The Announcer visited the Advanced Placement Art class on April 22nd to get a preview of some of the work that the 24 student artists were preparing for their AP portfolios.
While their art was impressive, so, too, were the thoughtful ways that they spoke about what inspired them to make art.
AP Art teacher Kelly Pack has worked with the students all year as they designed their own projects related to an inquiry question they developed in August.
“All students are working on different lines of inquiry and the goal for each student is to take their question into consideration when making decisions about content, materials, and techniques. My favorite part about this class is seeing how 24 individual students work with some of the same materials and tools in 24 different ways,” said Pack of her experience this year.
We sat down with Senior Leilani Jackson, who has grown up surrounded by art at home and was taught how to draw and paint by her mom, sister and brother. She said that she already had a passion for art coming into the AP program, but was thrilled to have the option to be in a year-long art class. Jackson is so glad to have been able to grow her artistic abilities through her years in the Naz art program.
While Jackson has had an opportunity to work in different media, she has found painting to be really liberating. “I gravitated towards painting because I’m able to free-hand and paint as I go and put on the canvas what I’m thinking at the time. I especially like oil paint because it’s forgiving and blends well.”
Jackson’s most recent oil painting was a work in progress as of the end of April. The piece is a commentary on how easily one can be distracted in today’s society. The canvas depicts a city where the buildings are burning and black smoke is clouding the sky, while in the foreground someone is looking down at a phone, missing what’s happening to the city around them.
Jackson explains that the purpose of the painting is “to show how distraction is a big part of our lives and how we can easily be distracted by our phones and not see what’s going on around us.”
Senior Val Ramos started drawing at a young age, too and said he was inspired early on by his mom and Pack. He enrolled in Introduction to Art his sophomore year and has been an active artist ever since.
This year, Ramos has been exploring the theme of nostalgic Americana of the 1950s and how American values of the past influence how people live in America today. His work is very personal: one piece depicts the artist himself as an older man looking back on his own experience with faith and family. Another sets a bucolic scene at a mountain church in Appalachia, a place where Ramos hopes to return to in the future.
Senior Izzy Strnic has loved taking art classes at Naz all four years and has been excited to delve deeply into her AP Art portfolio theme this year. Her focus has been on the idea of destruction and that has splintered into many different areas. She explored the idea of the destruction of society and the world, but has also adapted some more nuanced views of destruction.
“Destruction isn’t always a bad thing,” she said. “Sometimes, out of destruction can come growth and change.”
In fact, one of the pieces she is most proud of is a lino carving: a technique where an artist carves an image into a piece of linoleum and then prints it onto paper. “I really liked carving away at the piece because I was able to destroy it as I was working on it and ultimately created something new,” she explained. The image she carved is of a girl, who Strnic explains, “is obviously beat up and destroyed, but there is also beauty and growth displayed.”
She will continue to ponder the theme of destruction as she enters the Art Conservation program at the University of Delaware next year. A unique and competitive program in the United States, she was one of only 15 students accepted. In the program, Strnic will learn to preserve and restore art and artifacts from museums and archaeological digs — a direct tie to the theme of her AP Art portfolio, though she admits that she may have subconsciously picked that path.
One common comment from the student artists was how grateful they are for the support and inspiration they received from Pack throughout the course of the year. And, the feeling is mutual. “This Senior class holds a special place in my heart,” said Pack. “I’ve been teaching art at Naz for six years, but it’s this year that feels like we’re really seeing the impact of the changes we’ve made to the art program.”
