Celebrating creativity: Annual art showcase at Frontier spotlights students’ diverse talents

Instead of the usual squeak of sneakers and roar of a home game, the Frontier Regional School gym in South Deerfield was transformed on April 29 into a vibrant gallery of ceramics, paintings and digital media. The school’s annual Art Showcase swapped out basketballs for brushstrokes, filling the space with student-created films, games and photography.

“It’s a very sports-heavy school, so we like to take a day to celebrate what people are doing creatively,” said Jack Purcell, head of the school’s arts department.

Purcell, who teaches a range of mediums at the school — including ceramics, drawing, painting, pop art, digital media and design — often watches the event reveal a different side of the student body. He notes that the showcase serves as a powerful reminder of classmates’ diverse talents that exist far beyond jersey numbers and lunch tables.

“Students come here and they’re like, ‘Oh wait a minute, you don’t just play softball, you do this?’” Purcell said. “It’s such a privilege to work with so many of [the students] and see what they do.”

Senior Emily Woods has shared work at the showcase before, but never the art from her latest adventure: ceramics.

“I’ve been doing art since probably as young as [I could] hold a pencil,” Woods said. “This was a whole new thing to explore, and I loved it.”

On her table rest sculptures of a great blue heron and whale, Woods’ favorite animals, like ceramic pop-up paintings.

Across the gym, sophomores Ambriella Stokes and Lucy Zraunig stand behind an installation with a clear cause. A collage of jean scraps crawling with red handprints greets visitors at the table for Denim Day, a campaign dedicated to spreading awareness of sexual assault and showing support for survivors.

“Because we had the Art Showcase today, we wanted to bring more attention to this and not have it be overlooked,” Stokes said. “It’s a very important topic that students need to be educated on too.”

A bowl with bright red paint waits beside the Denim Day symbol to encourage the waves of middle and high schoolers to interact with the art.

“Sexual assault is becoming more normalized in our culture today,” Zraunig said. “It’s important to speak up about it and show that it’s not okay and it’s not something that should be normalized.”

Next to Stokes and Zraunig, a line of handmade stools sits on a table, a sneak peek into the wide scope of three-dimensional work students created a few doors down at the “Fab Lab,” short for “Fabrication Laboratory.”

At just one table in the Fab Lab, a student tweaked a custom keyboard, one watched a radar screen while another tracked her heartbeat with her own heart monitor. Across the classroom, other students fine-tuned a custom wooden farm sign and watched a prosthetic hand flex its fingers.

“I really try to not set a ceiling on students’ projects,” said Dan Murphy, who runs the Fab Lab. “I try to get them the materials. I try to teach them, guide them along on how to use the tech and really try to see their vision through … I think if a teacher sticks to only their script, they neuter creativity.”

Frontier marks Murphy’s fourth and favorite school in his teaching career.

“I’m so proud … I don’t ever look at the clock, every day is new,” Murphy said. “I have students who are coming to me all throughout the day asking if they can do more work, and that’s what you want.”

Jesse Merrick, who teaches video production, film, photography and graphic design at Frontier, described a similar feeling of “pride and accomplishment,” watching students stand by their work at the showcase.

According to thank-yous from parents, Merrick’s classes have changed students’ minds about school.

“Students who in the past struggled in academic classes or said they don’t like school sometimes will finally find their voice and find something to be happy or excited about,” Merrick said, a student film playing over his shoulder in the gym. “They find something in the arts both that they’re good at and that they think is fun.”

Instead of technology, junior Emil Gibbons often sources his art from the recycling bin. At his table, a creature stares at passing students with a face like both a bird’s and angel’s. The standing sculpture, Gibbons’ favorite character at his table, started with a seltzer bottle.

“It really speaks to me and my passion for the environment,” Gibbons said. “We live in a very consumerist world and art can be a very wasteful process, so whenever I can make something where I’m not contributing to that, it feels great.”

For Gibbons, highlighting his work at the showcase “[felt] awesome.”

“I think the arts have grown over the time I’ve been here, but I think historically, we’ve been very sports-focused,” Gibbons said. “Showing appreciation for the arts and the students who aren’t in sports or maybe they’re both into sports and art like me, it feels like we’re getting our moment in the spotlight.”