Since the beginning of this school year, Ella Christopher has worked on drawings, paintings, sculptures and jewelry in Carrie Adler’s art classes at Trinity Lutheran High School.
On Sunday, 22 of her pieces will be on display during the Seymour school’s second Fine Arts Festival.
Plus, stickers she designed with Trinity logos and Bible verses on them will be available for purchase as a fundraiser for the Art Club.
The senior is among more than 100 of the school’s students who will be involved in the festival that runs from 1 to 3 p.m. and the variety show that will follow it.
“We get the freedom to do whatever we want, so I mostly do painting,” Christopher said. “It’s one of my favorite things to do. I feel like I can express myself through my art, and whenever I was young, I always liked art. Now, I can do anything. I’m going to do art in college, too.”
Trinity’s seniors will have their own displays during the festival, which will take place in the commons.
There also will be art on display from grade school students at Immanuel Lutheran School and St. John’s Sauers Lutheran School in Seymour and White Creek Lutheran School in Columbus.
The variety show has been a longer tradition at Trinity, and it will include band, choir and drama students along with other individuals at the school. Nearly 20 performances are scheduled in the gymnasium, ranging from solos to duets to groups.
Adler said the inaugural Fine Arts Festival went so well they decided to do it again this year on the same day as the variety show.
“It does give our younger kids, like our potential students, future students, a chance to see what we do at the high school level, too, and that’s always fun to see them come see their artwork and then look around and go ‘Wow! Look at all that they do,’” she said.
Adler invited all of the local Lutheran schools and St. Ambrose Catholic School in Seymour to participate, and
three jumped on board. Plus, students in her 12 art classes could submit their work.
“It’s like game day for us. You show up and you see the actual performance of what you’ve done all year,” she said of the Fine Arts Festival.
“All of it together, there’s such an enormous amount,” she said. “Our plan going forward is to get more display units for this because there’s so much work, and I feel like every year, we get a little bit bigger with it, so that’s really cool.”
Seniors Stella Kleffman and Ryan Kleman also will be featured in the show.
This is Kleffman’s second school year taking an art class at Trinity, and she became interested in making jewelry. Along with necklace pendants and earrings, she made a glazed clay piece on which to hang earrings with the message “You look stellar” in the middle.
“I like these because you get to keep them afterwards,” she said. “After the art show, we get to take them all home and you can give them as gifts, you can wear them whenever you want. I think it’s cooler since you made it yourself than it is if you just bought it.”
As of Tuesday, Kleman had completed one painting and 10 drawings for the festival, and he was working on one more drawing. His work includes drawings of a horror movie character, an anime character, a snake, a car and the positive message “Good vibes only.”
“I just like to get an idea from something and try to work off of that and make it my own creation,” he said.
Both seniors like having the opportunity to showcase their talents at Sunday’s festival.
“Since I was an athlete over my high school career, that gets posted a lot and you’re always in The Tribune and stuff for that, so I think it’s nice for students that have fine art abilities that they get to show their talents, too,” Kleffman said. “They know that Trinity doesn’t offer just sports, but we have all of these different things that we offer for students.”
Kleman likes seeing people get excited and happy while looking at all of the students’ artwork.
“It’s stuff that we do, and it’s cool to see people come and just look at our (work) and just meet a lot of other students,” he said.
For the variety show, music teacher Leah Schneider said the school’s band and choir and students in her guitar and applied music classes will perform. There will be covers and even original songs performed, and students in Jayme Lowe’s drama classes will do skits.
“Visual arts, musical arts and dramatic arts, we have all of it together,” she said of Sunday’s event.
The applied music class consists of five seniors, known as music ambassadors, who will perform together. Addison Bumbleburg is on keyboard and vocals, while Riley Lawles, Kaitlynn Rowe, Conner Covey and Chase Sawyer play guitar and sing.
“It’s good seeing everyone come together and show their talents together,” Covey said.
Rowe said she has participated in choir during her time at Trinity, but this is her first year joining band. Throughout the school year, she has learned how to play an electric bass guitar.
“It’s just really cool we get to perform at all of these chapels and we get to do different kinds of music because we do chapel music and we also do country and pop,” she said.
Bumbleburg also is going to showcase an original song Sunday.
“It’s pretty cool because I wouldn’t know how else to publish any songs, and it’s good to hear some feedback,” she said. “I just write them for fun, and I figured ‘Why not do one at my school’s talent show?’ I’ve done them every year besides COVID (2020). I didn’t write one for that, but every other year, I’ve written a song, and everyone receives it really well.”
Lawles also is stepping out and doing a duet with her father Sunday.
“I really enjoy doing that with my dad because as you grow up, there’s less time to do that stuff together, so whenever you can come to school and do that, I think it’s really cool,” she said. “I grew up listening to my dad play music, and he basically taught me everything I know, so it’s really special for me to be able to do that.”
The variety show is fun for the students to see what their peers can do.
“I like the variety show because kids that aren’t involved in music classes themselves can do it, and it’s pretty cool because I get to see people that I didn’t know could sing and they go over there and sing solos and stuff,” Bumbleburg said. “It’s really cool to hear.”