Faith Academy art students turn challenges into championship
Many of senior Chase Muller’s compositions scored in the top 3 in the TAPPS competition, 3A division.
By Emily Hilley-Sierzchula
When a band of senior art students at Faith Academy in Marble Falls won the 3A art championship held by the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS), March 23-24, it was a question of who was more stunned: the teacher or her students.
“It was a nice surprise,” said Laurie Berg Harvey, Faith Academy art teacher for the past 7 years. She said during that time students have won five individual state championships, but this was the school’s first state championship.
The class surmounted several challenges on their way to the top.
The school found itself a little fish in a much bigger pond when it recently moved from 2A to 3A divisions in TAPPS, a larger division.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around” winning the championship, said senior Chase Muller. “The Waco Convention Center was filled with rows and rows of tables, each one filled with really nice artwork.”
Another challenge was the lack of a district competition. “They changed it this year so we went straight to state,” Harvey explained. This meant she and students had to be extra discerning in choosing which 20 pieces to bring to competition. Works had not been whittled down with a judge’s eye in district competition.
“We basically did a preliminary competition amongst ourselves,” Harvey said.
Yet another hitch is Faith Academy artists cannot participate in every category. For example, the school does not have a kiln, sewing machines or graphic design computers, so they get a zero in ceramics, textile and computer-generated art categories.
“So we had to do really well in the other categories, like painting, drawing and batik,” Harvey said. “I never thought we would hit it big because we can’t hit all those categories.”
She said the competition was demanding because students were challenged to compose indoor and outdoor drawings of subjects they had not seen before, called “seek and sketch.” Art teachers are not allowed to help students.
For the full story, see Friday's Highlander.
