‘Cool’ art on display
Holy Redeemer students show off spring semester work
MARSHALL — Holy Redeemer eighth-grade students displayed and shared information about their spring semester projects at an art gallery showing on Tuesday afternoon.
First-year art teacher Ashley Honetschlager thought the student art projects turned out really well.
“It’s kind of fun because they get to show off all their hard work,” she said. “It makes it worth it because some of the things that they struggled with turned out really, really well.”
Honetschlager taught first and fourth grade at HRS before transitioning to art this year. She said she wasn’t sure if the art gallery had ever been a tradition at the school, but she said she knew they hadn’t had showing for the students or their families in the past couple of years. After seeing the interaction between the eighth-graders and the visitors, she said having the art gallery was the right thing to do.
“The kids worked hard this year and I thought maybe we should show it off a little bit,” Honetschlager said. “They’re graduating on Thursday, so we had them put out all their art work from this semester. We have all the younger grades coming through. Their parents were invited as well.”
Eighth-grade art students displayed a variety of projects, including a more comprehensive final project.
“The students had four options for their final project,” Honetschlager said. “They could choose a portrait, a landscape, a coil clay pot or a representation of the color wheel. Then they could work within those four areas.”
Keygan Buysse created a nail art project of the state of Minnesota. The finished product had a heart centered on the location of Marshall.
“It took about two weeks,” Buysse said. “The hardest part was tying the string around all the nails. I did that at the end.”
Buysse’s project was extremely colorful as she used the colors of the rainbow.
“We had to do a final project, so I just decided to do this as a representation of the color wheel,” she said.
Bryce Lance made a giraffe, hippopotamus and a gazelle and then attached them to small canvases.
“These are animals made out of clay — Model Magic — and painted on canvases,” Lance said. “We had to do a final project and I just like animals, so I made some animals.”
Lance said he crafted the animal heads first, painted them and then put them on the canvas.
“I made clay ones first and it didn’t work,” he said. “It was too heavy and it just fell off of it. That’s why we used the Model Magic. It’s like a lighter clay.
AJ Toulouse’s final project was a colorful totem pole.
“I was just kind of thinking of cool clay projects and I found one on the Internet,” he said. “I thought it would be cool to do a totem pole.”
While unique, the project definitely had its challenges.
“I had to make three different cups and they had to stack together and stand up straight,” Toulouse said. “But the biggest challenge was putting the wings on. I had to use skewers to hold them on. And I had to be very careful when painting it, too.”
Avery Leary constructed a dreamcatcher for her final project.
“I always liked the idea of it, and I thought it looked cool,” Leary said. “It was definitely a challenge, though, trying to figure out how to get the pattern and make it look native.”
Colored string was separated by little nails for the top part of the dreamcatcher, while the bottom portion had pheasant feathers and beaded roping.
“I braided all these and put beads and feathers on them,” Leary said. “It took awhile. But I really liked doing the project.”
Like all the other students, Leary also made an abstract sculpture.
“What we did is take hangers and bend them how we wanted to,” she said. “Then we put a nylon over them and then painted them with different colors.”
Eighth-grader Kiara Maeyaert took time to explain the process of a magazine bowl to her grandparents and others who visited the gallery.
“We rolled it up as tight as we could,” Maeyaert said. “It was stretched out — a bunch of magazines folded up. They were all taped together — stretched out in a long thing. Then we rolled them up in a circle and it was flat. Then we pushed on the bottom and it came up as a bowl. We put Mod Podge on to make it stick together. Mod Podge is like a glue.”
The students also created original clay pinch pot fishes. Lance chose to make a whale.
“I used clay and then painted it,” he said. “I used a gloss to make it glossy at the end. I also splattered it at the end. I like art. It’s fun.”
The eighth-graders also drew artwork that used the word “Google.” Emma Klein creatively used cats and a ball of yarn to form her letters, while Kaylie Stucke spelled Google inside a Pac-Man maze.
Maeyaert chose to draw dancers and ballet shoes to create the word, while Brock Schultz used sports equipment. Brittany Seifert used a sea horse and other items you might find in and around the ocean and beach. Rachel Coudron spelled Google using farm animals and equipment.
Holy Redeemer School students in every grade had the opportunity to examine the art projects. Second-grader Kathryn Coudron was one of them who carefully inspected most of them.
“It’s kind of cool,” she said. “My sister’s is my favorite because she made a horse, and my favorite animal is a horse. I like art.”
Honetschlager was grateful that teachers and students took the time to check out the art projects.
“Hopefully it’ll get the younger grades excited about art,” she said.