Region's young artists put their best on display

NORFOLK

Where do stressed-out high school students turn for an oasis of calm amid their hectic lives?

Art.

“It helps me relax,” said Brittney Moser, 17, a junior at Churchland High School in Portsmouth who has an after-school job at a Dairy Queen. “I just forget everything else.”

Other teens echoed her sentiment Saturday at Norfolk’s Scope, saying they found a meditative refuge in making art. They were among 733 young artists who

entered the preliminary competition for The Virginian-Pilot Student Gallery. The contest, in its 36th year, is open to any junior or senior in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

Students registered and set up their work in the morning, after which the public could peruse the show.

Rebecca Matous of Norfolk, 17, stood by two black-and-white photographs she entered and explained the complex process she invented to make them. The Norview High School junior had photographed three configurations of ice, salt and water, collaged the images onto one sheet of photographic paper, then exposed them through a filter of salt and water.

The work is truly experimental, in a chemical sense. Rebecca does well in science and is taking college-level chemistry in her school’s advanced science program.

She plans a career either in pharmaceuticals or as a surgeon. “I just do so much,” she said. “This is an outlet.”

One of the paintings entered by Emily Davisson , 17, a senior at Cox High School in Virginia Beach, depicts Marie Antoinette, the 18th century French queen.

Emily painted a battleship in the queen’s wavy hair, and her palatial interior opens up into a tumultuous ocean.

Her eyes look panicked. She’s contemplating her past, “before everything got chaotic,” Emily said. The artist said she related to that state. “I got a job, got my own car, and I’m able to dress so much better with money. But I sleep a lot less than I used to. And I drink a lot of coffee, because I go, go, go.”

Emily also plays violin in a folk-punk band and helps cook and clean in her single-parent household. Still, she makes good grades and is trying to find time to apply for college scholarships. She wants to be a graphic artist or fashion designer.

“My work isn’t as innovative as his,” she said, indicating the nearly life-scale paintings of human figures with insect heads by her friend and fellow band member Rusty Painter.

Painter, 18 and a senior at Cox, made his own huge stencils and spray-painted the finished work onto cardboard. The result has the immediacy of graffiti. Painter didn’t mention being stressed, though he plays three instruments and his subject matter isn’t exactly serene. “That’s me,” he said, pointing to an image of a slim young man with the head of a praying mantis. “That’s a self-portrait.”

Painter was among the 62 finalists announced in late afternoon, along with 30 honorees and $550 in awards.

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com