Art Fair gives community interactive opportunities for expression

Fine arts week features countless of talented performances throughout the week, including musical performances, artistic displays, and York-based extracurricular activities. Among the ranks of these lies the Art Fair, a storied tradition carried on by the visual branch of the Fine Arts department which highlights those that dedicate their effort to things such as jewelry, pottery, painting, photography and others along the same lines.
Over recent years, the more the event expands into its unique nature as guided both by those that curate and coordinate the event, it has become much more interactive and immersive with visiting students, and this year is supposed to be no different.
“We’re always looking for new ways to grow,” Renee Kuharchuk, visual art teacher, said. “In the last couple of years, we’ve been expanding, so we have the art fair going on for multiple days, and that gives students more opportunities to try things out, we’re just trying to make art more accessible.”
This year’s lineup includes additions such as portraits, painting along with AP art students, making pottery, folding origami, and much more. The stations will be almost entirely led by current students in the visual arts program including Junior MacKenzie Petersen, who has been involved with the arts at York ever since her freshman year. It will be Petersen’s first time taking an involvement with the art fair, putting an emphasis on her enthusiasm for working with others in order to display the interactive aspects of the fair, inspired both by the creative nature of the fair and art in general.
“Art is definitely a class that challenges me and pushes me more than most other art classes I’ve been in.” Petersen said, “it’s a fun class and it gives you a lot of freedom to create what you want. I really like the class because it’s pushed me to try different things with my art that I really like and might not have tried otherwise.”
Unlike Petersen, this will be senior Coral Stone’s second time helping with stations, previously leading the station dedicated to the art of Henna, which she dedicates as the most important part of the fair for her, personally.
“It shows a lot of cultural influence,” Stone said. “It displays a lot more than a lot of the other art does, especially with the diversity at York.”