Pieces of work being hung up down the hallway, points on each one gathered. It’s VASE season around the state. VASE is the state wide art competition that stands for Visual Art Scholastic Event. It focuses on the art work of students. 

Many people use art forms to relieve themselves from stress, but there are some people who take it seriously. They make art a part of their daily lives and try their best to make sure that the work is good. With VASE approaching even faster, Art teacher, Mary Boyd-Long, believes that this year will be competitive amongst the students at Lake Ridge. 

“My students are working really hard on their projects. Especially my upper levels because they are really competitive when it comes to their artwork. I have high hopes for how their pieces look because the Lake Ridge art department usually does a really good job at VASE,” stated Boyd-Long. 

This competition means a lot to quite a few students, so they try their best to make their projects look good enough for others to look at. With art pieces, it takes a lot of patience to get done. Sophomore, Bhavya Gireesh is excited for VASE but is concerned about her project. 

“As excited as I am for VASE, it takes a lot of effort to work on the project. You have to stay committed to the piece and extremely patient. There will be times where I’ll look at my project and wonder if it’s VASE quality, but I know that when I finish the piece, it will be VASE quality,” stated Gireesh. 

To a lot of people, it is known that there are so many different materials to use while doing art. The term for the various materials used is media and there are a lot of students who are using a mixed media to work on their projects. Sophomore Alex Phan, put a lot of effort on his project so he hopes that it catches the eyes of others. 

“For my piece, I used a large piece of paper and acrylic paint. Since the paper is really big, it’s really hard to finish the project quickly. With painting comes patience and quite a few mistakes, but creativity helps fix that,” stated Phan. 

With competitions like this, a lot of people would expect there to be an overall concept. The idea of uniformity is something a lot of other competitions look for, but VASE is a different. Boyd-Long believes that VASE emphasizes the creativity of students.

“For my lower level of art students, I usually give them an assignment to give them structure. My upper level students do whatever type of art they want and use whatever media. They use this opportunity to make their creativity shine,” stated Boyd-Long.  

The first part of VASE usually takes a day, but if the piece ends up going to state, the artist needs to stay overnight to show it to the other judges. A lot of the students in the higher art levels have decided to participate in VASE with hopes of making it to state. Sophomore, Brianna Packer, hopes that her and her friends make it to state together. 

I’m really excited for VASE this year. It’ll be even more fun if all my friends and I make it to state. We all put a lot of time and effort into our work so the idea of us making it to state would be so much fun,” stated Packer. 

With VASE rolling around, a lot of the students in art are putting most of their focus on their projects. Their hopes of making it to state is what’s keeping their motivation at an all time high.