Artwork by Lulu Louchheim
With more free time on their hands, Choate’s student artists are finding ways to continue creating art with the resources they have around them.
Charlotte, Vt., resident Lulu Louchheim ’21 based her piece on a photo that she took of her dog, Moose, comically hiding behind the plants in the corner of her greenhouse.
“When I look out my window, I feel really happy to be living surrounded by nature, and I’ve started appreciating how pretty my surroundings are more than I have before,” Louchheim said. “I feel like my artistic inspirations are coming from the nature that surrounds me.”
Although she is most familiar with watercolors, Louchheim took this opportunity to revisit oil pastels. “I chose the colors according to what I saw from the photo; I think I might have made the objects a little brighter than they were in real life, though, because I love using bright colors in my drawings and paintings,” Louchheim said. “I think the plants in the picture add meaning to the art by demonstrating how powerful a connection to nature can be in uncertain times like right now.”
Macie Simmons ’22 calls Wrightsville Beach, N.C., home. According to Simmons, sparse sightings of neighbors and eerie silence has pervaded the town. One thing, however, brings the community together each day: the sunset.
“I feel incredibly claustrophobic and stuck. I’m very much an extrovert, so staying in and not seeing people drains me. One of the only good things to come from this is at night, everyone watches the sunset from their porches, so I see my neighbors then,” Simmons said.
“I feel incredibly anxious about this whole situation, but I know there’s nothing I can do,” she continued. “That’s what makes me feel so lost. I’ve been staying in contact with my friends through FaceTime — that’s definitely one of the things keeping me going.”
Simmons created her artwork with pens and watercolor paints, because that is all she currently has access to. In her piece, she depicts faces of her loved ones, such as her mother (pictured in light purple), in bright colors.
“I’ve been drawing a lot of family members and friends because I have access to pictures of their faces. I was mostly motivated by just wanting to create something,” Simmons said. “I’ve been having a lot of artist’s block recently, and I’ve found for myself that one of the best ways to get inspiration is simply to just start drawing. That’s what really inspired this piece. I just started drawing faces and tried to see how it went.”
Simmons wants her art to remind people that they’re not alone. “All of the faces I drew turned out slightly different, but they all work together in this piece,” she said. “It sounds cheesy, but I guess it’s like how we’re all different, yet all in this together.”
Artwork by Macie Simmons
