“When you work on a piece for so long, you end up getting sick of it. But when you finish it and see it laid out, it’s so worth it having other people see it,” said Kyle Guinnip, a senior with artwork displayed at the Mt. Lebanon High School Art Show.

Student artwork and live musical performances filled the school on Friday evening. All kinds of media were on display, including ceramics, paintings, sculptures, charcoal and color pencil drawings and mixed media. Parents, friends, classmates and teachers came out in impressive numbers to support young artists in their end-of-year celebration.

In the cafeteria, graduating seniors showcased their best work. Guinnip’s horror-inspired surrealist art explored themes of neurodiversity and the complexities of human nature. One of their favorite pieces is a gouache and colored pencil drawing titled My Body is a Temple/I can’t Inhabit, which depicts a woman with an apple core for a body, a metaphor for anorexia.

“There’s a theme of a perfect body, represented by a fruit like an apple. When you think about it though, your body is an organism. The sole purpose of it is to make sure you stay alive. It’s for you,” Guinnip explained in the loud, bustling room. A body positive message underlined the piece, as she said women shouldn’t feel compelled to alter their bodies to conform to societal pressures.

Across the aisle, Mary Connell stood by her artwork. She’ll be attending Carnegie Mellon University in the fall for fine arts. In her final year at Mt. Lebanon, she focused on capturing the uncanny valley effect in her artwork.

“The uncanny valley regards the aversion of near-human likeness falling just short of human; the eerie feeling induced by lifelike robots, dolls, 3-D animation, mannequins, or police sketches,” wrote Connell in her artist statement. “The emotions that make one human might attract you, with repulsion of fascination, to the uncannily ‘inhuman.’”

Mr. Self Destruct is her favorite piece in the collection, named after a song by Nine Inch Nails, one of her favorite bands.

That song “is part of a larger album all about self-destruction, perception of yourself and a very human experience,” Connell explained. “I feel like even without intentionally doing it, a lot of that came out in this piece. A lot of this was supposed to be about the relationship between humanity and technology. But along the way it came to be about self-perception and the continuation of cycles.”

The mixed-media piece depicts various body parts in various shades of red, black and white, as well as the unsettling faces that evoke the feeling of uncanny valley.

While audience members browsed the artwork, the Mt. Lebanon Foundation for Education (MLFE) held its first-ever silent auction and art sale, featuring donated works from students. MLFE raised just under $7,000 which will be used to enhance student experiences in the school district.