Bayside High School
Bayside High School Hosts Successful Alumni Career Fair
By Russell Vines
On Friday, April 28th, Bayside High School hosted an Alumni Career Fair in the school library. The event was organized by the nonprofit organization Friends of Bayside, which was founded in 2015. The goal of the career fair was to connect current Bayside High School students with successful alumni in various fields.
Ms. Riaz, a Social Studies teacher at Bayside, as well as Mrs. Valente, an ELA teacher, both Bayside graduates, were instrumental in organizing the event. Mrs. Valente explained the importance of connecting current students with alumni, saying, "Our overarching goal of the day, as well as in all of our Friends of Bayside High School activities, was to connect our present to our future and our past to our present, linking our current students to the amazingly talented, creative and generous Baysiders who have graced these halls before they did, providing invaluable insights and expertise.”
The event was a great success, with a wide variety of occupations and fields represented, including law, social work, physical therapy, EMT, arts and entertainment, entrepreneurship, engineering, and education. Current students were able to speak with alumni who had successful careers in these fields and were able to gain valuable insights and advice.
This event was the first post-Covid event hosted by Friends of Bayside, and the organizers were thrilled with the turnout. "We could not be more thankful for our alum who gave their own time," said Mrs. Valente, "and we look forward to many more events such as these, bridging the past to the future."
The event is sure to be a highlight for many students as they begin to plan their futures and consider career options.
Broadway Returns To Bayside
By Sage Lopez
On Friday evening, April 28, 2023 the musical Into The Woods JR by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine made its triumphant debut on the Bayside High School stage. This production marks the return of the performing arts to Bayside. The show, directed by Mr. Morrison and produced by Mr. Tizol, featured student actors from across all grades. In addition, Ms. Assel and her art students provided stage, prop and costume design. Behind the scenes, the team from the Music Performance & Production CTE program provided sound and music under the guidance of Mr. Liguori, Mr. Curcio, Mr. Gunderson and Mr. Cohen. This was truly a collaborative production bringing together the best of Bayside’s art and music programs.
Set in a fairy-tale kingdom, Into the Woods reimagines the Brothers Grimm tales with their narratives intertwined, and the various plots are tied together by a narrator. The story centers around a baker and his wife who wish to have a child and to do so must undo a witch's curse. The show also featured well known characters such as Cinderella and her family, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Cinderella and Rapunzel’s Princes, and Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) along with his mother and beloved cow.
Auditions were held in early January and the cast and crew started rehearsals in February. Over the three months leading up to opening night, the student actors worked with Mr. Morrison and teaching artist, Mr. Marcus, from ArtsConnection, to learn the songs, memorize lines and bring the play to life on stage. In addition to the actors on stage, the show was made possible by a hard working crew backstage. These students moved set pieces, applied makeup, assisted with costumes, and checked that the actors’ mics were switched on. A show can’t go on without a backstage crew.
Mr. Morrison is currently reviewing shows for next year, so if you are interested in participating in the 2024 musical, make sure you audition in the Fall!
Artists Make It Look So Easy, But Is It?
By Kerri McKay DeJean
What would it be like to be an artist’s apprentice? For four months this spring, 25 Bayside art students have been interns in a Character Design Workshop with Creative Art Works (CAWS) and a guest artist, Brandi Martin Yu. Ms. Yu trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Visual Arts, and works in drawing, painting, and sculpture. The group meets in the Bayside High School Mac Lab, room 232, twice a week, and there is also a bi-weekly virtual meeting with another artist in the industry. The students are talented, motivated, and hungry for information about how an art student becomes a professional. This group is artsy, clever and full of visual ideas bursting from their pencils.
So here’s the drill. The 11th period bell rings and the interns take their places in the Mac lab. A library is set up in the back, storing their sketchbooks, art supplies, and drawings created with passion and skill. The guest artist, Ms. Yu, begins with a warm-up exercise like making different pencil marks according to music or reading a story and asking them to imagine what they envision, perhaps a wolf in a medieval town or an alien at an underwater hotel. Next, the activities range from inventing landscapes to painting with cardboard to researching historic visual details. The idea is that everyone in the room considers this a chance to be a worker in a design studio, learning the trade of character design.
When an artist develops a character, this might be for a game, a book, an animation, a toy, or merchandise. Dozens of career choices stem from this kind of work, and this group is learning studio practices kept by the finest professionals. They work with blue non-printing pencils, onion skin Photoshop, and papers of different sizes and textures. Part of the work is intentional, focused, and carefully completed. Other aspects of the output are random, risky and experimental. Both methods help an artist create compelling work. Characters have intrinsic and extrinsic features, noticeable silhouettes, specific clothing and accessories, body type, and color palette. The important thing is that they keep their minds alert and their pencils moving, and follow the prompts from Ms. Yu with their own spin on the drawings. The next Mickey or Bugs is only a paper away!
A typical viewer watching cartoons is not always thinking about the hard work that goes into this kind of entertainment. However, people in the industry notice a lot of technical details. These industries are surprisingly large and lucrative for about 59,000 special effects artists and animators, to name one area. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “The median annual wage for special effects artists and animators was $78,790 in May 2021.” An artist with illustration skills can select a number of career pathways. The site also says that employment is expected to grow 5% this decade. Not too shabby! The interns are loading up their skill set across a wide spectrum of responsibilities such as attention to detail, following a client’s requests, problem solving, project management, and organization.
Two interns describe this program as memorable and educational. Bayside High School junior Grace Yu describes a group activity of designing a neighborhood on large papers during one session. She explains, “Everyone painted on a poster board with cardboard and black paint. But, the unique part about this experience was that we had to stamp the cardboard on, rather than dragging it along. This led to exciting and unique designs, which became one united neighborhood that everyone participated in creating.” This is something that Grace had never done before.
Another intern, Bayside High School junior Katie Lee, said, "Besides this opportunity being a bonding experience, I've gathered knowledge on a variety of skills including using Photoshop, sketching gesture drawings, and learning body proportions. I'm beyond thankful for all that this internship taught me and gave me a chance to interact with other artists while growing my circle of experience."
The students appreciate the time together as a cooperative group with similar interests and plenty of ideas to share. If you’d like to do this next year, ask your art teacher about how to sign up. As artists like those in the Character Design Workshop practice and research, their work naturally becomes higher quality, and the easier it is for them to make impressive art. At the conclusion of the internship during an online ceremony, the winners of the competition were announced. Of eleven finalists, seven are Bayside students: Tongxin Zhou, Enrique Nuñez, Kyle Hyun Beck, Rayna Lin, Katie Lee, and Serah Han. Yumi Lu took second place and Rayna Lin took first place! This calls for celebration.
