Copperas Cove ISD holds 2nd annual Festival of the Arts

By BRITTANY FHOLER

Cove Leader-Press

The Copperas Cove Civic Center was full of different kinds of art Saturday morning and afternoon at the second annual Copperas Cove ISD Festival of the Arts.

The festival kicked off following a 5K hosted by the Pride of Cove Marching Band Booster Club Saturday morning at City Park in honor of Music in Our Schools Month, which is why the location for the festival changed from the Copperas Cove High School cafeteria to the Civic Center, according to CCHS Art Teacher and National Art Honor Society sponsor Chrissy Bachie.

“It's been a great event,” Bachie said. “We actually grew this year with some more artwork, some more availability and just more volunteers.”

Two food trucks were parked outside the Civic Center, while inside featured several different table stations with hands-on arts and crafts demonstrations for festivalgoers, ranging from shaving cream post it notes to felting to crocheting to coloring your own bookmarks to caricatures, to jewelry making to directed drawings and more.

In addition to a lineup of performances from music groups from the different elementary campuses, junior high campuses and the Copperas Cove High School, there was also an art gallery featuring row upon row upon row of sculptures and drawings and paintings from CCHS art students as well as CCJHS art students and some elementary students.

Most of the sculptures came from Bachie’s classes, but also from art teacher Linda Lapierre’s classes, such as Sculpture I, II and III, AP Art, Drawing II and III, Painting II and III, Art I, and more.

There was also a Senior Showcase, featuring artwork from two CCHS seniors.

“There's just an array of art,” Bachie said. “It's very self-expressionist. We've got surrealist, we've got realism, we've got pointillism, abstract, it's just all over the place.”

Bachie added that the students are very talented, as evidenced by their artwork.

“I'm the one with the college degree, and I’m the one teaching them, but I'm going to tell you, these kids are amazing, and they teach me every day,” Bachie said. “I don't feel like their teacher. I feel like they are the ones just educating me- in so many different ways.”

Having a festival dedicated to the arts, both painting/sculpting/drawing types of art as well as performing arts and media art is so important, Bachie said.

“The world we live in is very much athletic based. We just really highlight those athletic kids, and sometimes I think the ones that are doing the arts kind of gets kind of forgotten, and so I think it's really important for them to be highlighted for their talents to be shown,” Bachie said. “Also, art is self-expression, and art is a form of therapy. I mean, it really is a way to cope with anxiety and depression and stress and PTSD. Art therapy is huge for me, and I have several students who art therapy is huge with them as well…for us, for my group of students, they just really want to showcase that art is a way to just express and just relax and to kind of cope with life’s stressful moments.”

The idea for the National Art Honor Society Chapter at CCHS and the Festival of the Arts came from a student, Meagan Hunt, a senior and this year’s chapter president. Bachie said that Hunt approached her three years ago wanting to start a chapter at the high school because there had never been one before. Hunt has also put in the work to help Bachie start the festival last year and again this year, with a group of volunteers.

Hunt said she started exploring art in seventh grade. 

“It really gave me a voice when I didn't really have my own at that age,” Hunt said. “I was angsty, I was emotional, but art gave me an outlet to be able to express myself and how I'm feeling and communicate with others and have others relate to how am I feeling. That spurred into me doing portraits and being able to connect people through art and do events like this because it brings people together, like it brings our community as a whole to connect with one another through theatre through choir through dance, that visual arts like it's just amazing that we can kind of act like that without words.”

Hunt’s art was featured in the Senior Showcase. Her portraits featured a lot of realism work with colored pencils and graphite, she said. The other senior featured in the showcase, Nathan, had artwork featuring color and Impressionism.

“It’s just so different from me that it gives me more realities to explore,” Hunt said about Nathan’s artwork. “If I’m able to draw inspiration from so many other places that events like these give me more ideas, more things to explore, and I'm sure it gives other things as well, like little kids, adults, like you're able to draw from these experiences to create something.”