By Beza Kifle
Walking down the second-floor art gallery one morning to advisory, four artworks of cowboy boots caught my eye. I saw that the pieces belonged to senior Virginia Brown, so I found her in the library to talk about them.
Virginia is currently in the year-long Honors Visual Arts class. She’s previously taken Foundations of Art, Ceramics, and Painting 1 and 2 at Lovett.
Honors Visual Arts’ first project was for the entire class, and they had to make a still life. “We were tasked with getting three objects from home that mean something to us,” she told me. She chose a cowboy boot because “that’s a big part of [her] personality. [She has] like 50 pairs of cowboy boots.” She also chose a cheer bow since she’s done cheer for 12 years and a paintbrush because she likes painting.
The four pieces on the wall were different forms of art. “We started with a still life, and we did a charcoal drawing,” she explained. “Then we did two forms of printmaking which is very new to me.” Virginia said that she doesn’t really love printmaking, and “it brought up a lot of challenges that I had to try to overcome.” It took her some time to figure out what to do since she’d never done printmaking before.
Now that her class is done with the still lifes, students have started their individual projects, where they have to be done with 3-4 pieces by the end of this semester, and 6-9 next semester for those who are in the class for the whole school year. “They all have to have a central theme,” Virginia said.
While she’s still trying to figure out her theme, she knows that she wants to include calligraphy, and specifically typography into each one. “What I’m doing is exploring when I add text to a painting, what message am I trying to convey,” she said.
The piece that she is currently working on is a leopard with sunglasses and a chain necklace. “The text that I’m doing is kind of bringing that character to life,” she explained. “I’m writing it in French, and it says ‘please shut up’ on it.”
When I asked her if her future paintings would also all be animals, she said that they probably all wouldn’t be. “I think that it’s more impressive to me when people can do a lot of different things that don’t really seem like they relate, but then relating them together by having that message be shown through typography or calligraphy,” she said. She told me that she’ll probably feature objects in her paintings.
A lot of her inspiration comes from Pinterest and TikTok. “I look at what’s trending, and I really like using bright colors, glitter, and really girly things,” she said. She also likes using inspiration from shopping. “If I like a specific pattern, then maybe I put it into a painting,” she said.
Virginia recently had a painting displayed at the High Museum. “It is called Mind of a Diva, and it’s a portrait of Caroline Stratton with a crown and gems. I was honored to have that in the High this past semester,” she said. “It took me a really long time, I remember,” she added.
She did the piece her sophomore year, and it is one of her favorites, including typography to portray Caroline’s personality. She wanted her painting to have a fun personality because not everything is so serious.
Outside of school, Virginia does a lot of art, including brown paper signs. “That’s a big thing that I do, so I make those for birthday parties and wedding anniversaries. I’ve done a baby shower,” she said. She gets a commission from each one, and it focuses on the typography that she likes doing because of her interest in fonts and words.
Virginia also makes a lot of dorm art for college students. “I’ve sold a few custom pieces,” she said. She just made one for her room at home, and once she finds a roommate at Bama, where she will be going to college, she’ll make her own dorm art, too.
