Archive: Around Town

Lansing High School opened a digital art gallery last Friday with an exhibit entitled 'The Show Must Go On' (click here to view the gallery). About 75 works of student art, including a video, are displayed in the virtual gallery. The title is referential, because due to the coronavirus lockdown students learned how to use the platform while studying remotely from home. The exhibit features works of art from LHS art teacher Jessica Stratton's Digital Art class and additional work from other Lansing High School students.

"My digital art students started the gallery by creating the space and installing their Empathy Portrait project," says Stratton. "After that, I added works from my AP Art senior students, Advanced Drawing and Painting, Studio Art, (more) Digital Art pieces, and Ms. (Clarissa) Loomis' classes (Drawing, Painting, Design Studio). Ms. Loomis also helped by inputting the student's artist statements, which are visible when you click on an artwork."



The exhibition looks like a gallery in a modern art museum, with curatorial statements introducing the works in the various sections. If you have every used Google Street View you will be familiar with the idea of the digital gallery -- you click a little 'feet' icon to move around the gallery space and view the art works. Using the 'feet' icon you can walk through the gallery, clicking on paintings you want more information about. You can also click and hold the left mouse button to move right, left, up, or down, or use the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Stratton advises, "With all of the content in the gallery, it may take a moment to fully load. It is best viewed on a computer, but can be viewed on other devices."


Icons at the bottom of the screen activate the gallery as a kind of slide show, and the one with the little down arrow displays 'guide points' that quickly take you to the various sections of the gallery.

The gallery was created in an online platform called Artsteps. The platform creates virtual art galleries that appear to be three dimensional, that may include 2D and 3D works. If you create a free account you can use social media features that allows chat and commenting, but there is no need to sign up is you just want to view the gallery.

They began by installing works they created for a class project entitled 'Empathy Portraits'. In addition to creating the art they wrote the curatorial statement, and installed the art with information about the artists and artist statements. As you traverse the gallery you view these details by clicking on an artwork on the gallery wall.  After establishing the gallery the Digital Art class invited other LHS art students to submit their artwork using Google Form, and the class installed these additional works.

A student publicity team designed posters to promote the exhibition, and wrote messages to be posted on social media, including Instagram and Twitter.

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