FREEZE: YOU'VE NOW BECOME A A WORK OF ART STUDENTS BRING MASTERPIECES ON CANVAS TO LIFE.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO

Staff Writer

QUARTZ HILL -- Forty-five Quartz Hill High School art history students made art come to life Friday by reproducing art masterpieces using themselves as models.

With makeup and costumes, students posed statuelike to re-create "living pictures" by Botticelli, Degas, Manet and Kandinsky as part of the school's third annual Living Art Gallery show.

"We had a week to work on it this year," said sophomore Corinne Brierley, who had to cut her hair to make bangs to be the barmaid in Edouard Manet's 1882 "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere."

"I had to find something that looked appropriate to what she was wearing. We had to paint the background. It was hard because there's a lot of people, lights and architecture in the background. We had to find a bar table and get all the props. There's wine bottles and a dish of oranges," Brierley said.

The Living Art Gallery is modeled after its more famous counterpart, the annual Pageant of the Masters held every year in Laguna Beach.

"It's from my AP art history class," art history teacher Gail DeGroff said. "The students work all year toward it. It's very cool, and they do a great job. It's everything from ancient Greek to post-modernism."

The school's show consisted of about 20 exhibits featuring students from DeGroff's two classes and were viewed by other students in the cafeteria.

Each exhibit is attended by a tour guide who gives a 30-second talk about the artwork. The show requires students to remain frozen in poses for about an hour.

"They do the costumes, the backdrops, bring in props. They try to re-create it as close as they can to the actual painting. It comes very close. In many classes, it's phenomenal," DeGroff said.

Sophomores Jane Harris and Amanda Archambo did Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky's 1912 abstract expressionist work "Improvisation 28," a riotous splash of color and black lines.

"I really loved the philosophy behind his work. He developed this whole-blown expressionism. He painted what he felt and didn't think about what he knew and what he saw," Harris said.

There are no human figures in the work so Harris and Archambo donned white jumpsuits and painted themselves to blend into the work.

Brierley said she and classmate Leah Healey settled on Manet's bar painting because it had two girls in it.

"It's kind of controversial," Brierley said of the work. "We don't know if Manet was trying to depict two barmaids or one barmaid and her reflection."

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Quartz Hill High School students Amanda Archambo, 16, left, and Jane Harris, 16, blend into "Improvisation 28" by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky for the school's third annual Living Art Gallery on Friday. Below, Corinne Brierley, 16, stands at the bar as she and Leah Healey, 15, re-enact "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere" by French painter Edouard Manet.

(3) Quartz Hill High School students act out "Crack the Whip" by Winslow Homer.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer