On Feb. 5, family, friends and students gathered in the Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery for the Panorama Invitational.
The Panorama Invitational has been an annual event for the Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery for about a decade. The art being showed in this exhibit is from high school art students from around Kern County and is put together by the art teachers from the Kern High School District. Dacey Villarreal, art teacher at Independence High School, was the liaison for the Panorama Invitational and helped get things set up with the teachers from the high schools and with Tom Betthauser the BC gallery director.
Most of the art works are from juniors and seniors from the high schools.
Linda Brown, an art teacher at Liberty High School, said that most of the artworks she selects is usually form the advance student courses but this year one of the pieces she chose came from the intermediate class.
Most of the teachers select the art by looking over a students work over the year and look for high quality and the best example of the project that was assigned.
“I look for great examples as far as what we are doing…which piece shows our best side,” said Jamee Eaton, an art teacher at Vista High School and an adjunct professor for Kern Community College District for Bakersfield College at the Delano Campus teaching art appreciation.
There are 68 pieces of artwork created by 64 students that are on display for the Panorama Invitational.
Kimberly Garcia, 17, art student at Independence High School, did a mixed media piece called “Golden Ages” The piece was inspired by Garcia’s dog Goldy who passed away.
“We had to make something for the Day of the Dead and I wanted to honor my dog…when he passed away I was devastated,” said Garcia. Garcia was also very grateful of her teacher and the help that she was able to give her.
“I would like to thank Dacey Villarreal for helping me with this project and criticizing me in the best way she could,” said Garcia.
Rose Melara, 17, art student at South High School, painted a piece on canvas called “End of Fall Impression”. Melara said that the assignment was to draw trees and when she was done the teacher really liked it and asked if she would like to paint it on canvas. Before painting it on canvas Melara had done the piece three times on paper before she transferred it to the canvas.
“She said we had to draw a tree and I guess she liked it,” said Melara.
Ariana Pena, 17, art student at Vista High School did a piece called “Kylie Jenner” which is a drawing of reality star Kylie Jenner, done with three shades of black and grey colored pencils. She was inspired to do the drawing because she likes Kylie Jenner’s hair and make up. Pena was also inspired because she likes to create realism art.
Mark Bandimere, 17, art student at North High Schoool, did a piece,which was at the top of the flyer for the Panorama Invitational. The piece is called “Majestic Owl” a linocut piece.
A linocut is a black board in which is you carve the black away to get white and use negative space to create the image rather than just drawing it. Bandimere said it took him about two weeks to complete the piece. The reasoning for his piece was that he likes owls, particularly burrow and barn owls.
Betthauser said, “This brings back a lot of memories.” High school is a big time when some students first get there artwork in a show and it’s a big deal, this could really make or break the student on deciding whether they want to go into art as a profession and gets them moving in that direction said Betthauser.
The Wylie and May Jones Gallery will have the Panorama Invitational up until March 5. After the Panorama Invitational is taken down, Artist Tom Chung will have his artwork in the gallery. Tom Chung’s artworks will probably consist of large scale monochromatic paintings and other contemporary Alaskan culture pieces.