Advanced art students have been working and preparing since the fall to display their work at an art show on Feb. 25 at the Union of Contemporary Art. Rebekah Pilypaitis and Traci Long, both art teachers, came up with the idea of having their students get to know themselves and each other more by taking an enneagram, a type of personality test, and then making art representing their results.
The Enneagram of Personality has nine different types which are the reformer, helper, achiever, individualist and more. Each enneagram test tells about different parts of one’s personality, but most have some of the same ones.
Students have worked hard for their artwork to come out as good as possible. Pottery students are currently firing their work and Long’s students have drawn self-portraits of themselves with sharpie.
Long’s Art 3-4 students made collages of images, symbols, and words that represented them based off their enneagram type and later drew self-portraits of themselves over their collage with sharpie.
Pilypaitis’ advanced pottery students also went off their enneagram type and made busts, which are sculptures of a person’s head, shoulders and chest. The top half depicted what other people see on the outside of them and the bottom half is what they hide.
“We have been making art for the last few months and with the pottery we have had to restart our busts two times,” Pilypaitis said.
An enneagram specialist, Christopher Heuertz, from Gravity, a Center for Contemplative Activism, came to talk to students about the enneagram test. Heuertz’s conversation topics helped people understand their type, such as fear as an invitation to growth and working with the test for awakening and spiritual development.
The Gravity Center helps people better themselves by offering contemplative retreats, spiritual direction, enneagram consultations, weekly meditation sits and public speakers or retreat guides.
“I think it’s very exciting and very emotional to see that lots of people gathered just to see your artwork and all the things I did to achieve my final product that I’ve worked hard for almost the whole school year,” senior Fabiola Cordoba said.
Students will get to display their artwork at the Union of Contemporary Art located on North 24th street. Students and those invited will share a video of the process of creating their art and their reactions from 6-8 p.m.
This is the first time this event has taken place. Pilypaitis took the enneagram test last May and she fell in love with it and thought it would be an interesting experience for students to learn about themselves.
“Once you take the test and find out what your number is you learn a little bit more about yourself,” Pilypaitis said.