Illinois High School Art Exhibition honors seven students with awards

In a selective art competition, seven LZHS students are honored with winning not only an award offered to only seniors, but a chance to be critiqued and for their art to be exhibited in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Kailee Remez, senior, began freshman year taking art because she thought she liked taking pictures, three years later, she has taken seven different art courses and was shocked to find her piece won.

“I wasn’t really expecting to get an award because I just took [the photo] out of a car window. I mean, I still set it up and everything and tried to have it be a good photo, but I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere,” Remez said. “I just thought it was going to be another project.”

Held at the Merriment Social by the Illinois High School Art Exhibition (IHSAE), student’s art, like Remez’s, will be on display from October 1 to mid November.

“The [entries] had to be senior portfolio work and people who are going to be participating in National Portfolio Day or the IHSAE Senior Scholarship Exhibition in the Spring. We also wanted [to enter] a range of media: we were looking for a cross-section of photo, drawing, painting, ” Matthew Winkelman, art teacher and board member and Senior Scholarship Exhibition coordinator for the IHSAE, said.

“It was a picture of a rainy window and of a motel, with a motel sign,” Remez said. “I had to set up the composition and that is what helped it get into the show.”

Along with Remez, one of the other six students was granted the award as a junior because they are graduating early to further pursue their passion for art..

“Since I’m technically graduating early, I won’t have the [opportunity] senior year. The way I look at it, I am both a junior and a senior at the same time,” Conner Burns, junior, said. “I’m taking off, that year when I would be a senior, to work on my art portfolio, make money, take online art classes, and just really shift a lot of my educational focus towards art education: learning about art, learning how to do art, and doing art.”

In addition to winning the award, the students are honored with the chance to be judged by 35 premiere colleges that will be attending the event on National Portfolio Day.

“Judges go around and they’re able to give you feedback. Then they can look at your work and you can also send in your portfolio if you want to, with colleges already knowing you,” Remez said.

According to Winkelman, “the exposure is a great opportunity,”

Both Remez and Burns plan on trying to visit Milwaukee as their art pieces are being displayed, but the real award they both receive having the opportunity to have their passion displayed through their pieces.

“I like seeing the outcome of my projects. I feel like you can’t really plan photo shoots, which I often try to do, but you kind of just have to let it happen,” Remez said. “You can’t force it, but I like seeing the end result after editing and just from [being] out on the photo shoot to the end result.”