By Christian Tufino
North Country students in grades 6-to-12 show their colors in SUNY Plattsburgh’s second annual art exhibition: Beginnings on Jan. 30.
Sculptures, illustrations and mixed media art from young artists lined the walls of the Myers Lobby Gallery in the Myers Fine Arts Building, a gallery that is usually dedicated to active art students of the college.
Museum Director Tonya Cribb held the exhibit the previous year and was pleased with the results, so she decided to make it an annual event.
“About 15-20 years ago it was a recurring event here on the Plattsburgh campus,” Cribb said. “Then, there was a sort of break where nobody had been doing it, so we restarted and it was so successful that I’d like to make it a yearly show.”
After 30 minutes of initial viewing, Cribb handed out awards based on six categories: sculpting, drawing, print making, photography, mixed media 2D and painting. Additionally, there was a section for honorable mentions for each of the categories.
The judges included faculty from the art department such as David Monette, Norman Taber and Michaela Rife. Pre-college students and families had the opportunity to interact with the judges and other faculty who attended the exhibition.
Monette thinks the exhibition is important to give these young artists something to look forward to and show appreciation for them.
“It’s hard to have your work exposed at any level and so when you have an exhibition like this it’s a way of complementing those students skilled at art,” Monette said. “Our culture doesn’t really put a lot of value in these things, and exhibitions like this propel us forward so that maybe we can start paying a little more attention to our creatives and the creative aspects we have to offer in this region.”
With submissions from nine different schools across Franklin County, Essex County and Clinton County, SUNY Plattsburgh’s art faculty wanted the campus to become somewhere that students and families contemplating college can come and feel welcomed.
“I thought it’d be a great way for younger people to realize they can come on campus to celebrate our young artists,” Cribb said. “And because it’s regional, gives those students and families an opportunity to visit campus, get comfortable on the campus, hopefully meet some of our friendly students, staff or faculty, and think that this may be the place they wanna go to college.”
Monette had won his first art award at this same exhibition, viewing it as a push and well-needed acknowledgement of young artists.
“So for the students that are here and might not notice it, these might all be little steps to realizing that maybe being an artist is the thing that you need to do, or that thing that’ll bring meaning to your life and this exhibition is a nice way to recognize that for them,” Monette said.
