Student Artists Take Center Stage at the Parrish

For the next several weeks, the Parrish Art Museum will give over much of its gallery space to the kids. The museum’s 2023 Student Exhibition, which opened March 12, features work by more than 1,000 up-and-coming student artists from 50 East End schools. Just like the professional artists, students, teachers and their families had a chance to view the works at a private reception with refreshments at the museum on March 11.

“It’s different than their work being on the refrigerator, to have the work really matted, installed properly, and given the right space next to something that works with it,” said Deputy Director of Art Education at the Parrish, Martha Stotzky.

She added that this show is not only a huge self-esteem booster for the student artists, it also gives the community a chance to experience the depth of the works local art teachers are doing in their classes.

The student works will be displayed with projects created during artist Darlene Charneco’s residency at the Parrish. Alongside the student work, “Chisme” an installation by Salvadoran artist Jose Campos will also be on view. The exhibition features 25 woodcut figures of Latino migrant workers created in partnership with the migrant community. Campos, himself, was a child migrant, having fled the violence of El Salvador’s civil war.

The student exhibition continues a nearly 70-year tradition for the museum, displaying works carefully created using painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and new media by students from Bellport to the South Fork and the North Fork. Throughout the process, Charneco held workshops with 300 students, focusing on the concept of scale-jumping, which asks artists to hone in on the particles and microcosms that make up a larger being. The students developed “cell-like artworks,” symbolizing an individual within a community.

Stotzky explained that while the student exhibition has taken various forms throughout the years, it has only been in recent years that the Parrish deployed an artist-in-residence to work with students. Charneco worked with 18 different classes this year, to develop one work of art, to be displayed in what is known as the spine gallery of the Parrish, the center of the museum.

For students the opportunity to work with an artist-in-residence is “just a different experience,” said Stotzky. “This is somebody who doesn’t have another job…they are an artist. And they have a method and a process that is disclosed during the session with the kids.”

Southampton High School art teacher Pam Collins explained that Charneco visited her Studio in Art classes, teaching to students using her own work process to prepare for the collaborative piece.

Then, to prepare a group project for the exhibition, Collins said, Charneco led the students in a project where they each created a circle that represented themselves, which was hung on a wall in a collective piece with all the students throughout the East End who participated.

“[Charneco] wanted them to think about where they are in space, and then think about where they are in the classroom, then where they are in the building, and in the town, in the city and in the state,” said Collins. “She just kept bringing us farther and farther away from where we were located in the classroom.”

Each student was given a Wikki Stix, a sticky string covered in wax that can be bent and molded, or if needed, cut apart and attached to the circle.

The approach by the student artists varied, said Collins. Some students worked figuratively, others abstractly. Others had a plan for their circle while some improvised as they went along. Then, Charneco taught them how to improvise with watercolor, gave them beads to add, and some students filled in the design with a Sharpie. In addition to the residency project, teachers submitted the work of their students from preschool through 12th grade that were made independently from the residency.

For students in preschool to eighth grade, participants from Riverhead, Southampton, East Hampton, Southold and homeschool groups took part in the show, with three group projects per school and a limited number of individual works by seventh- and eighth-graders. High school age students and homeschoolers within Riverhead, Southampton, East Hampton, Southold and Brookhaven were invited to take part in the show with a single group project and 15 individual works per school eligible for submission.

For students who were selected by their teachers to have their art shown at the Parrish, the feeling is one of excitement.

“When I tell my students that I want to put their piece in, they’re like ‘Really, in the museum?’” said Collins. “They have trouble wrapping their head around it. And then I say to them, ‘This is a huge honor and we can’t put every student that is taking an art class in the show. So by selecting you, you’re representing our high school.’”

The students who had work submitted involved a wide ride of styles, ranging from self-portraits to charcoal paintings, to ceramic, sculptures, and even a weaving basket.

Neill Slaughter, an artist and professor at Long Island University, will grant awards to some of the high school student entries in the show.

“If they want to go on to be professional artists, this is their first experience of being awarded for their work. So it is kind of like their first exhibition in their exhibition history,” said Stotzky.

The Parrish Student Art Exhibition opened to the public on March 12 and runs through April 16. On Friday, March 17, at 6 p.m., Jose Campos (aka Studio Lenca) will take part in a conversation at the museum about “Chisme,” an installation of 15 painted woodcut figures depicting migrant workers. Parrish Art Museum is at 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill. For more information, visit parrishart.org.