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Ceremony honors fine arts students
For their ability to far exceed expectations in the fine arts, students from Mountain Home High School earned recognition for their achievements during a ceremony April 23 at the school.
The Eighth Annual Creative Art Awards Show presented awards to nearly two dozen students representing musicians, actors, writers and artists from various school programs and clubs.
"Artists are the heroes in our world with the courage enough to embrace beauty," said James Bird, who served as the evening's master of ceremonies. "In a life that daily escorts us to the protection of the routine and the familiar, artists pursue the beautiful, knowing that even a glimpse of it can overwhelm them, knowing that it may turn on them or abandon them (and) knowing it will almost certainly break their hearts."
This year's event honors these students -- "the ones who have stepped onto the most uncertain path of all (and) the ones on a quest to find beauty," he added.
According to Bird, these awards are the end result of the hard work invested by each of these students. It also recognizes the efforts of their teachers, who invested time outside of the regular classroom schedule to guide and hone the talents of these teens.
The evening's atmosphere started on the lively side as members of the high school's Encore Company presented the opening scene from their upcoming presentation of
"Beauty and the Beast." Curtain call for the theater troupe's final play of the season will run from May 9 to 11 at the high school.
The mood of the evening quickly changed as Aubree Ogaard took the stage. Reciting excerpts from the play, "The Good Mother," she depicted a woman willing to go to extreme measures to protect her son from their neighbors.
Ogaard said she started rehearsing the 10-minute script shortly before the district speech finals just a few weeks ago. The day before the tournament, she spent five straight hours practicing "to get it right," she said.
That's no small task, the teen added. To make the performance both memorable and believable, she had to burst into tears, scream and break down on stage -- all on cue.
"It's emotionally and mentally exhausting," Ogaard added. "You sit down after each performance having to calm yourself down."
The serious side of the fine arts continued at last week's awards show as Nate Groggett read a poem he wrote titled, "A Reflected Shadow." The idea for the poem hit him as he sat in Kim Monnier's creative writing class.
The idea is that shadows represent major life events in a person's past that are normally not visible unless they take time to stop and see them, he said.
"It will reflect every direction you take -- always exaggerating but always true," he said as he read off the hand-written manuscript, which took Groggett just five minutes to write.
As the recognition ceremony continued, Patti Hamaishi from the Mountain Home Arts Council Visual Arts Committee and the local Out of the Box organization presented scholarships to two seniors. In recognition of their contributions to the local fine arts community, Sean Ji and Paola Salinas each earned $500 to further their education.
Closing out the first half of this year's awards ceremony, members of the high school's jazz choir raised their voices in song. The choir performed two ballads, which director Michael Stear said tended to break the rules a little since the performances normally feature up tempo and slower numbers. However, he emphasized that the students specifically selected these numbers since they were their favorite compositions.
During last week's ceremony, Stear honored the choir for its efforts during the year. He emphasized that music produced by this group of students seeks "to make the world a little bit better."
Meanwhile, band director Jerry Tippets presented similar accolades to members of the high school's jazz ensemble. They included Matthew Rueger, who won this year's Woody Herman Jazz Award, and Montana Webb as this year's John Philips Sousa Award recipient.
During the evening, parents and students had opportunities to look over various art products created by the evening's honorees and others involved in these programs. Among them were hand-drawn creations from Raub's advanced art class, photos produced by Susan Martin's photography students and pottery forged by those in John Clark's shop.
The awards show marked a final moment of sorts for Bird, who will retire from teaching at the end of this school year. During her closing remarks at this year's cermeony, theater department director Taunya Page credited Bird's contributions to the fine arts -- "a teacher and creator who's done so much for Mountain Home High School," she said.