Alternative High Student Takes Top Prize at Art Competition

If anyone can speak to the transformative power of the arts, it is Jessica Wilson, an 18-year-old student at Burnsville Alternative High School.

Last year, she was adrift. This year, her life has turned around. She is well on her way to a college education and her piece, “Fluctuating Impressions,” took “Best in Show” at the 26th Annual High School South Suburban Conference Art Show.

Wilson started at the BAHS in the last quarter of the 2010 to 2011 school year. Wilson said she’s always been interested in creative pursuits like writing and art but she had very little formal training until she enrolled in Teacher Andrew Nagahashi's class in fall of 2011. Nagahashi sensed she had a unique talent right off the bat. She was very quiet, he said, but he could see that she was absorbing every morsel of information in class and applying it to her work with a critical eye.

“Her work was very strong for not having a huge interest before,” Nagahashi said. “She has a phenomenally creative mind — and not just in visual arts, but in the poems, songs and other things we’ve worked on." 

With Nagahashi's guidance Wilson hit her stride. Ink is her medium of choice and her crowning glory is “Fluctuating Impressions,” a flowing work on birch wood, with a light stain overlaid with undulating rows of tiny ink V’s. It took about a month for Wilson to complete the meticulous drawing.

Impressed, Nagahashi submitted the drawing to the South Suburban Conference's art show, which a juried show that drew over 90 competitors. Hopes were high for BAHS, the only alternative school to submit this year, Nagahashi said.

Both Wilson and Nagahashi struggle to find the words to describe the joy and surprise they felt at the opening reception at Normandale Community College on March 1. The program was winding down and Wilson felt a pang of disappointment. Then her name was called — “Best in Show.”

“My jaw just dropped. It’s a big accomplishment,” Nagahashi said. “There was a lot of really awesome art there. I couldn’t have been more proud.”

By all accounts, it was a life-changing moment.

“This is a totally different Jessica from the girl I met at the beginning of the year,” said Nagahashi.

Wilson agreed.

“It made me feel really comfortable with myself, like I wasn’t wrong in thinking that I have some potential,” Wilson said. “It’s a big change. I went from not caring too much about school to being extremely dedicated.”

Wilson's story makes a good case for maintaining an arts curriculum, said Principal Janice Porter, though the program has often been threatened by financial strain. Amid budget turmoil, the school has had to cut art altogether at times. Two years ago, BAHS was able to fully restore the school's art program.

“This just proves that there’s a need for programs like art. Jessica just found her niche,” Porter said. “She just blossomed."

Encouraged by her recent achievements, Wilson has set her sights high. She hopes to start at Normandale after graduation, then transfer to Minnesota State University, Mankato. She plans to study cognitive science, with an eye to a career in research. Though she enjoys art, Wilson said she doesn’t plan to pursue it full-time. She would rather study the workings of the human mind.

Her teachers have no doubt that she will succeed.

"She’s grown so much in the five or six months since first quarter. Who knows where she’ll go from here,” Nagahashi said.

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