arts

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Excellence in the arts on the high school level
Gallery & Museum Guide

Derek Cooper's "Monochrome," one of his series of haunting portaits in black, white and shades of gray. Most of his works on display were ink drawings, but this was an oil painting on canvas.

Excellence in the arts, at the high school level

photos and story by Eric Jackson

The International School of Panama has several tracks. Kids can get a Panamanian high school diploma, or study in a program that prepares them for the US university system, but the really advanced students go for the International Baccalaureate, which places like Oxford and Cambridge want to see when making their admissions decisions. (And yes, an IB can also get you into Louisiana State, where dad went, if that's the goal.)

The ISP's International Baccalaureate Arts Program had its senior art show at La Casona in the Casco Viejo, featuring works by Erik Simons, Joanna Boyd, Derek Cooper, Maro Guevara, Danniel Baker, Ana Isabel Sosa, Viktoria Frühling, María Elena Durán, Michelle De La Guardia, María Antonia Vergara and María Teresa Chewning. This reporter caught the show on May 25, which was also La Casona's video night, on this occasion dedicated to high school video producers.

The country's really excellent high school video program is at the Instituto Isaac Rabin. On this occasion they showed several works, starting with the award-winning "Los Ultimos Seis," about the elderly last six patients at the Palo Seco Hospital, which used to be called a leper colony but now bears the title "Hospital Nacional de Larga Estancia." This 2004 work by Carolina Borrero and Tomás Cortéz is a hard-hitting tale about the lives of people who were isolated by fear and prejudice, and remain isolated even now that Hansen's Disease (leprosy) is treated at outpatient facilities, because isolation is the only thing these people know. "We wanted to show the hospital as people," Borrero explained, and that she and her fellow students did. The video won a prize at an international youth video festival in Argentina.

There were also recent videos about a scary story set at night in Gamboa; a time-lapse "poem" of a bedroom; and an interview with the Summit Park's new director, the latter by ISP students.

And then there was the video about aging calypso musician Vincent Williams, who mostly gets by washing people's cars these days. He claims authorship of the calypso standard "My Commanding Wife," which has been recorded and sold a number of times, but for which he has never received a penny of royalties. After the excellent little video, live "from Hollywood --- Calidonia," Williams put in an appearance and treated the crowd to some a capella songs.

Here we have a puppet version of one of cartoonist Maro Guevara's characters. The nature of our camera and the format in which his cartoons about Joan of Arc were presented keep us from showing the cartoons here, but they really are excellent.

María Elena Durán's "The Concept," an oil and canvas experiment in color

María Antonia Vergara's "Work No. 464005," photography with digital manipulation

"Pasando la pipa," by Michelle De La Guardia

"My commanding wife --- she trying to destroy my life!