Gina Jostes third time DaVinci Fest winner
She stands behind her art work with flaming amounts of pride and amusement. Senior Gina Jostes, recently won an award at the DaVinci Fest for the third time as an art grand champion. This year her art piece titled ‘The Mad Hatter’s Garb’ won an award in the category of mixed media. Jostes explains how art is a rare form of non-verbal expression that she wishes everyone had the chance to induce.
Jostes’s unceasing amount of love and passion for art really shines through in her work. Ever since she was young, she knew that art was something she would always be passionate about. Art has always been a huge part of her life, and it really took off around 7th grade when she got a drawing instructions book and a sketchbook from her mother to entertain her on a plane ride to see her relatives. She started off drawing on her own, but around halfway through 9th grade she began taking classes at Off The Wall Art Studio with Karron Nottingham once a week, and she has not stopped since.
I don’t consider art a hobby at this point in my life, it’s an important part of me and it’s how I express what I feel without having to put it into words.
— Gina Jostes
Jostes explains what sparks her inspiration, “Anything will do; a beautiful day, a particularly happy smile, certain colors, the movement of snow, a relationship, a character, and so on, and so forth. My imagination goes wild when my emotions are touched and I feel something that can be translated into an image.”
Jostes won the title of Senior Division Art Grand Champion for her Mad Hatter costume, an ensemble that many people at the school probably saw her wear during Halloween. It’s based off of the character of the Mad Hatter -or Tarrant Hightopp- in Tim Burton’s 2010 rendition of Alice in Wonderland. She also won first place in the Senior Division Mixed Media for a piece called, “The Cogs Are Turning” which consists of several layers of different materials, including: paint, lace, paper, photograph, and miscellaneous bits and pieces. She had a theme going this year of Madness -madness in terms of abandoning yourself to a dance, or letting emotions pour out of you and onto a piece of paper. She has received the title of Junior Division Art Grand Champion in 2013, Senior Division Art Grand Champion in 2014, and first place in the Senior divisions Fiber Art and Mixed Media in 2015.
Jostes said, “I enjoy creating pieces with many types of media; I’ve done a lot of sketching and painting, but I also make pieces with mixed media, where one part is painted, the next is collage, and another might be drawn. One of my favorite kinds of art is Fashion Design. I love designing clothes based on whatever may inspire me, and I’ve made quite a few of my sketches into realities.”
Jostes plans to attend the College of Design at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities next year for an Apparel Design major and a business minor. She has been accepted at the school and has just recently confirmed her enrollment there. If possible she would love to continue to do design related work in her future, whether it be high end fashion or theater costuming, it is something she plans to figure out as she goes about her career. However if things turn sour she will have the business minor that she can fall back on.
“I don’t consider art a hobby at this point in my life, it’s an important part of me and it’s how I express what I feel without having to put it into words,” Jostes said.
Samantha Flipp • Mar 30, 2016 at 4:21 pm
This is a great article. It is extremely informative. I loved hearing about all of Gina’s accomplishments and what she plans to do in the future. The only negative thing I have to say about this article is that it could have included quotes from more sources.
Jimmy Thomson • Mar 30, 2016 at 1:55 pm
This is a great Article. As a fan of art and cinema I found this very intriguing. the structure of the article was perfect in its story like structure going from Da Vinci Fest to personality to career.
Katie Hutton • Mar 30, 2016 at 12:03 pm
I adore this article, your language is really vivid (particularly ‘flaming’) and I like that you added the bit about her getting her sketchbook on a plane ride, and also that she wore her costume on halloween, it’s a cute touch.
Jordan Fulin • Mar 30, 2016 at 10:59 am
Fantastic article! Your article was easy to follow since first you introduced Gina and shared what sparked her passion for art. Then you covered her most recent accomplishments and shared her future plans. Also, I appreciate your word choice a ton in this article! I love how you avoid the simple/cliche words when describing Gina’s career in art.
Megan McGuire • Mar 29, 2016 at 10:48 pm
I like the set up of this article and how you started with Gina’s interest in art from the very beginning. You did a nice job of capturing and explaining Gina’s whole career and had some really interesting quotes as well.
Rose Stoebner • Mar 29, 2016 at 8:57 pm
This article was really in-depth and did a good jobs describing her accomplishments throughout high school. In could have used more quotes from other people to gets some more perspectives in there. The photos were good but could have used a little more variety but the e captions were good as well. Overall it was a very interesting article.
Karisma Vang • Mar 29, 2016 at 8:12 pm
Wow, its amazing how far she got and where she’s taking her career. I love how she’s going above and beyond with her art. I also enjoyed the quote usage in the writing, there could be more quotes from other people. But how you used what you had was very well.
Adam Sutcliffe • Mar 29, 2016 at 5:23 pm
I thought this article did a very good job of explaining Joste’s accomplishments throughout high school, and showing off her creations through text as well as visually. The only critique I would really make on it is to possibly get some quotes from people who she knows, or family/mentors, but other than that, very solid article!
Sarah Junko • Mar 29, 2016 at 5:03 pm
I really like this article. It is always interesting to read about a classmates successes. This article was written very well and it had really interesting information along with great quotes.
Alex Serier • Mar 28, 2016 at 9:18 pm
Nice article. This article was a interesting look at her current award winning work and the past art work she has done it was also interesting how the end how the seniors future was talked about which was a good way to finish off the article.