Colorful collages and still-life art pieces created by about 45 students lined the walls of Yosemite High School's Badger Gallery last Friday for the open house and artist's reception for the show, "Juxtapose."

In her Art3, art teacher Carol Hendrickson said she wanted her students to learn depth and illusion of depth through dry media so she had her students do so with soft pastels. In Art2, she asked students to think of a word that described them and then to make a collage representing that word by using several different collage techniques.

For the collage project, YHS sophomore Sarah Swan, 15, chose the word, "complex." To express that word, she created a city scape and each building represented a collage technique and aspect of her life.

The buildings were filled with photos of Swan and her soccer team, her little brothers, her parents, and pictures of her and her friends at a Justin Bieber concert.

"I have a lot of things that I do and a city has a lot of complex things," Swan said.

YHS junior Allison Ash, 17, chose the word, "remember" and made a collage of her summer.

"It's really nice to remember the good times you've had on a bad day," Ash said.

YHS senior Kaitlen Krusen, 18, chose the word, "unique." She said she enjoyed the project because it was something new. For her collage, she included images that reflected her favorite artist, Pablo Picasso, and also portrayed a fantasy influence.

YHS junior Celeste Morales, 16, created a pastel of a hand. She said she likes creating different designs you wouldn't normally see and combining them together. Morales said what started out as simple doodling has improved, over the years, to her current abstract designs.

Hendrickson said that presentation and feedback are part of the artistic process and are important facets to an art student's development in the visual arts.

"By the time a student's work is shown to the public, he or she has solved many visual problems through his/her critical thinking skills," Hendrickson said. "Showing student artwork to the public boosts students' confidence in their own abilities and the positive affirmations they receive from it motivates them to continue in their visual journey."

Hendrickson said there will be three more art shows this spring that will be open to the community.