FEATURE
ADVANCING
THE ARTS
The arts program at Jesuit
is thriving, a few years
before its move into the
spectacular new Fine and
Performing Arts Center, set
to break ground in 2020
16 JESUIT PERSPECTIVES • WINTER 2018-19
When you’re grinding away, day after week after month
after year, you may not always take note of your own
substantial progress.
For Jesuit High School’s Art Department Head, Kevin Ball ’03,
that would be understandable. Year after year for the past decade,
Ball’s department has developed and evolved, grown and
progressed, step after step, mushrooming into a creative force on
campus and throughout the Tampa Bay area.
There are new courses and better-targeted courses in art, music
and theatre. There are more student participants generating
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across the region and state. There has been a steady expansion
of clubs and the annual Celebration of the Arts extravaganza.
There are sensational student artistic contributions to Gaudiosa
and on the walls of Gonzmart Hall. There is a new music (organ)
scholarship at Jesuit, and the phenomenal Mission Drive Day
concert. There are sold out fall and spring stage performances.
There is teacher-commissioned artwork sprouting up in classrooms
across campus.
Jesuit’s arts program is thriving and proliferating.
For Ball and colleagues such as music director Nina Wegmann
and theatre director Richard Miller, who are invested fully and
immersed daily, sometimes it’s not until you step away for a
moment that you recognize it.
“I had lunch with two former students recently, Victor Bufano
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abroad in Europe. Victor is in the architecture program and this
semester he is with a group of classmates building a house from
the ground up in a rural area of Georgia. It is a complete blank
slate for the team and as intimidating as it is exciting.
“These were two students who were talented and committed to
the art program, and it’s helping them pursue their dreams.”
It has been a common theme for Ball. Every so often he
reconnects with an ex-student, and by the time the encounter
is complete, he’s learned about how Jesuit’s art program infused
their lives and is helping launch their careers.
RIGHT Peter Cevallos '18, Pep
Band Drum Major in 2017-18
BELOW Sophomore artists at
work in the art studio