The competition between Jesuit schools is unbelievably intense. Usually, when these rivalries come to mind, one might think of sports rivalries such as the Dallas Jesuit vs. Strake Jesuit football game or various other athletic competitions.
Jesuit students across the country also compete in other forms, including the recent Third Annual Jesuit 4×5 National Art Competition. The judges received an amazing 290 entries just in its first year, and the number of entries has grown each year after.
Mr. David Williams, an art teacher at Jesuit, encouraged the top artists in the school to compete in the prestigious event; however, he did not require his students to participate.
Dallas Jesuit performed very well, with Arturo Amaro ’15 placing second in the transparent water color competition and Sam Collins ’15 earning an honorable mention in the black and white drawing competition. Among the categories of the competition are Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Relief, Photography, Design, Digital Design, Mixed Media, and Sculpture.
The artists had two weeks to prepare for the competition, but only one week to actually draw or paint. Students were encouraged to explore and try new ideas during this period. After the students completed their artwork, Mr. David Williams mailed it to the competition site at Loyola Academy in Illinois.
Collins explained that he competed against a group of about forty people, including a few international students. He drew a Buddhist statue that is located in his friend’s back yard. Collins explained that he’d been “drawing since [he] was old enough to hold a pencil.” However this hobby did not become a passion until around fourth or fifth grade. He truly began to devote time and effort to the arts “around freshman year,” specifically in Mr. David Williams’ art appreciation class.
Sam’s great passion for art won him the Bark Scholarship, which rewards Jesuit’s best Junior artist with a $14,000 scholarship applied to his senior year.
Amaro competed against twenty seven other artists. He was originally a sketch artist and has turned to watercolor painting only in the last year, claiming that he has been “branching out lately.”
His painting of an ocean wave with a sunset background was inspired by a beautiful picture and was painted on a 4×5 inch canvas, as were all the other pieces of art.
Although Amaro doesn’t compete often, he describes himself as a “regular artist, drawing and painting in [his] free time at home.”
As Jesuit boasts its powerful athletics and impressive academics, it is a nice reminder to see that the arts at Jesuit are very much alive.
