‘Art carries stories’: Northfield Mount Hermon exhibit showcases students’ diverse backgrounds, identities

A walk through the Northfield Mount Hermon annual student exhibit reveals a range of mediums and colors, but behind the paintings, sculptures and ceramics, students leaf through layers of their identities to turn their inner lives into art viewers can see and touch.

“Art, compared to sports and the performing arts, is often seen as inaccessible or only for the ivory tower, but in reality, art carries stories,” said junior Arabella Chong. “It carries significance that can transcend throughout centuries.”

Chong’s oil painting, “Sweet Escape,” captures the glistening tides of a waterfall near her home in Hong Kong beside a door covered in bubblegum pink orchid petals.

Like other works on the walls, Chong said moments of homesickness inspired the piece. Often at Northfield Mount Hermon, “I wish there was a door I could just go back home in,” Chong said.

The orchids in the painting represent a wink to her grandfather, an orchid breeder.

“The panel shows that my grandfather is always with me and is a spirit throughout my art,” Chong said.

This spirit appears again in Chong’s other artwork, a collection of snapshots from a larger watercolor piece titled “Fusion of the Land and Sea.” Petals from the Bauhinia x Blakeana flower, or Hong Kong orchid tree, float amidst bright orange California poppies, representing Chong’s mother’s home state.

“I’m mixed-race, and I’m from Hong Kong and also American,” Chong said. “This shows that even despite my very mixed and very complex identity, I can still put it all together and thrive.”

Across the exhibit, junior Adebimpe Omotosho’s painting literally falls off the canvas. Called “Laid Back,” the self-portrait shows Omotosho from above, with photos from the artist’s camera roll connected to the braids in her hair, dangling off the painting.

The artist said the phrase, “Your hair is a tail of your life” sparked the mix of mediums.

Instead of blending the paint of her face, Omotosho decided to “let it lay on top of each other to highlight pieces of my face.” Peering at her self-portrait, Omotosho said she prefers “messy painting until I get somewhere… You build like building clay.”

Years ago when touring the school, Omotosho visited the student exhibit, where her mother told her she could paint pieces like the works hanging on the walls.

“Coming back and seeing other kids come this year and look at my piece, it’s like, ‘That was me last year,'” Omotosho said.

Looking at the more than 60 works on display in the exhibit from art classes at Northfield Mount Hermon, including her own, ceramics teacher Mona Seno said she feels proud.

“It feels so good to have [students] go through the creative process where I was guiding and watching them and then to see them exhibit their work like a true artist,” Seno said, beaming. “A lot of the work is done solo in quiet moments in the studio by yourself, and this is a chance to show their pieces.”

Compared to past years, “There’s a lot more colors on the walls,” Seno noted.

Across from her, shades of blue burst from junior Bonnie He’s painting, “Mirage of Suzhou,” also inspired by a flood of homesickness. A blurry cityscape of Suzhou, He’s home city in China, encircles a self-portrait, framed with frills cut from a skirt He wore during her childhood.

“I tried to envision home, and I realized it was really hard for me to picture it even if I was a visual learner … There’s this alienation of being in two different cultures and trying to connect with the one that you started with when you’re trying to expand your life here,” He explained. “It’s a way for me to express an explosion of beauty — I think there’s beauty in the alienation.”

On the center wall of the exhibit, a rainbow of beads buds from the inside of He’s sculpture like a garden. Black spiky beads inspired by sea urchins jut from a recreation of Hanfu, the traditional clothing of the Han people in China, that wraps around the garden of color.

The sprawling sculpture centers “the beauty of sacrifice” and He’s “observations of motherly strength where they protect inner beauty — the soul, the innocence — while taking a lot of damage or sacrifice outward.”

“When people congratulate me, I think it’s a reflection of her sacrifice,” He added.

She stressed that the artwork’s message is not an essential takeaway of the piece.

“I want people to feel mesmerized even if they don’t understand the message,” He said. “I think it’s important to just feel it — I think sometimes art is to be felt and not to be understood.”

Visits to the exhibit, which runs through May 8, can be arranged by appointment with Mona Seno at mseno@nmhschool.org.