National Art Honor Society (NAHS) and art club collaborated to hold an open-call photography contest with the theme “Endless Summer.” Any student or staff member could submit to the photography show. 

“Both NAHS and art club, as well as Ms. Matricardi, [who] is our premier art teacher, we wanted this year to have more shows and be able to showcase art from people all around TJ, not just people involved in the art classes,” senior Mulan Pan, NAHS co-president, said.

Sophomore Isabel D’mello submitted photographs back in September, when submissions were due. 

“I think I just saw the Facebook post and I realized that I had a lot of photos from this summer,” D’mello said. “So I thought [I] might as well submit. What’s the worst that can happen?” 

This photography show is the first to be open to the entire Jefferson community, at least in recent years.

“Contests like this are really good for letting me also be more creative and artistic, even though I don’t have the space in my schedule to take an actual art class,” D’mello said. 

Members of NAHS and Art Club chose approximately 40 photographs for printing.

“After we got the images back, we chose whichever ones printed best out of those, because maybe the ink at this place wasn’t good for this specific type of photo, or the quality was just a bit lower,” Pan said. “All the applicants whose photos made the final round and got printed were able to take home their framed copy.”

The printed photographs were only half of roughly 80 submissions. The show garnered wide participation from the community although art has traditionally been overlooked at Jefferson.

“There is definitely a lot more importance put on the STEM courses, which I guess is only natural because [Jefferson] is a STEM school, but I think the art department here is really good,” D’mello said. “At least from what little I’ve experienced in our clubs.”

Jefferson’s art community is working towards increased recognition of the visual arts, one show at a time. 

“We had the AP Art Show last year. It was really inspiring to be a part of, because it was so awesome to actually have all of our artistic talents and hard work be recognized across the school, and not just be [in] this little corner,” Pan said. “That’s something that we want to expand throughout the school as well.”