Art students at Wellesley High School are back to being fully hands on, and the results will be on display in April at the Clever Hand Gallery at 52 Central St., in Wellesley Square.
The Emerging Metal and Clay Artists showcase will feature nearly 30 pieces, one from each student from Wellesley High’s Intensive Metals class taught by Shayla Vines and Honors Ceramics Intensive class taught by Amie Larson. Some pieces will be for sale at the show, which runs April 4-16, noon to 5pm daily.
“Until COVID interrupted, the student show had been an annual event at Clever Hand for at least 10 years,” says Clever Hand’s Ann Schunior. “We are delighted to welcome them back, and the students are thrilled to have their work displayed in a Wellesley Square storefront.”
WHS Teacher Vines says in spring of 2020, instruction was limited to talking about various jewelers, metalsmiths, and sculptors working with metal. “Each class I would choose a new artist to speak about and as a class we would discuss how they created their work and how we could possibly go about the same look with what we have in the WHS Metals Studio,” Vines said.
Things got more real during the 2020-2021 school year, with a hybrid schedule that allowed some studio work (once every other week for 80 minutes). During Zoom class, students prepped as much as they could to be ready “to use the precious studio time as efficiently as possible,” the teacher said. All shared tools needed to be wiped down before the next student could use them, following COVID-19 protocols. “I did my best to have students only using bench tools I had enough for the whole class to use at the same time when possible.”
Students are now back to a pre-pandemic schedule, meeting in person about 3-to-4 hours per week, and producing art deserving a wider audience.
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