A Smithsonian Institution-affiliated art gallery accepted eight Nelson County High School student images into a selective global youth art exhibit.
One NCHS student, Lilly Lewis, earned a significant additional honor. The host gallery, Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center in Solomon, Md., requested having the actual framed image present right there for physical exhibit during the art show.
The exhibit, titled “Let Them Cook: Teen Art Exhibition,” is, according to the organizers, “a showcase of teen creativity, celebrating the bold and fresh perspectives of young artists aged 13 to 19.”
Organizers said the artworks “reflect the passions, struggles, and dreams of the up-and-coming generation of artists.”
To have your art on these walls, I’m told, is a big deal. This venue in the past has exhibited on those same walls some famed world artists like Picasso, Matisse, Warhol and Pollock; for a student (especially in a rural and financially-disadvantaged county like Nelson) to have their art there by invitation is a great, national-level accomplishment.
Lewis’ realistic watercolor pictures a whale struggling to swim upward and free herself from fishing nets entangling her tail and pulling her down to a bleak seafloor (littered with trash).
The haunting image will be on exhibit in-person until April 4.
“It’s a huge honor to have eight national-level ‘wins’ like this for Nelson’s art,” NCHS art teacher Terry Ward said. “If we were sports, they’d say we’re having the ‘winningest’ year.”
Student Audrey Watts had art included in a 2023 exhibit at the same venue. Back then and also again this year, Watts’ mom, Brandy Watts, made a family trip out of the four-hour journey to the gallery in coastal Maryland to enjoy the art show and to get on-site photographs.
“We’re super excited to take the little trip again for her art,” Brandy Watts said.
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Chris Graham
