The 20 under 20 art competition recently selected artists from schools all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area for its art gallery that will be showing from April 15 to April 23 at 934 Watters Creek Blvd. Nine out of the 20 people whose artwork was selected were from Allen High School, and one from the Lowery Freshman Center as well.

“It is not really a competition, it’s more of a chance to give young artists the chance to shine through,” senior Marin Tanner said. “There are no awards or anything, you just get to be in the exhibit and you have the chance to sell your artwork if it gets in. My pieces are going to be up for $25 each.”

Tanner was selected for her pieces “Safety” and “Pin.” Both explore the theme for IB Art that she has been working on for the past two years: how objects and color affect human emotion. She said when she meets people and analyzes them, she associates them with different colors.

“I have a friend, she’s very blue, another friend she’s definitely purple. I see a lot of things through colors, and a lot of people remind me of certain colors, and sometimes it’s a pattern of maybe some different things, but I ultimately see things in color,” Tanner said. “At this time [in my life] I would say I am stormy blue. There’s a lot of things going on in my life and it’s kind of confusing, but blue also has a calming feature to it.”

Tanner has three older siblings who she said are all very artistic, and she said her older brother Cameron has inspired her to become an artist and is going to attend the University of North Texas to pursue art like he did. Tanner is hoping to pursue concept art and graphic design.

“I have been working toward it,” Tanner said. “Concept art is really a general idea of what the story is, you can have characters, settings, weapons, or anything like props. Your concepts, if they get chosen can be in the movie and incorporated into the sets.”

Senior Kristen Lowrey is an art student of Laura Helms who had three of her five pieces chosen for the gallery. Being in IB art, she has spent the year researching and crafting her art pieces from the theme she chose to focus on this year —women. She did a clay box covered in what she calls “scruffito.” She also did a piece with plum blossoms, saying that if she were a fruit she would be a plum.

“I did research on plum symbolism for IB art class, and apparently in China, the plum symbolizes strength because the plums blossoms go into winter and come out of it smelling sweeter than when they went in,” Lowrey said. “Taking negative experiences and making them positive.”

Lowrey has done many art pieces throughout the two years, one was called “Lileth and Eve” based on the legend of Adam’s first wife from Biblical times. In her portrait she showed Lileth protecting Eve. This year in exploring her theme, she also did a portrait of Nobel Peace Prize winning Malala Yousafzai, who fought for girls’ rights to education. One of her pieces that was entered into the competition was called “Joy” and shows a woman smiling.

“Well most of [painting “Joy”] was [because] I’m sad and I want to spread happiness, and I want to make myself happy which is part of that, and also by that entire beauty norm,” Lowrey said. “Also, the media of the piece is pretty important to me because that piece of wood that I used was a door in a house that my great grandfather built back in the 60s, and then it turned into a college desk for my dad in 1987, and so it has been in that house, it has been in my dad’s college, and it was in our house for a long time, and I wanted to use it. Now it’s a painting. That significance throughout.”

Another artist that will have her artwork placed in the gallery is Senior Jennifer Herron who is a student of John Garrott. She likes working with paper to create two and three dimensional art, and two of the pieces that were chosen for the gallery were the 3D “Koi Fish” and her 2D dragon. Two artists that she said she admires are Leonardo Da Vinci and Tobias Kwan.

“I like that I have the ability to portray an idea and a concept through artwork to someone who may not visualize the same thing as I do, but through art work I am able to get my point across,” Tanner said. “ [Art] can speak loud volumes, [and] even if it is a small piece, it can still have a great impact.”