The second floor J-Wing art gallery and the library opened their doors Tuesday night for the spring student art show. Students and parents traveled between the two galleries between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. looking at the displays; the J-Wing gallery held pieces from various art classes, and the library featured a solo show of works by senior Leo Hahn from his spring independent study. 

The gallery was meant to be a culmination of visual art work from throughout the school year, and it serves as the most important event of the year for the Visual Art Department. Plans for the gallery took shape on the very first days of the semester, allowing art students and teachers to cultivate a meaningful collection.

“This was our last big event of the school year, so I was definitely thinking about it as I was working with my classes near the end of January,” said art teacher Sarah Rebholz. “I have this idea in the back of my mind constantly like ‘this would look good in the show’ but we really don’t start planning until a couple weeks beforehand.” 

Planning the exhibit involved more than just picking what art pieces belonged in the gallery — the art staff had to clean and lay out the exhibit to make it appealing for people to come and visit. Upon arrival, visitors were treated with drinks and a charcuterie board. 

First year art teacher Kevin Wilson believes that shows like this one are important. 

“Art is like conveying your worldview: your image that you have in your mind and to share that with other people,” said art teacher Kevin Wilson. “It’s similar to reading a novel — that’s someone’s worldview, their specific way of communicating their observations that they feel are important to share. I think if we get students to make that next step of being capable of rendering things in a believable fashion they can go on to do something creative and share that vision with other people.” 

The exhibit featured everything from landscapes to ceramic bugs and even some ice cream cone sculptures. 

“It was just quite amazing to see how everything in the exhibit was made by different students who have these unique talents,” said junior Dejuan Strickland. “The fact that SLUH is choosing to highlight all these abilities is just amazing to me.” 

On the other side of the building, Hahn opened his solo exhibit in the library, which he described as his “love letter to SLUH.” The first thing most students would notice are the cows and bulls, which are subjects in four of his pieces. Hahn was intrigued by the symbolic nature of the bull and how it represents power and strength, but also servitude in providing milk. This complex nature created a whirlwind for him to capture. 

“There’s this piece called ‘Cyclone’ where I wanted to capture the masculine energy of the bull in this kind of unexpected way,” said Hahn. 

However, “Cyclone” contrasts two of his other pieces involving the cow: painting it as helpless or dejected. In his two drawings, he used an inflatable cow he had lying around as the subject. 

“There’s ‘Pinched’ and ‘Deflated’ which were these chalk pastel drawings of this inflatable cow we had lying around in the Prep News office,” said Hahn. “It was interesting to see how I could take this object and manipulate it in order to get an emotional kind of response out of it.”

What’s most important to Hahn though is that he has the ability to give back to the SLUH community. 

“From the start I wanted this exhibit to be a sort of love letter to SLUH and what SLUH has meant for me,” said Hahn. “I’m really grateful to be able to share my gift to the community in a way that I thought was meaningful to people.”