At Gretna High School, there is a group of students who have a passion for art. Whether they paint or they sculpt, they are hard at work on their projects every day. While it is for a grade, most of the students take the classes because they are truly passionate about what they do. For seniors Mia Glatter and Audrey Post, this is especially true.

For these girls and many other students, they have been doing art for most of their lives. Often, artistry is passed down from parents to their children. Doing art for their whole lives is something that both of the girls share.

“[I have been doing art for] as long as I can remember,” Glatter said. “My mom originally went to college to become an art teacher, and me and all of my sisters have been doing art forever.”

Even though they have always done art, it became a serious thing for them at different stages in their lives.

“It’s always been one of my biggest passions, like, one of my biggest passions as far as, like, figuring out what I want to do,” Glatter said. “I didn’t figure out that I wanted to go, like, seriously into the art field until, like, end of sophomore, or, like, early junior year. And now I’m planning on going to crime investigation.”

For Post, she started taking art seriously once she entered middle school, and the art classes became more advanced. She said that, in terms of really getting good at what she does, it took her until about sophomore year. The more advanced classes allowed her to learn more.

In the realm of art, there are so many different paths to take and lots of different ways to create. Every artist has a preference for what media they want to work with and what pieces they want to create.

“I love charcoal and graphite,” Glatter said. “I love portraits. They’re really cool and detailed, and you can just do some insanely cool stuff and add some cool textures. And just, yeah, like realism. Just still life stuff.”

Artists like Glatter have found that charcoal and graphite are great for portraits. They create black and white drawings that are especially expressive. However, each artist prefers to work with different things.

“I like to paint, it’s my favorite,” Post said. “I like to draw birds, and I do kind of, like, a traditional art style of, like, old paintings.”

Her art style is a lot different than Glatter’s. She enjoys painting more traditional subjects, rather than portraits of people. All artists, however, no matter what they create, have to have their inspiration come from somewhere. For everybody, that inspiration is different. For Post, the reason for doing what she loves comes from a different place.

“My parents (are my inspiration), with them being artists, and I want to show them that I can do art, too,” Post said.

For art classes, the big event of the year is the EMC competition. It’s held in late April, but leading up to it, the student artists have a lot of preparation to do.

At EMC, high schools bring roughly 10 students to exhibit their art. There are demonstrations of different art styles, such as glass blowing, pottery and metalworking. Medals and certificates are given out for the different media. Competing at EMC is a great opportunity for the art students. It gets their art out into the world and also serves as an opportunity to go and see others’ artwork

“I’m definitely competitive when it comes to art, though, since it’s so opinion-based,” Glatter said. “I feel like there is a lot of competing to be had, but it’s a lot different than competing in a sport, in my opinion. I would say it’s more similar to if you were in track and field, where you’re competing more with yourself.”

Post agrees that being able to enter her art in the competition is a good opportunity.

“Yeah, I haven’t done it that much, but I like to enter my art and stuff and people to see what I can do,” Post said.

Besides getting people to see her art, Glatter also likes the chance to win.

“I would say for this type of show in particular, it gets my art out so other people are seeing it,” Glatter said. “Otherwise, it’s just like sitting in the school or in my room. Aside from that, it’s obviously really cool to win.”

In the art hallway, there is definitely a sense of community. According to Glatter, the diversity of characters and individuality in the art community only strengthens it.

“I would say you find a lot of different characters,” Glatter said. “It doesn’t matter how odd you are because it all goes into expressing. Like, everything is expressed through art and sometimes being more odd makes your art that much cooler.”