By Kara Parker 

Staff Writer

    The Reflections Art Contest is a contest run by the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), which gives students an opportunity to enter their art for a chance to be recognized as winners. There are many different types of art for students to enter into the competition. This year, students from R.J. Reynolds High School are entering almost all of them, ranging from dance, film, and music composition to photography, visual arts, and literature. 

    This year, one of RJR’s very own theater arts classes has made a group project to enter into Reflections. With the new Reynolds theater teacher, Dr. Jennifer Pierce, there came changes to the curriculum that led to this special project, which the class has decided to enter into the contest. This project has been different from what you may think of when you think of theater. The process has required the students to be more creative, and they also started with less of a concrete base to build off of. 

    “Devised theater is not like a traditional theater piece where there is a script and a director and the director interprets the script and tells the actors what to do,” Pierce said. “It’s a group of artists coming together and forming a piece organically from day to day, and so we took the themes of the reflections contest and we did that.”

    This project by the theater department involved composing music, making a set using art, writing a script, choreographing a dance, and filming a video of everything. This project has given students a lot of options for how they wanted to participate in both the project and Reflections. 

    “We’re getting five or six entries out of one ensemble effort, which has been really fun,” Pierce said. 

    However, there are struggles when designing an entry for the Reflections Art Contest, one of which is understanding the theme. Deciding what the theme of the given year means to that individual person specifically, as well as what the theme means in general. Students have to put lots of thought into how they choose to interpret the theme and how that plays into their art. This year’s theme is I Belong!

    “We’ve been…making moves that make people want to come together and make a group and a community because that’s what belonging is, it’s like togetherness and just being there for one another,” Rachel Lupton, a sophomore in the theater arts class making the devised theater piece, said. 

    Outside of the theater department, there are other individual students making art to enter into the contest individually. Quinn Crater, a senior at Reynolds, is choreographing a dance to submit to the contest. Crater has been putting a lot of effort into the contest this year because it is the last time he will be able to submit an entry. 

    “Now, as I’m getting older and into my senior year, I really want to leave a legacy behind,” Crater said. “I want to showcase what I’ve done, what I’m doing, and what I’m going to do.” 

    When Crater thought about the theme of belonging, he thought about the world and his place in it. To help showcase this in his entry, Crater made artistic choices with the filming aspects of his dance. 

    “I want to express how our city is more on the creative side,” Crater said. “We have a very expressive downtown, and our city is built on the arts. I’m showing that through editing my dance in different locations, I’m filming all across Winston.”

    The contest does more for students than just simply giving them an opportunity to be recognized for their artistic talents. Reflections can be a learning experience for students in how to create art, it can help students learn how to cooperate and work with others and can help students learn life skills that will help them throughout their lives. 

    “I’ve been learning a lot of stuff from this,” Lupton said. “I’ve been learning people’s talents, what I can do, how I can work with others, how I can work with different techniques and different types of people and their techniques and what they know and what I know.” 

    In addition to giving students an opportunity for learning, Reflections can also help give students a different outlook on life. This shows through students being required to contemplate a theme that has ranged from Accepting Imperfections last year, I belong! this year, and Show your voice! A few years before that. These themes can help students meaningfully reflect on their own lives.

    “I feel I’ve gotten a little more positive, actually,” Crater said. “How everyone in this world does have a place where they fit in and belong, and really, you can find where you belong anywhere, following your passion and what you love.”