The UHS annual Art Gala this year featured the works of more than 100 artists, half professional and half student, according to event chair Caroline Cullen. And about 35 of the pros were new to the show this year.
This year was the 48th anniversary of the show.
“We kept the number of artists a little bit smaller this tear because we thought last year was a little bit too crowded, Keeping the number smaller allows more room for browsing.”
One of the new artists this year was Sungmin Bobyak from Hockessin. She works in oils and likes to paint happy animal faces. She said she had heard of the gala for some time and wanted to get in, and she succeeded with the help of another local artist.
“I sent them an email and it turned out that Diane Micklin, who is in our studio group at the Howard Pyle Studio was involved. She contacted me and invited me to participate” Bobyak said.
She said she’s been painting “forever” but took a break from art for 20 years after college. She was raising a family and teaching early childhood special education before getting back into painting as a professional artist.
She describes her work as “happy, endearing animals,” but said she doesn’t think she’ll be painting people. “I have no interest. For me, staring at a cute animal — I especially like doing dogs because staring at a dog’s picture never gets old. All the love that’s held in their eyes, that’s what I want to convey.”
Set up right next to Bobyak was another newbie to the UHS gala, Sarah Chapman of Pocopson. As with many of the artists, she said she’s been painting her whole life, turning professional in 2022.
She refers to her work as “realism with a twist. There’s always an element of imagination. I’ll take things that I’ve seen and just twist them a little bit it to get at the feeling [I want].
She showed one painting of a cloud that was based on a storm over Pocopson. Chapman tried painting from the photographs she took, but none of them captured what she saw so, it was all memory and imagination. There are also images she did at the Kuerner farm.
Sarah Snyder-Dinsel is on the committee that chooses the featured student artists. She explained that students present their portfolio to her and the committee, and they are judged “as a whole package,” Snyder-Dinsel said.
“A student can a stellar piece that is just gorgeous, she said, “but that isn’t enough. [The portfolio] has to show a broad, good, and sound art foundation…and their portfolio should show that.”
This year there were two featured senior artists, Piper Coon and Sree Seshachar.
Coon wasn’t available for comment, but Seshachar was.
Seshachar said he’s been painting since middle school, and said he likes seeing things “that are unique and creative and outside the box.” One of his pieces fits that outside-the-box vision, a bear playing a bass clarinet.
He said he wants to continue with art at least to some degree. It will at least be a minor when he starts college, with a possible major in biology.
And while there are the newbies, there are also the old hands, those who return to the art show every year, the Shawn Fausts, Kathy Rucks, and Don Shoffners. But leading the list this year is Carol Apicella.
Apicella has been involved with the UHS Art Gala for 20 years, as a participant, a chair, and a volunteer. This year, though, she was the featured artist.
Apicella creates mosaics, and she was taught by two other artists involved with the gala in years past, Lele Galer and Karen Delaney.
She likes the event's dynamic, and how it changes over time while still being the same.
“Every year it evolves into something new. Sometimes it’s the vision of the chairs, and sometimes it’s what the market is looking for. But I like watching new artists come in, and I like seeing old friends,” she said. “When you come here for so many years, it’s like old friends’ week.”
Apicella also said market forces reveal themselves.
“You see the highs and lows of the art market. Sometimes people are buying like crazy and then there were some years where there weren’t as many sales,” she said.
She’s also impressed with the student art, saying the art program at Unionville is excellent, and that art students from Unionville know more than many students from other high school programs.
But her art is why she was this year’s featured artist. She uses more than just tiles for her mosaics. As she has said in the past, she’ll use buttons, pieces of wire, thin metal tubing, anything to give the piece a three-dimensional quality.
The Unionville Art Gala is a major fundraiser for the UHS PTO. The 2023 shoe brought in about $30,000, Cullen said, and she was hoping for at least that amount this year. Final numbers weren’t readily available.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...
Comments