Sofi Walter and Gary Coyne stand in the Hamilton West lobby during the school’s annual art show.
High school photographer named artist of the year.
Hamilton High School West Artist of the Year Sofi Walter almost never leaves her camera behind.
Inspired by her mother, a former wedding photographer, Walter took to photography at a young age.
“She had a big influence on me,” she said. “I had so many cameras that were at my disposal to just use and go to town with. All her expertise let me know how to do things. I would always want to take candid shots. I took her camera everywhere. I was always taking pictures of everything just to help me remember stuff.”
Walter has discovered different techniques as her skills have developed. She said she has grown to love macro photography, or taking close-up shots of smaller objects.
“I love taking pictures of water droplets, snowflakes, things like that,” she said. “I’m really big on blowing things up. Some people don’t really know what snowflakes look like. I’ll take pictures in the winter and put them online, and people will ask me if it’s real. Of course it’s real, it was on my glove! I love that.”
Walter, a member of the Class of 2013, put her photography background to good use in her art classes at West. Many of her pieces are recreations of photographs. Her main goal is to trick the eye.
“With my art, I really try to pride myself on picking a photograph that I really like and trying to replicate it as much as I can,” she said. “I love trying to get those details in there and making it look as real as possible. I want people to be like, ‘Whoa, that’s a painting, not a picture.’ That’s why it’s more detailed.”
Her teachers at West noticed, leading them to select her as Artist of the Year at the school’s annual art show.
“It’s kind of tough because there is a lot of talent,” art teacher Gary Coyne said. “Sofi’s work is so detailed, and she’s so passionate about what she does. She has quite a variety of watercolors, a lot of photography. We thought she would be the best candidate.”
Each year, Coyne, James Ditmars and Danielle Tan collect hundreds of pieces from their art students at Hamilton High School West to display at their annual art show. This year, more than 375 student works of art from pencil drawings to large canvas paintings plastered the lobby walls and panels distributed throughout the hall from May 22-24.
They start to set up about two weeks before the show starts. Layout can be tough; from the constant flow of traffic through the lobby to the late-May humidity, it is difficult to get an ideal placement.
“We haul it down here and try to lay it out,” Coyne said. ” You have to have the right space. You’re just trying to match pictures up to the space you have. We put it up on the walls, and that’s a constant thing. Things start to droop and fall. It’s tough to keep things hanging up sometimes.”
The show has been a West staple for the last 15 years, and shows off the work from all West’s art classes: art fundamentals, ceramics and sculpture, drawing and painting, photography.
“There are all different levels of artwork, freshmen through seniors. It’s been a tradition because it’s such a nice place to have it,” Coyne said.
As Artist of the Year, Walter’s work is featured the most prominently. She said she started taking art more seriously in middle school.
“I loved to express myself,” Walter said. “My teachers noticed that I was more into it than the rest of the class. I loved the way that you could make it your own. You can give a whole group of people one picture, and their interpretations of it can be so different. I think that it’s always been a thing that I loved to do.”
Walter said she learned several techniques in her classes at West that she wouldn’t have known about otherwise. One of her favorites involves shading watercolors with dotting motions rather than full strokes.
“I like a lot of watercolors,” she said. “It’s funny because I used to hate them. I kind of dot it, almost like stippling. I’ll start with the darker colors and move to lighter colors. It has this really cool effect.”
She is also fond of a method that uses only two materials: powdered plaster and black paper. The artist creates an image on the paper by brushing the plaster on with his or her finger. In a similar technique, Walter darkens the entirety of a piece of paper and then erases it away to achieve a similar result.
Because her work is so precise, Walter often spends days or weeks on a single project. Coyne said her diligence plays a major role in her skill.
“The biggest thing is patience,” he said. “She has a ton of patience that you really don’t find in kids today. Usually, they want to do things that are produced quickly, but she can stick to something for days and not get bored or antsy. You can see that in the detail of her work.”
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