The Falls Church News-Press has partnered with George Mason High School’s award-winning newspaper, The Lasso, to bring its readers some of the top articles appearing in the student-run digital paper. This regular feature will appear monthly in the News-Press during the school year. The Lasso can be found online at  www.gmhslasso.org.

Contrasto Art Up For Mason to See

By Evelyn Duross 

This year’s art classes 1-4 finished their Contrasto project that is now featured on the walls of the ramp leading down to the TLC. A contrasto project consists of cuttings of pieces of white paper to make designs from the black paper behind it.

Doing this with smaller and bigger pieces ultimately make a detailed image. The use of the black and white paper are used to display the positive and negative energy.

The images that the students created could come from anywhere. Many students got their ideas from their imagination, from other paintings, and some even from the idea-sharing website, Pinterest. The images varied from animals and ballerinas to abstract pictures.

The piece of artwork above is by freshmen Sarah Valley, who takes the elective Art 1. The image displays a little girl holding a large balloon made up of many hearts with sizes from big and small.

“I had a really long time to think about what I wanted to do for that project, so it took a really long time, but I found this picture online that was very similar but I made mine kind of different,” said Sarah Valley.

Many students got their spark of creativity from Pinterest. Freshman Christine Phan, for example, came upon a beautiful picture of a ballerina while cruising the site and became inspired for her Contrasto project.

“There were lots of small pieces to cut out and coming up with the idea,” Phan said about the challenges of the Contrasto project.

Freshman Nicole Miceli’s contribution to the collection of Contrasto artwork was what she calls her “twist” on the symbol Yin and Yang.

She used two people’s upper bodies to create a circle like shape by having the two people bend their arms. The white and black dot on their heads represent the Yin and Yang symbol. She also added the elements of shapes to make the piece more diverse.

“[My piece] was kind of a twist on Yin and Yang with people,” Miceli said about her project.

This year’s Contrasto artwork is a big hit in the walls of Mason. The unique, artistic, and creative add culture and a creative atmosphere to the halls.

These articles plus more from The Lasso available at www.gmhslasso.org.