DeCamillis' art on display at Municipal Complex

As she prepares for college, Annabelle DeCamillis has been working more than usual.

The 18-year-old senior from Spain Park High is aiming for a scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and has been assembling a portfolio. DeCamillis’ medium is oil painting, and one of the pieces she added to her application, “Paradise,”  is a view into a blue-tile bathroom.

DeCamillis pointed it out Monday, April 1 as it hung in the Hoover Municipal Complex Lobby, noting not only was it one of her favorites, but she had finished it in only three days – specifically the last three.

“The paint was still wet when we hung it,” said Linda Chastain, president of the Hoover Arts Alliance.

DeCamillis’ work is on display in the Complex lobby as the first artist featured by the Alliance in its new gallery. She is also the 2013 recipient of the Signature Homes/Hoover Arts Alliance art scholarship and was recognized by the Hoover City Council during its meeting April 1.

DeCamillis has been celebrated across the country. She was awarded a gold medal at the 2012 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and her winning painting was chosen to be on exhibit at the U.S. Department of Education. She was most recently chosen as a YoungArts finalist and scholarship recipient, which sent her to Miami for a week to study with world-renowned artists and exhibit her paintings at the Miami Museum of Art.

The Alliance, in its sixth year of operation, created the gallery in the Complex at the suggestion of Gene Smith, Chastian said. Work by local artists is slated to rotate after being on display for about a month. Alliance members said DeCamillis’ work will be featured until shortly before graduation in May.

“I put my life into these,” DeCamillis said of her work on display. “I think it’s worth seeing.”