With a week filled with chalk art, Soundgardens, interactive murals, and a “technicolor” theme behind them, the Palo Alto High School arts program is hailing the annual “Arts in Unusual Places” celebration as a success after student-led projects in visual art, music and theater were presented last week all around campus.
The week-long celebration kicked off on Jan. 27 with student artwork displayed on classroom doors and a glass art installation near the Tower Building. Throughout the week, lunchtime performances featured a variety of performances including, theater scenes in Centennial Plaza, choir karaoke near the 800s building, and instrumental music in the library.
According to Brittney Kerby, Visual and Performing Arts instructional leader, Arts in Unusual Places is a yearly tradition that showcases VAPA students’ work in unexpected locations.
“The whole point is that we get out of our classrooms and showcase our arts in other places,” Kerby said. “So we have performances happening at lunch, we have the glass art installation over near the tower building, and you’ll see that on every door there’s a piece of original student artwork. We’re just trying to bring what we do to other parts of the campus that maybe don’t have that artistic touch.”
According to senior Oliver Rasmussen, the newly formed Paly Artist Guild is a great space for students of different art fields to come together and bounce ideas off of one another.
As part of this initiative, Rasmussen collaborated with members of the glass-blowing community to create a colorful installation near the Tower Building featuring umbrellas and glass raindrops.
Kerby said that the Technicolor genre was chosen as a quirky but vibrant theme for this year.
“Technicolor came to be just because it’s got a lot of whimsy to it, especially with ‘Wicked’ happening right now,” Kerby said. “Technicolor is moving from black and white into full color, and we thought that that would be a good theme to kind of showcase what we do here.”
Tuesday featured a video segment made by the Paly Theater community that followed the themes of Technicolor. According to junior Aashi Agarwal, a member of Paly Theater, the program worked to plan and perform scenes on the Centennial Plaza during lunches to inspire other students to join the performing arts program.
According to Agarwal, theater is not as accessible for students at Paly.
“This is a week of sharing what we do in class and stuff outside of the shows,” Agarwal said.
On Thursday, senior Riya Kini, a member of Paly choir, helped organize an interactive karaoke at the 800s building. She said the event was part of a broader effort to highlight the visual and performaning arts at Paly, which are often overlooked by students.
“At Paly, we have so many programs available that as Arts we kind of get overshadowed by sports or journalism,” Kini said. “We created the Paly Artist Guild to organize Arts in Unusual Places and to try to get more people to join the program.”
According to freshman orchestra member Lucas Lin, who played the violin in the library on Friday, the experience of playing together in a different way was new and enjoyable.
“It [playing in the library] was pretty cool because we got to play in an unusual place and in an arrangement we have never played in before,” Lin said. “I’d say that it went pretty well, as I think the people enjoyed it and it was a fun experience.”
Kerby said that the point of Arts in Unusual Places is to use art to bring some unexpected joy into the transition back to school from winter break.
“We are grateful that we get to bring and spread our creativity across campus, and we hope that it brightens people’s days, especially in January, which feels like a very, very long month,” Kerby said. “We love giving our creativity to the masses.”
