Check Out The John Bapst Art Show Online

As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning, some beautiful paintings caught my eye, so I stopped to see from where they came. My jaw dropped when I realized they were pieces from this year's John Bapst Memorial High School Art show. Now may moons ago, when I was in high school at Bapst, I took part in the Art Show. My work was not nearly as awesome. But I was impressed, even back then, at the caliber of artistic talent the school boasted. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at how good these pieces were. But with the implementation of distance learning this year, I wasn't sure they'd even be able to do an art show.

Silly me. I should have known, with a force like Melissa Avery Burns at the helm (she started as an Art Teacher at Bapst my Sophomore year, 25 years ago!) distance wasn't going to stop this show from going on!

The John Bapst 2020 Digital Art Show "A collection of student works from the Fine Arts Department at John Bapst, highlighting student successes, even through remote learning!" was put up on the John Bapst Facebook Page this week.

You really have to see some of these to believe them. They're crazy good!

Burns, who aside from still teaching Art is also the Fine Arts Director now, says there are just over 200 students enrolled in Art Classes this year.

"In this show we have about 130 students represented from just this semester... and you're seeing work from Basic Design, Advanced Art, intro to painting, Children's Book Illustration, Digital Drawing, Digital Photo, and Sculpture & Ceramics."

Knowing first hand the hard work she puts into each year's Art Show, I wondered how difficult it was to set up an art show online?

"It actually was easy! We now have students pass in work digitally (they take photos and post them on our Google classroom platform with written reflection about their work). So we downloaded those images, put them in folders, and this year we had an incredibly talented art sub who then uploaded them to our website/fb page. Bing Bam Boom DONE! Amanda Welch was such a huge help and we've been blessed to have her at Bapst as she took over for our other art teacher, Sam Mahar, who started her maternity leave almost Simultaneously with our covid lock down."

See all the entries yourself, here. And enjoy!