STUDENT ON SHORT LIST OF ART CONTEST
By Angela Hokanson
Glendale News Press
08/03/11/education/gnp-visual11.txt
March 11 2008
CA
Competition seeks to cultivate, inspire youngsters through education
and scholarships.
Artist Caroline Sirounian with her painting "Misterious" at Glendale
High School Monday. (Alex Collins/News-Press)
Caroline Sirounian’s favorite thing to paint is an interesting
personality. Not a person or a figure, necessarily, but the character
behind that person, the qualities that make up who they are.
The results of her efforts are often surrealistic scenes, with
humanlike figures morphing into animals and other creatures.
"I’ve always been interested in drawing people and capturing their
personalities," explained Caroline, a 17-year-old senior at Glendale
High School.
Her artistic talents have been recognized by the Music Center of
Los Angeles, which in late February named Caroline as one of 30
semifinalists in the 2008 Music Center Spotlight Awards Visual Arts
competition.
The competition seeks to cultivate young artists through arts education
and arts scholarships. Nearly 1,000 high school students from around
Southern California submitted two-dimensional artwork to this year’s
visual arts competition, according to the Music Center.
This weekend, Caroline’s work, and that of each of the semifinalists,
will be on display at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.
And the top two winners from among the semifinalists will be announced
in late April at an awards gala in Los Angeles.
Caroline has been drawing as long as she can remember. advertisement
As a child, she would watch television and then re-create images she
saw on paper using pencil and markers.
As she got older, she tried to imitate works of art she saw in history
books. When she was 11, she started taking twice-weekly art classes
at Magic Brush Art Studio in Glendale, lessons that helped her develop
her evolving artistic talents, she said.
There, under the guidance of art instructor Edward Manukyan, she was
encouraged to create whatever came to her. Today, it’s her imagination
that reigns when she is doing a painting or a drawing, Caroline said.
"I have a really big imagination and that’s about 99% of what I do,"
she said. She enjoys drawing with pencil, because with that tool,
the artist has to be precise and every error shows, she said.
"With a pencil you have a really fine tip, and every stroke makes a
difference," she said.
She also enjoys working with oil paints, for the way that the paint
feels on the brush, she said.
The painting that Caroline submitted to the first round of the Music
Center’s competition was one called "Enigma," which she did in Scarlett
Lowe’s commercial/multimedia design class at Glendale High.
That painting shows Caroline’s face, with overlapping images of
dragons, unicorns, lions and trees.
The symbols are supposed to be enigmatic, Caroline said, and represent
different facets of her identity.
The background of the portrait, which consists of brightly colored
circles, represents her changing moods, Caroline said.
Caroline has the technical skill to execute her ideas and the
creativity to develop unique works, said Lowe, who encouraged her to
apply to the Music Center’s competition.
"She has the skill to express what she wants to express," Lowe said.
Lowe has taught art for 15 years, and said Caroline may be the most
talented student she’s had in all that time.
"She’s able to take what she feels inside and express it," Lowe said.
Caroline plans to study art in college; she is applying to the Florence
Academy of Art, which has campuses in Italy and Sweden.