Seventeen-year-old Sharon Forster likes to put herself in a category with Picasso and Seurat.
Picasso’s abstract faces and Seurat’s dots of color were so different in their time that critics questioned whether cubism and pointillism had anything to do with real art.
It’s a criticism Forster is all too familiar with, given the medium for her artistic expression: the computer.
Yet she is among the burgeoning ranks of young people who are moving beyond the mere pencil and paintbrush and are instead grabbing the computer keyboard to make art with some new tools: digital color, sound and animation.
They are learning their skills at a handful of mostly suburban high schools, including Schaumburg, where innovative districts are spending money on computers and experienced teachers who aren’t timid about experimenting with technology in the art department.
“You do need traditional art skills. But I can actually do better work on the computer, and it is still creative,” said Forster of Hoffman Estates.
“I think there is so much you can do with a computer that you can’t do with traditional art media like pencils, markers and paintbrushes,” she adds.
The Savannah College of Art and Design agreed, and recently offered Forster a $6,000 scholarship to study computer animation–an uncommon major for an art school. Forster credits her high school for providing the training necessary to excel in this new medium.
She has special praise for her Schaumburg High School instructor, Jacquelin Settipani, who taught her the finer points of a computer design program.
Settipani entices students into art-related careers by telling them about surgeons who use virtual reality to design operating rooms, dentists who design dentures with drawing software and lawyers who use multimedia programs to make sparkling court presentations.
“I think with desktop publishing, artists were afraid that if everyone can do art, they would lose their jobs,” Settipani said. “But they found there are more jobs, because computer graphics do not sell without an art eye.”
Settipani is adding four sections of a semesterlong entry level graphics course to this fall’s schedule that would make most college freshmen shake in their boots. It will cover three-dimensional animation, computer illustration, photo imaging and manipulation, poster and package design, video editing and Web page design.
“That is very advanced,” said Bonnie Lennon, assistant director of admissions at Columbia College in Chicago.
The college offers visual arts program degrees and a summer program for high school students interested in computers and art. It started an interactive, multimedia program only three semesters ago, Lennon said.
But Columbia’s philosophy is that students need a fine arts background to create sophisticated artwork, she said.
“There is a very different quality and feel from students who learn to draw and paint and then apply that to the computer,” she said.
Instructor Helene Smith-Romer added that students should not neglect academics.
“It’s scary because these kids think it’s a play toy,” she said. “They also need to be educated in the three R’s. If they are not intelligent and educated, they will only be able to play with the computer.”
Settipani tries to teach her students basic skills on paper. Up to now, only the most advanced students could work on computer graphics. But the school found room to add courses this fall. Now Settipani’s goal is to give all young artists computer skills to get into a respectable art school or launch a free-lance art career.
“It is a growing field and a lot of colleges are thrilled to get students with some skills and techniques,” said Settipani, who does her own free-lance design and photo work during the summer. “I’ve been working on building our art computer lab for seven years. We get a couple of computers a year.”
Settipani tracks new techniques and software through workshops and her free-lance jobs. She serves as a resource to other schools, including Lake Park High School in Roselle and St. Charles High School in St. Charles. She was chosen teacher of the year by a technology and learning magazine underwritten by IBM–even though she’s a Macintosh fan, as are many artists.
Forster said she has wanted to be an artist since she was a little girl. It was her exposure at Schaumburg High School, however, that brought those artistic abilities to the forefront.
When she showed her computer-generated artwork and portfolio in a multimedia presentation to Savannah College officials, they were surprised. Her work was beyond the scope of computer art they expected of a college freshman and gave them every indication she could break new ground with the medium.
Savannah College told her that “most students my age had only had drawing,” she said. She added, humbly, “I’m just learning how to use computers.”
