Being an artist requires talent, hard work to develop the craft and a dash of creativity. Representing a myriad of artistic mediums such as ink, fashion pieces and even repurposed clothing, Niles West artists were selected to be part of the annual High School Invitational Exhibition at Northern Illinois University [NIU] and were eligible to earn a scholarship. Juniors Emilia Rydzewski and Julia Miller were chosen by fine arts teacher Dawn Zalkus and senior Nanette Ruehlman was chosen by fine arts teacher John Zilewicz. Both teachers recommended art that showed promise and the diversity of art that Niles West has to offer.

Artists spent weeks working on projects in their art classes on a chosen theme.

‘The process of creating my project took two weeks. I first started off with just boxes and I do a lot of character design but I couldn’t use humans. Our teacher’s restriction for the piece was no humans; it had to be monsters. So I thought, ‘I don’t usually draw monsters. Well, I can try drawing other things,’ so I tried to draw a bunch of plants and animals and I liked that idea so I went off of that nature theme to develop my project,” Ruehlman said.

Unconventional methods and creativity were present in all three artists’ processes.

“The process started from a project for my art class where we were going to take a goodwill piece and turn it into a mixed media sculpture. I had picked out some mini ceramic masks and originally I was going to put them on a canvas and make it more of a wall piece with a mirror in the middle to be interactive with the viewer. Unfortunately, some of the masks fell on the floor and shattered so I had to come up with something else. I ended up shattering my mirror as well as the masks and using the shards and piecing them together all in a soft feminine-looking hanging cloud with pearls throughout it and ‘raining’ down. I put the jagged pieces of the ceramic masks all over the surface of the cloud,” Miller said.

Artist messages were often commentaries on society illustrated through the intricate elements of their piece.

“I chose the female doll-looking mask and the pig mask to put on the piece to represent bigotry and misogynistic stereotypes especially surrounding toxic female body image throughout history. My idea behind this was to show how femininity doesn’t have to just be dainty and soft and perfect; it can and will have hard times, struggles, roadblocks, and other issues, being shown with the sharp broken masks and jagged metal add-ons. Lastly, the shattered mirror pieces on it represent the loss of identity – especially to young women and girls- based on how they look and how ‘feminine’ others see them as. I wanted to show that that doesn’t matter; only you can define yourself,” Miller said.

Rydzewski chose to comment on environmental issues through her wearable fashion piece.

“I submitted one of my pieces called ‘Tangled Tides.’ It’s a wearable piece where I crochet a net made out of plastic bags and then crocheted corals on top of these shoulder pads. I did it for my artist and activist project where we were supposed to choose a topic that we felt really passionate about and I chose ocean pollution,” Rydzewski said.

Zalkus reflects on how Rydzewski’s work – an amalgamation of various mixed media- effectively conveys her statement on ocean pollution.

“I enjoy Emilia Rydzewski’s mix of crochet work with yarn and plastic bag material. Her color palette accentuates the beauty of the coral and the plastic, looking to emulate the beauty of the more natural fiber material works to reinforce her statement on the state of our current oceanic system,” Zalkus said.

Selected pieces were displayed in the Jack Olson Gallery at NIU and awards were sponsored by Blick Art Materials, a retailer and art supply business.