Six students attended the University of Kansas Visual Arts Day on March 2 to learn more about what the school’s program had to offer. The students, who were all interested in art, were able to participate in workshops, listen to professors and students, and take a tour of the art facilities.

Junior Sam McCoy was able to partake in a ceramics workshop.

“I threw on the wheel,” McCoy said. “They gave us a tour, and we went down to the wheel-throwing place. They did a quick demo and they showed us how they mixed all their clay and then we got to do the wheel.”  

McCoy wants to minor in art, and says that the visit made her consider KU as an option for higher learning.

Senior Carly Newhouse is accepted in the Visual Arts program at KU and will be attending the university next year.

“It [the visit] was really cool,” Newhouse said. “I experienced printmaking for the first time, and it was a really interesting experience, and I made cool stuff.”

Although Newhouse already knows she’s attending the school, she says it made her even more ready to start the next year.

“It made me a lot more excited since I actually saw what I would be doing next year,” Newhouse said.

Art teachers Tim Mispagel and Heathyr Shaw accompanied the students on the trip.

“I thought the visual art day was really productive for the students and a nice opportunity to be able to see how a division one program is set up,” Mispagel said.

Mispagel was also pleased to learn about the class sizes at KU’s Visual Arts program. With KU being a large state university, Mispagel says people can be frightened by potentially large class sizes.

“I think the misconception with going to a school like KU is that they’re going to have huge classes, and that’s not necessarily the case,” Mispagel said. “A lot of times, the big university can be kind of intimidating to some. I was pleased to see that it’s not and it was nice to get to see the facilities of KU.”

Mispagel also says that for students looking into art in college, visiting KU allowed students to have “a good gage to measure by” when looking at other schools’ art departments.

Although this was the first time that Mispagel and Shaw took students to visit during KU’s visual arts day, Mispagel hopes to take more in the future.