NHPS Students Show True Colors At NHFPL

She says she’s not there, but it’s a trick. She’s there, somewhere in the splash of color. There’s the outline of a shoulder, the side of a head, and at last, an eye. Then the title of the piece — I’m Not There — takes on another meaning. Maybe you’ve found the artist, Evelyn Novoa, but she’s still a couple steps ahead of you.

Novoa is an 11th-grader at Wilbur Cross High School and one of many artists celebrated in ​“Creative Minds: The Work of New Haven Youth,” running now at the Ives Gallery in the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library on Elm Street. The exhibit, which runs through May 10, offers a sense of the creativity pouring out of New Haven’s public schools these days, and at times, a glimpse into what’s on the students’ minds.

Habin Lee, a 10th-grader at Wilbur Cross, has a few pieces in the exhibit, from realistic portraiture to distortions of reality to pure abstractions like the piece above. Given Lee’s age, productivity, and wide-ranging eye, it seems clear that we’ll see more from this artist in years to come.

Meanwhile, Michelle Serrano, a 9th-grader at Co-op High, allows us to journey into the petals of a flower. The way she renders them, she conveys how the petals feel as much as how they look.

Grace Adolphe, a 12th-grader at Co-op High, offers an image that feels like a moment out of a story, a chapter out of a book. Even if the reality is that the picture was taken as part of a daily routine, Adolphe finds the drama in the everyday. It could be a still from a thriller. The people in the car might be in the middle of a chase. Even if it’s also possible that the driver is parallel parking, and just doesn’t want to hit the car behind him.

Maria Castro, a 12th-grader at Wilbur Cross, makes her art by pyrography, burning images into wood, putting out designs that partake of the bold, curling lines of tattoos or graffiti.

Zuhah Syed, an 11th-grader at High School in the Community, also leans into the spray-painted stencils of graffiti art to make a bold point about the ways religious beliefs can confine and harm us as much as connect and heal us, if we’re not careful.

And Allison Diana, a 12th-grader at High School in the Community, uses humor with an edge to make a deep point about our treatment of the oceans. If mermaids were to exist, we’d never meet one; after seeing what we’ve done to the planet, maybe they’d just want nothing to do with us.