Milton Art Nurtures Experimentation and Perseverance Across Generations

By Timothy Baelee ’29

For some students, athletic achievement is the best representation of their personal growth. For others, music recitals serve that same purpose. For the artists with work displayed in Kellner Arts Commons, however, the ongoing Kellner student art exhibition serves to best represent their achievements and progress. These students’ work spans five mediums—painting, drawing, photography, architecture, and printmaking—and covers a wide range of themes, inspirations, and processes.

For Advanced Drawing student Amy Khaing ’27, her inspiration was a photo of a flower girl who was “only around eleven or twelve years old” in Myanmar. “Sadden[ed] to see someone [her] age worrying about her livelihood,” Khaing chose to create a drawing about social justice and inequity and set it to the background of a 100 kyat note, a unit of Burmese currency. “Worth [only] about two cents,” the note represents how “the girl carries the weight of livelihood and sacrifices her childhood for something so small in value.” The piece’s deep meaning—offering a call to “look beyond the headlines and spotlights…[to the] countless…underrepresented stories” in the world—was both the highlight of the piece and the most difficult part to render for Khaing. Creating an abstract piece for the first time, she struggled to “present… themes of social justice … clearly” and found it difficult to balance “abstraction and clarity.” Despite these challenges, Khaing successfully utilized a new medium to communicate her message.

Printmaking student Jiayi Wu ’27, meanwhile, underwent a similar exploratory process to Khaing’s but produced pieces with very different themes. Like Khaing, Wu experimented with an unfamiliar medium and found the experience to be difficult but rewarding. Her prints were made with monotypes, which—per educational nonprofit Art League—is a special kind of print, created from the application of paint or ink directly onto a plate. This plate is then pressed onto paper in order to transfer the ink, creating only one strong print. Wu found that learning to use monotypes, a “new medium” for her, was the “most difficult part” of her work, and that she spent “a lot of time experiment[ing] to get familiar with the technique.”

Examples of monotypes that Wu saw during her preparation for her own exhibit showcased the “flexibility of [the] medium, … [ranging from] more abstract…[to] very realistic… and…exhibit[ing] creative experimentations with color.” Inspired by this malleability, Wu decided to “play with colors in [her] monotypes” and “combin[e] and layer…different mediums, like pastels.” This experimentation allowed her to work “flexib[ly] and creativ[ely]” and was, for her, one of the main highlights of her creative process. Wu hopes that “viewers…take away whatever they…instinctively feel,” stating that her “intention was not to express a deep or powerful message” and that “it is simplicity that [she is] attracted to.” Wu and Khaing may have starkly different messages, but both showcase successful experimentation and growth.

Architecture and design student Jenika Avdiu ’27 also explored unfamiliar forms of artistic expression in her project, emulating the style of Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Having previously developed her own trends in her projects, Avdiu found “difficult[ies] in making sure [she] was following Ando’s style” and struggled to choose which “key features of [her] artist’s work would go into [her] final model.” Despite these challenges, Avdiu remarked that she “enjoyed the … open-ended prompt” and “freedom” given to her for the project. Her final product accurately showcases what she hoped to display: how “hard … it [is] to … produce [an artist’s style of] work … through [an outsider’s] eyes.”

All of the artists interviewed grappled with difficult concepts and ideas but ultimately succeeded in producing work with an effective message—a success fostered in part by Milton’s art program, which encourages creativity and innovation. Author-illustrator and upcoming Nesto Gallery artist Tad Hills ’81 serves as another success story for this program. Hills, as his website says, treats the process of bookmaking as akin “making [a] sculpture,” and his work exhibits the same ethos of creativity and perseverance seen in today’s Milton art students. Even when he has to endure the “tough part [of] getting all that clay to … not … collapse,” Hills continues to push through and produces successful work like How Rocket Learned to Read, which won the Irma Simonton Black & James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature in 2011. He will be showcasing his work and creative process in the Nesto Gallery from April 16 to May 16, creating an exhibit much like that of the student-artists in Kellner. Although these events are similar, one key difference exists—today’s students are only beginning to embark on their careers, imbued with the same creativity and perseverance that successful alumni like Hills have. Only time will tell how much these artists will achieve.