Millions on Sunday will watch as football strategists draw up plays during the NFL’s Super Bowl XLIX.
But Wyatt Miller would rather draw, period.
The Columbus East High School senior will be a key player in today’s Super Pottery Bowl and Super Painting Day, meant to promote art classes for the next academic year at the school on Marr Road.
Pottery and painting will be demonstrated for students from 11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. And Miller’s pencil drawings and photography will be among more than 15 artists’ varied work displayed from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. — although it’s only open to the general public after 3:15 p.m.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Miller has coordinated the exhibit as part of his senior project.
“I’m not much of a football person,” he said. “But I’ve loved to draw ever since I can remember.”
Current art students will help their interested peers tackle a sizable task — creating oversized, Jackson Pollock-style splatter paintings on canvas, East art teacher Denise Kocur said. Organizers plan for resulting works to be displayed during the school’s spring art show, and later displayed in various locations around East.
Currently, about 450 of the school’s estimated 1,500 students are enrolled in art classes, Kocur said. Five years ago, about 300 high school art students were enrolled. She attributed the increase in part to a 2012 expansion of space devoted to art instruction.
The last time East hosted a Super Pottery Bowl and Super Painting Day, more than 100 students participated.
Kocur regularly reminds students that art training spreads far beyond the classroom into life’s most practical aspects — a thought that area art leaders such as Lewis Ricci regularly have mentioned.
Ricci, former executive director of the Columbus Area Arts Council and current executive director of the Indiana Arts Commission, has said for years that he believes art or arts training enhances creative problem solving.
Kocur agreed.
“I think it helps with critical thinking skills,” Kocur said. “People sometimes wonder, ‘How do you teach someone to be creative?’ Well, it has to be practiced.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Score big with art” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
What: Super Bowl of Pottery and Super Painting Day.
When: Art exhibit from students, faculty and the public open to the general public from 3:15 to 5 p.m. today. They can enter through the school’s main entrance facing Marr Road.
Where: Gallery Main level and in the School Commons of Columbus East High School, 230 S. Marr Road.
Information: 812-376-4369.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
