Five students from Potosi High School have advanced to the Visual Arts Classic State Competition. The Visual Arts Classic (VAC) is a competition for art students in grades 9-12. The competition features various media categories, including painting, drawing, ceramics, design, and sculpture. A long-term project is completed months in advance and submitted to regionals for judging. An on-site project is also created, in which students are given roughly two and a half hours to complete a project that best fits a prompt that correlates to their long-term projects. A team project is also created, where each school has students work together to create a piece that fits a given prompt. All schools also participated in a quizbowl, in which thirty questions are asked about various artists that the students had studied before the competition. Awards are presented to schools that score the highest overall.
Rather than competing against one another, students are graded for how well they complete a prompt. If a student is ranked first in either the long-term or short-term projects, they are allowed to move on to the state competition, which is held in Madison. Tessa Seippel, Marilyn Camacho, Izzy Warren, Callie White, and Ava White have successfully moved on to the state level from Potosi’s entries.
Only two seniors participated this year, making Potosi’s VAC group a young one. Only three out of ten students had previously competed in the VAC. Rahni Haverland, the elementary, middle, and high school art teacher at Potosi High School, guided her students through the challenges they faced. Haverland says, “I was impressed with the underclassmen jumping right in and trying something new and scary.”
No prompt is the same, and students are expected to have creativity and flexibility with materials. No medium is generally more popular than any other, as the given prompt is generally a determining factor for students. Haverland claims, “I find it depends on the prompts. Students may be comfortable drawing, but the prompt this year was not something anyone wanted to create. Last year, I had two students drawing, two students doing photography, and no students in the art history or painting category. This year, it was the complete opposite.”
Haverland has high hopes for the state competition and believes that her students will succeed. She tells students: “Be open to try new things. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, pivot, or try something that may not work.”