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At NCSSM, we’ve always known our students’ talents extend far beyond STEM disciplines. Now others around the state have finally gotten a good look at what our students are capable of in the fields of literary and visual arts as NCSSM-Durham’s literary and art journal – Blue Mirror – and work published in its Spring 2024 edition have been recognized among the best in the state. At the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association competition, student contributors ranked First Place in Nonfiction and Second Place in Art, while the magazine itself received Honorable Mentions in Layout, Cover Design, Photography, and Theme Development and earned a rating of Distinction, placing it among the top five in the state.
That’s not bad for a 40+ year-old journal’s first time being entered in the competition. The first issue of Blue Mirror – a hand-crafted, photocopied, and stapled affair printed in-house – was published in the spring of 1982. NCSSM was barely two years old at the time, with its very first class preparing to graduate.
The journal’s long history is testament to the significance of the literary and visual arts – and the arts in general – at NCSSM.
“The students here have always valued the arts,” says John Woodmansee, a long-time NCSSM-Durham humanities instructor and faculty sponsor of Blue Mirror. “We’ve had incredible participation in Blue Mirror all along from contributors, from staff members, from editors, and even from staff members interested in helping out.”
“Lots of people submit to Blue Mirror,” says Stephanie Hughes, a Durham senior who attended the Durham School of the Arts before NCSSM and is one of Blue Mirror’s editors this year. Last year, Stephanie was part of the staff whose efforts on the magazine were recently acknowledged. “We publish two issues of the journal each year, and I’d say we get probably over 100 submissions every issue. I always see people reading it around campus. It’s just so special for us in that way.”
At a school focused on STEM, it’s easy to forget sometimes that students have other talents as well, says Alexa Garvoille, another Durham humanities instructor who co-sponsors Blue Mirror. “Any sort of the creative or expressive arts on campus – from our visual art program to creative writing classes to music to drama – is so important for students for self-expression,” she says. “Blue Mirror is a way to showcase those talents that are sometimes hidden just because of the nature of the school.”
For the vast majority of its life, Blue Mirror functioned mostly like a student club, always owing its existence to students’ interest in and ability to carve out time from their already-packed schedules to create the journal. NCSSM’s administration eased that burden recently by elevating the journal’s student editor positions to official student leadership roles at the school. This new classification prioritized the journal by creating regularly scheduled blocks of dedicated time for students to craft it. The result, say the Blue Mirror faculty sponsors, is a publication that generally appears much more professional.
Students in Morganton are publishing an arts journal of their own. Called Indigo Ridge, it is seeing tremendous support from the student body, says Maggie McDowell, a humanities teacher and one of the magazine’s faculty sponsors. She thinks she knows why.
“I believe more of our students than would be willing to admit it are secretly humanities kids as well as science and math kids,” she says. “They appreciate having spaces where they can explore that side of their identity. I think having a mode of expression that doesn’t have to include the right answer, or make your college application more competitive, is especially important at a school like ours.”
Whether it’s literary, visual, or performative, the arts at NCSSM serve as an inspiration to the artists who are creating original work, and those who are consuming it, says Carrie Alter, an instructor of studio art in Durham.
“The creative process gives both the creator and the consumer that moment where you’re not thinking about solving your math problems or anything else,” she says. “You’re just able to explore your thoughts or other people’s thoughts and other people’s images. That kind of inspiration is necessary not only for your own emotional development, but for your intellectual development as well.”
This is the first of two stories focusing on the arts at NCSSM; a story highlighting the performing arts will come later this academic year.
