Selah Gambrell

Class of 2020

My portfolio shows various stories from Greco-Roman mythology and the messages they teach about relationships and ideals from that period of time. Through the research and creation of my pieces, I wanted to know what we could learn about love from the examples shown to us in greek mythology.

My body of work began when I explored the stereotypes depicted in myths versus what we see in our society today. I show this in my landscapes and portraits using many different mediums and hidden symbolism in my pieces. My compositions were more simplistic, and I used multiple mediums to show contrast through layering and using negative space as backgrounds to limit distractions in the portraits. As I moved further into my process I began to wonder how the love we saw in popular greek myths were different from what was presented to us in society today. Common themes in mythology were strength, companionship, femininity, sacrifice, and folly, which were things I tried to show in my work. As I got to my later pieces I began to experiment more with mediums I had never used before and pushed myself to attempt more challenging things like portraits, complicated backgrounds, and difficult poses.

Grace Garrabrants

Class of 2020

How do I show what femininity personally means to a modern woman who desires to have the grace and beauty of the past while attempting to thrive in the now? These pieces reflect my fascination with femininity, and how I relate femininity to the world in which I live today. They explain my own personal odyssey, along with my anomalous journey through figuring out my own femininity as I connect it to the past and the future. Still, I do not flatter myself, because I know my struggles are not just my own.

I hope all people, especially young women, can relate to my artwork. I began this year experimenting with creating skin tones as well as poses. I truly wanted to grow with the study of lifelike form by using a variety of mediums. In my early paintings, my composition was standard as my figures were centered, but throughout this year I strived to learn how to create atmosphere whether it was realistic or abstract. By the end, I attempted to learn tricky body layouts and used foreshortening. Many of my pieces while in a slightly different style my of them are tied together through resin this year I wanted to learn how different mediums were affected by it, especially charcoal and acrylic painting. I learned that it adds a leave of dimension and interest to a piece that I was not capable of doing before I discovered it. Overall this year I not only grew in my skills but I also learned how to create pieces that were meaningful to a generation who are told they must be the same as the gender counterpart.

Brenna Goethals

Class of 2020

Within my volume of work, I explored the theme “How will humanity change over the next 100 years.” I pursued how I have seen society progressing and how I believe we will respond to these cultural shifts through visual means. With each piece, I dug into an aspect of society I see changing. I started my portfolio using acrylic paint as my solo medium, but as I honed my craft, I started branching out into spray paint, paint pen, and incorporated mixed media paper to layer elements on my canvas. I explored with the freehand technique of spray art in hopes of creating a loose rhythm in my backgrounds. You can see my growth in the flow of my pieces from “Longing with no Limits” to my final piece “Career Paths”. They are both sky backgrounds done in spray but the movement created in the direction of paint and the softness of the pattern is better executed in “Career Paths”. This growth in my art helped build confidence in my abilities and even pushed me to step out of my comfort zone and experiment with more complex compositions. At the start of my portfolio, my compositions were strictly centered in the middle, versus towards the middle I started applying the rule of thirds and tried to make my pieces more balanced.

Ali Moore

Class of 2020

My art challenges me to find beauty and positivity in things I would not normally think much of, as well as showing the things I really enjoy. An example of this would be music and the retro based theme you see in my work.

My body of work shows that anything you can think of has some form of beauty to it whether that is in an old magazine, time period, or different places in the world. My art started with a lot of pieces that were solely acrylic paint because I enjoy that medium the most. I began my investigation with painting an old magazine cover in acrylic. Overall, compositionally my pieces incorporated a lot of balance, unity, and texture while usually being two dimensional with a lot of pop art colors. As time went on, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and try to take as many risks as possible which included me trying mediums I have never tried before such as watercolor and paint markers. This process helped me discover my true style.

Savannah Shoop

Class of 2020

This year in AP Studio Art, I strived to find how I could explore my love for retro design, 1940-50s style, through mixed media. I dove into this question by first learning more about my own family’s history, especially my grandmother and her travels. I’ve always been fascinated with the 1940s and 1950s time periods. The fashion, the music, the aesthetics, the lifestyle, it all seems so much simpler to me and I pull a lot of my own inspiration from that time. I have many pictures of my grandma in the 50s around my room that influenced some of my projects as well.

It’s safe to say that my first few projects were sort of a mess! I started off this year not knowing what mediums I worked best in. I didn’t even know my style and it took some well-needed guidance to find that things like collaging and acrylic painting are my specialties. While wrestling with the meaning of my work, I began to discover that I could use my love for history as a source of motivation for my art. I tried to get familiar with techniques like image transfer and mediums such as oil pastels and gouache paints. I found that my work best reflected my talents when collaging or using acrylic paints.

One of my favorite pieces I did consisted of an acrylic self-portrait with a newspaper collage background. I struggled a bit with taking risks because I was used to working with the same mediums for each project but I was able to step out of my comfort zone and try a hand at the infamous work of resin. At first, I struggled to pour it on evenly and it took a while to perfect it. I ended up completing two projects that were coated in resin and they happen to be two of my favorite pieces. It adds a quite elegant and polished element to the artwork which fits well under my theme. This year in AP Art helped provide me the opportunity to grow as an artist and find what I truly love to do in the broad spectrum that is art.