Emily Smith has shown a talent in art since the age of 4. That talent will take her to the prestigious School of Visual Arts in New York City this fall.
By: Chris Karmiol
Emily Smith took her first art class when she was 4 years old. She remembers it well.
"I still have the first painting I ever made," she said, taking a break from finishing another one. "It’s hanging in my room. I love it."
She created that very first painting a tree done in tempura during a summer art class at The Peddie School 13 years ago. After an entire primary and secondary school education, which Emily would be the first to say does not include enough art, the Hightstown High School student is now taking her passion for paints to the next level. Emily has been accepted to the School of Visual Arts in New York, a breeding ground for up-and-coming artists.
"I found out I got in when I went to a portfolio review," Emily said. "I wanted to be accepted so badly. The reviewer said, ‘You’re what we’re looking for.’ I didn’t think anyone got in on the spot."
It was the strength of her portfolio that got her through the doors of SVA, a school that hosts programs in fine arts, art history, animation and photography, among other disciplines. That portfolio consisted of over 30 of her best works including watercolors, which Emily said were her "big sellers," and illustrations done in stipple, a fine art technique in which an entire work is created out of tiny dots, carefully placed to represent lightness and darkness, forms and figures.
One of Emily’s stippled pen-and-ink drawings, "On the Adirondack Lake," includes a scene with two figures sitting on either side of a row boat while the water ripples under the vastness of onlooking trees and mountains. Her high school art teacher, Bill Plank, said that she does an incredible job with these drawings.
"She’s so meticulous," Mr. Plank said. "It almost looks like a reproduction of a photograph. Her close attention to detail comes across."
It did come across to the admissions department at SVA. For the next four years Emily will join the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of artists who make New York City home. Emily is clearly not going to New York because SVA is there she’s going to SVA because New York is there.
"I didn’t really know much about the school," she said. "It was in New York and that was where I wanted to go."
Why New York? Thousands of art galleries and museums, creativity exploding from under manhole covers art in all of its various guises runs through the veins of New York like pharmaceuticals run through New Jersey. In neighborhoods like Soho, Williamsburg and Chelsea it’s as easy to find an artist as it is to find an angry driver on Route 1. Pollack, Basquiat, Haring and Warhol are some of the thousands of artists whose name and fame were made in New York City.
But her best work is hardly urban. She loves to paint outdoors scenes trees, landscapes, big flowers. Spending summers at her family’s Adirondack Mountain cabin germinated her love of nature art, which she said is best expressed through water color.
"Water color captures the brightness of nature," Emily explained. "Color is my thing. I love mixing paint."
Studying art in New York is not just Emily’s dream. The young artist said that both her mother and grandmother were art students, though they did not pursue it professionally. Emily, according to her art teacher, may do so.
"She definitely has the potential," Mr. Plank said. "She has a great deal of patience. She can adapt to new techniques and she pays great attention to detail. That comes across in her work."
Emily’s plan so far, she explained, is to eventually get a master’s degree in fine arts and maybe work in the field of art therapy. Her studies in New York will take her well on her way, but will Emily miss the rigors of Hightstown High School?
"I love my teachers and classes and everything," she said. "But I can never pay attention. I spend a lot of time drawing in my notebook."
And that’s what she’s been doing since that first art class over a decade ago. Like her very first painting hanging on her bedroom wall, Emily is still inspired by nature and includes trees as an important subject of her paintings.
With a smile, she assures potential audiences that some aspects of her art have changed since she was four.
"Obviously," she said, "I’ve gotten better."