When you pick up friends or relatives at Monterey Regional Airport, be sure to visit the New Youth Art Exhibit, which features work by student artists from Seaside High School.
“We try to have at least a couple of exhibits per year,” says Kathy Koop, who has been curating art shows for the airport since 2020. She works with all the schools on the Central Coast, as well as community organizations and even U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, in promoting a Congressional art competition.
In 2024, Koop is planning for three airport exhibits. As a designer herself, Koop finds the digital collages made by the students “advanced and impressive.” Part of the reason is Seaside High offers a college-level course on its campus, she says.
“It’s a little taste of our classes,” Seaside High art instructor Mandee Scorpiniti says about the show. The first year is photography, the second is advanced media technology (like graphic design and illustration), the third one finishes with video classes – hard to present on the airport walls, Scorpiniti points out.
Ashley Curiel Dominguez, a senior who just finished her college applications (definitely a graphics major) has a piece in the exhibit – a surreal room collage, using collage techniques (digitally) to create a room. “I just incorporated things that I really like, like the lake and the sunset,” Curiel Dominguez says of the work. The artist herself is part of the collage too, standing in a big, striped sweater next to a tall, Dali-like antique clock with a tilted “head,” arms on its “hips,” clearly looking the audience up and down.
Above, there’s another surreal room collage by Bryan Balbuena. It includes an image of Balbuena, who appears to be playing chess with himself – imagine a gigantic human hand reaching out through the ceiling to the chessboard floor.
In addition to magical realism, one can see various photo themes – toys photographed from different perspectives and landscapes done in Adobe Illustrator. The art is divided by grade level.
“I think it’s highly commendable that our little airport feels that youth art is important,” Koop says.