies to kind of represent how traditional beauty standards make you pick at yourself until you’re just rotting away,” Groves said.  

After two back-to-back hurricanes at the beginning of the school year, a lot of people were shaken by seeing the devastation it caused, and for some high school students like Groves, the effects of global warming were put into perspective.

“Red Tide”, the piece being exhibited at the Dali Museum blends a visual commentary about global warming with a personal touch. Using red beads and shells, Groves represents a hyperbolic form of red tide. 

She gives a piece of herself in her art by also adding hidden meanings, she uses shells from a hangout she had with a friend and letter beads that create the initials of important people in her life. 

“I tried to give somebody a piece of my mind, and they didn’t appreciate what I had to say,” Groves said. 

With her art, she creates poetry, and in her piece “Piece of Mind- Dead Meat” she expands upon Beauty in Decay and directly uses art as an outlet for her frustrations. 

Simplicity 

Junior Cameron Heatly also has his art displayed at the Dali Museum, but he takes a more simplistic approach to his digital art piece “Angelic Boy” by combining two things he likes.  

“Even though the main inspiration was angels, I did want to incorporate space, since that was still my main interest,” Heatly said.  

Heatly used Photoshop to create a surrealist piece that incorporates himself – an idea suggested to him by the 2-D art teacher Sandra Bourne- space and angels. The ethereal composition has a Salvador Dali-esk flair.  

“I found angel wings of different positions that looked sort of similar to each other, and just photoshopped them to my face,” Heatly said.  

“Angelic Boy” is like a digital collage, and it takes parts of photographs that Heatly found online to create this magical landscape, something I think Dali would be proud of himself.  

“I normally keep to myself, so I do stuff that I can do by myself,” Heatly said. 

Heatly uses art to explore his independence; in doing so, he creates art that lets us see directly into his imagination, and I feel that’s why he was chosen to be in the Dali collection. He expresses his inner thoughts so well and that is seen in “Angelic Boy”.  

One game at a time  

“I am not a teacher but an awakener…”- Robert Frost 

3d Art teacher and creative photography teacher Adam Turkel only has one student in AP-3D art, that student being none other than Kyla Groves. 

“The reason I became a teacher was to help elevate my student’s art and help push artists to the next level,” Turkel said. 

Turkel tries to lead by example in the classroom and being a musician and artist himself, he creates in the classroom along with his students. He feels that if he shows his students how much he enjoys art they can learn how to appreciate it too. 

Turkel is also a leading example that art can be a viable career and shows his students that with art you can have a successful personal and professional life.  

Turkel also preaches to his students that the art room is like a sports team and that when they take art seriously it’s as if they are competing in art shows and that participating in class is like their training.  

“I try to inspire them by giving them every opportunity to express themselves and introduce them to as many different ways,” 2-D art teacher Sandra Bourne said.  

In Bourne’s classroom, she encourages her students to explore all types of mediums, and she feels that students having a variety of art forms to explore is key to getting students to express themselves.  

It’s all about location, location, location. 

“Pinellas County is kind of like the Cadillac of art departments in Florida,” Turkel said. 

Both Bourne and Turkel are extremely thankful for the art referendum because without it there would be fewer resources available to the students. 

“They’re all working on expensive paper, we have canvas, we have oil paint,” Bourne said. 

Bourne feels extremely fortunate because she knows in other counties like Hillsborough, art teachers are barely given any money to buy supplies for their classes.  

 With the art referendum, Bourne and Turkel can supply their students with high-quality art supplies and introduce them to a variety of ways to create art. For example, Turkel has a 3d printer in his classroom which lets students play with art in different ways and in Bourne’s classroom students can use Mac computers to create digital art. 

Pinellas County has many art museums and galleries so there are plenty of places for students to showcase their work.  

It’s not Junk 

“It makes you feel like you’re actually doing something important and not just throwing junk together,” Grove’s aid.  

The whole point of creating art in the first place is for it to be seen, and for students to know that THEIR art is going to be seen by people is such a validating feeling. It also opens a lot of horizons for aspiring artists.  

“It’s taught me that I can have a future career in art, rather than it just being a hobby,” Groves said.  

Groves has received many opportunities by having her art displayed. Museum curators are interested in her and art departments of different colleges have contacted her, she even got a personal tour of Eckerd College’s art and science program.  

Not only does being exhibited throw students directly into the art world and let them network and create connections but there is also the possibility of students earning money for their art. 

“The kids have the options to earn money through scholastic awards and competitions and other exhibits, as well as scholarships,” Turkel said. 

Even people want to buy students’ art. Bourne had one of her freshmen students have their art purchased last year from the Dunedin Fine Art Center by a nurse who saw his piece and just fell in love with it.  

“You’ve made it, you know, the confidence, the joy, the appreciation to have your art seen is immeasurable,” Bourne said. 

Gestalt 

“Art is part of the whole, and it’s such a necessary part of the student,” Bourne said. 

Some people wonder why the arts is a graduation requirement, and it’s because it just rounds out a whole student. Art, no matter what medium; music, fine arts, or even literature is essential for everyone.  

“Well, I think if you’re an artist or you’re a creative, and I think everybody is, it’s like breathing,” Turkel said.  

Art is a form of expression and for everyone, it can be hard to just say their feelings it’s an essential outlet for our feelings, especially for high school students whose lives are rapidly changing.  

In a world where nothing is certain, art is the flame that lights the dark tunnel that is our lives. I am so happy to say that we at Lakewood High School have wonderful art classes and clubs that let students’ creativity shine through.