Arts & Electives

May 27, 2025

2025 Annual Film Lab Showcase at the Grandin Theater

The 9th Annual Film Lab Showcase at the Grandin Theater this May featured four short films produced, written, filmed, and edited by high school students. The red carpet event represented the culmination of students’ group curriculum based learning for the 2024-25 school year.

We’d like to congratulate our beginner film lab students, Bee M, Reece B, and Theo H, as wells our advanced students, Ivor G and Jupiter C, on the efforts they put in to making this premiere a great success.

We’d also like to note our teacher and student actors, who played varying roles from lead to extras – Josh, Eva Rose S-W, Sarah P, Anna H, Miles C, and Sori M.

Sarah P shared:

I had such a great time being in “My Shadow Is Brighter”. The cast and crew for it were so fun to work with and the premiere went amazingly well.

May 19, 2025

Odessa Reflects on the Daisy Art Parade

As a senior this year, Odessa attended her last Daisy Art Parade as a CHS student. She was kind enough to share this personal reflection with us:

Although I have interacted with the Daisy Art Parade in the past, this was by far the one filled with the most clearly formed effort, well-earned organization, and energetic community engagement. Throughout the day I saw people excitedly interacting with giant puppets (such as the Frida Kahlo) and actively learning about the messages various krewes aimed to spread—from embracing art to protecting our natural environment. I also saw a pink dragon-pony bite off someone’s head. Despite the parade not being directly downtown as with the first year, many people from around Roanoke showed up to watch, or to celebrate art and artistry. It was a great new decision to end in the plaza with the statue of Henrietta Lacks, where parade-goers thoroughly decorated both the sidewalks and a number of collective-art canvases. I loved being present this year, and I can’t wait to see the parade continue to grow.

May 13, 2025

World Building Class Posters

Over the course of the semester, the World Building Workshop students each created their own fictional worlds. This involved researching historical, social, literary, and/or scientific principles to give their worlds internal consistency. They manifested their worlds through a combination of small specific assignments, and a larger project to present their world in the form of written fiction, a game/game system, or other creative format of their choice. They presented their world to us through an end of the semester poster session for all to enjoy.

May 5, 2025

Gristle Butter # 17

The last issue of Gristle Butter for the school year has arrived!

Read Gristle Butter #17 now, featuring Eva Rose, Jupiter, Olchar, Odessa, Wilson, Ella, Daniel, Louis, Avery, Zoe, Maddox, Derek, and Miles!!!

April 4, 2025

Lily Earns a Scholastic National Silver Medal

Lily E won a Gold Key at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards national level, and went on to win a Scholastic National Silver Medal for her art piece ” The Last of the Cherry Tomatoes.”

Congratulations to Lily for earning this prestigious award recognizing her outstanding achievement in painting.

Lily is an art student of former CHS parent Patricia Kapral.

Lily Earns a Scholastic National Silver Medal

February 21, 2025

Gristle Butter #16

Click here to read Gristle Butter #16, the latest edition to come out just in time for the Star City ZineFest! Enjoy being treated to the imaginations of Daniel A, Wilson K, Avery M, & Odessa M.

January 14, 2025

Gristle Butter #15

Click here to read Gristle Butter #15, featuring the combined talents of Daniel A, Louis F, Wilson K, Avery M, Tsula A, Odessa M, Maddox B, Miles C, and the Poetry Class.

December 9, 2024

Band Class at Jefferson Center Music Lab

The band class recently got a tour of the Jefferson Center Music Lab. They learned about the various studios, equipment, and programs available to high school students, and also had a chance to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Shaftman Performance Hall.

December 3, 2024

Eva Rose Is Passionate About Being Onstage

Eva Rose’s passion for theatre started at a very young age because her family was so involved in the theatrical community. She participated in her first production at the age of eight months old as the “Baby Princess” in The Boys of Draken Street and has taken part in all sorts of productions ever since. By the time she was a junior in high school, she had been in over 25 productions!

For years she’s taken advantage of a variety of theater educational opportunities at the June Bug Center for Arts and Education, the Mill Mountain Theatre, the Virginia Children’s Theatre, the Floyd County High School and the New River Stage. She’s also been in productions with all of the aforementioned, as well as HaeBo Productions, Summer Musical Enterprise, and New River Community Theatre Guild.

Her favorite roles she’s played are “Wednesday Addams” in The Addams Family, “Duffy” in Annie, “Mayzie La Bird” in Seussical Jr., and “Helena” in an abridged Midsummer Night’s Dream. She was also featured in the film Wish You Well when she was just six years old, and has won several acting awards through One Act and Forensics competitions. She’s also been part of Mill Mountain Theatre’s Musical Theatre Conservatory for several seasons.

Eva Rose’s favorite place to be is on stage, and she is excited to make her debut with CHS as “Mrs. Webb” in the Fall 2024 Community High School’s production of Our Town while also performing in Annie at Mill Mountain Theatre!

She is thrilled to be able to take the stage in so many different shows and circumstances, and can’t wait to see what comes next for her in the theatrical community. Eva Rose shares that her passion for theater has helped hone her skills in public speaking, connecting with others, and being a more outgoing person overall.

November 20, 2024

Improv Workshop with Jack Wright and Ben Bennett

CHS hosted an Improvisation workshop by touring musicians Jack Wright (saxophone) and Ben Bennett (percussion). Wright and Bennett play some of the most experimental, free-form music out there, pushing beyond free jazz into what Wright, in his scholarly book on the practice and history of improvisation, calls “Free Playing”, using instruments and voice against the ways we are taught to play them “correctly”.

The workshop was a lot of fun and explored new relationships with sound, play, and rhythm. Students and faculty brought instruments to experiment with, including their own voice!

Jack and Ben have had a 15-year-or-so musical friendship, which persisted through the pandemic with a lot of playing sessions, duo and trio with Zach Darrup, sometimes recorded, sometimes not. To say anything at all about the music always feels reductive, but we can say that playing music like this pretty consistently renews and adds to our enthusiasm for living.

The two met through Ben’s dad, John M. Bennett, well known in the underground poetry scene and a partner of Jack’s since the 80s. The three formed the group Rotty What, documented on two recordings, “Naming the Dust,” and “Ohio Grimes and Misted MeaSnies.”. Together with Evan Lipson, bassist, Ben and Jack played as Wrest, which toured the US six times over the past ten years and produced two CDs, “Wrest” and Ingress. and a duo Tangle on Public Eyesore Records. In 2016 Ben moved from Columbus Ohio to Philadelphia, where they collaborate regularly as a duo and trio with Zach Darrup (Never), and with various musicians who come through.

Enjoy this video of Jack and Ben playing locally at Art Rat Studios. Jonathan Falls has also performed in another ensemble on the set with Jack & Ben at Art Rat Studios.

Jack and Olchar also performed an east coast tour together in 2019 with Olchar on vocals and Jack on his sax).