Advance art students fine-tune skills at Solon Springs High School

SOLON SPRINGS — In the art room we have two students who are enrolled in our independent art course. This is an advanced-level class where students design their projects and work with the instructor to fine-tune their art skills by practicing various methods.

This year student Cade Lisson has been working on detailed drawings and using desaturated color to add value to his work. He recently finished working on an acrylic landscape painting where he practiced using a palette knife along with a variety of brushes to create value and space in his work.

Alex Slivensky has been working on creating paintings from popular culture. His work this year has included renderings of popular album covers to recreating digital art from video games with tempera and acrylic paint. His work focuses on using color, accurate proportion, detail and value to render these images on canvas.

In our makerspace class, students are working on a film unit by learning to write scripts and film scenes using live-action or stop-motion animation. Students Landon Hoag, Katie Kurowicki and Makenna Kuehnow are creating their settings for their stop-motion animations.

Nolan Hill-Smith is learning to use the digital animation software to create his group’s film.

At the end of the unit, all the students present their finished products to the class and students give classroom feedback on how the films did in accomplishing the overarching theme of the unit — story development through film, filming techniques, editing and final production.

Colin Wiita is an art educator for grades six through 12 at Solon Springs High School.

This story is part of the Telegram’s efforts to showcase the work of young people in the community. For more information on those efforts, contact reporter Maria Lockwood at

mlockwood@superiortelegram.com.