Centennial High School
Izzy Matos
Grade: 11 Course: Art III Title: Self-Portrait Instructor: Nan Collin Artist Statement Some of my favorite works of my own art are those that look nothing at all like my original concept. My process is very intuitive and unstructured, and most of my pieces develop their own personality and style during the process. I rarely work in the abstract, but I like to insert a more subtle meaning or story within my pieces so that they have more substance than a simple study or portrait. When working with the human form, a large part of my process is spent balancing the anatomical form as well as the flow of the composition. A purely anatomical piece may be technically "correct," but not appealing to look at. One of my greatest assets as an artist is my keen eye for detail. My work goes through dozens of adjustments and corrections in both an anatomical and compositional sense, guided by observation and intuition.I take inspiration from a variety of sources, but comics and heavily stylized work are my favorite influences. I think the greatest asset of the visual arts is its versatility in storytelling. Each medium, style, and individual make a piece entirely unique. Only Van Gogh could make Starry Night, but only Dali could make Persistence of Memory. There is beauty in art, but there is more beauty in the difference between my art and yours. |
Chloe Moon
Grade: 11 Medium: Gouache Course: Art 3 Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement “Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.” I added a visual interpretation of a part of my personality to accurately create a self portrait that represents me, both on the inside and out. Overthinking has always been a habit of mine; anxiety-driven thoughts rushing and overflowing like powerful currents of water. Listening to my inner voices leads to more thoughts pouring in, until I drown in the endless ocean of meaningless worries. The working process was an adventure, as I have decided to use gouache for the first time with a single flat brush. After sketching out a loose composition, I let my brush run around freely as it willed, experimenting with colors and techniques on the way. It felt unusual to work on a piece about overthinking without putting much thought into it. I enjoyed the experience of being able to concentrate solely on painting, and nothing else. As a person who often gets lost in my own train of thoughts and worries, working on the self portrait felt like an escape. |
Karen Peng
Grade: 11 Course: Art 3 Title: Pineapple Cake Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement “Pineapple Cake” is about the objectification of POC. My favorite themes to explore are childhood, identity, and humanity. For my more stylized pieces, I enjoy using dynamic poses and vibrant colors. Pineapple cake is a Taiwanese pastry which I used with pineapples in different serving stages as imagery throughout my piece. I always like to keep my pieces more personal and spontaneous rather than strictly planned out. I have never really tried to emulate any specific artist, but I enjoy fauvism, As per human nature, people often like to categorize things and label themselves to create a self-identity and conquer their fear of the unknown. I also attempted to do this (for my whole life actually), but now I don’t try to label myself and instead just try to make whatever I feel like making in the moment, and I believe this is what has impacted my art the most. My interest in humanities also influences the subject matter in my art. Art is one of the only things that I can do happily without getting drained because it feels less like an obligation. Even though it may be difficult to express my emotions through art sometimes, I still want to keep doing it for the sake of improving, and I still want to be as genuine as I can possibly be. I believe that art and creativity are very important nowadays, and that they can be the deciding factor on whether an idea will be successfully pushed into the world. |
Atrina Vedadi
Grade: 11 Course: Photography 2 AP Title: Faceless Medium: Digital Photography Instructor: Hannah Elliott Artist Statement My photography is inspired by Rene Magritte– after researching his work I fell in love with the surreal and dreamlike qualities of his processes, and how he leads the viewers into questioning the real meaning behind his paintings. In this photograph, I tried to highlight the mysteriousness of Magritte's work while still incorporating my own style. With my photo, I tried to include these aspects in hopes of opening up the meaning of my photograph to the creativity of the viewer's imagination. While editing my photos I turned down the brightness making it more mysterious and also distorted and mirrored the photo to make it more unique and personalized. In my future work, I hope to continue exploring ways of communicating personal concepts that could be interpreted by the viewer in different ways. |
Amaiya Brickhouse
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Glassware Medium: Charcoal, white chalk Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement My glassware piece focuses on the characteristic traits of glass: reflection, highlights, shadows, and complexity. The glass’s reflective quality is captured and enhanced by the use of a grayscale color scheme that is able to emphasize the contrast and communicate a harmonious structure. Beyond the quality of the subject, the piece itself is reflected horizontally purposefully in order to resemble a tunnel. Though the glass itself demands a lot of attention to detail and concern for realism, the piece has an air of fantasy, paralleling a tunnel built of glass leading into darkness, into the unknown. The dramatics in regards to color help to develop the atmosphere. The piece, much like the color scheme, is dark and reserved with elements of light and wonder. Each painstaking detail is meant to bring the unearthly architectural structure to life. Drawing this was a test of endurance. The drawing is one of the largest pieces I've made in my high school career. Experimenting with an unfamiliar size, material, and subject expanded my comfort zones as an artist. The piece itself is a smaller-scale representation of the process of making it as a whole which is to say taking something mundane like glass from my dining room table and creating something new and beautiful. . |
Sophia Chao
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Child Labor Medium: Mixed Media, cloth, acrylic paint, tags, string Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement I created a tryptic depicting the lives of children affected by harsh child labor practices. Much of this piece uses up-cycled fabric sewn onto canvas. I wanted to make a commentary on children made to work using materials and products that were created by child labor. Sketched from fabric, this work provides a look inside a clothing factory where children are forced to spend long, grueling hours in sweatshops and paid unlivable wages. Children in sweatshops are forced into these terrible conditions by circumstance and sew to support themselves and their families. The first part of this tryptic shows the three children looking out onto the world where they live, surrounded by the factories that employ them. I stitched their clothing and surroundings out of fabric to show how their lives are dependent on this industry and also depict their brutal work atmosphere. In the second part of this tryptic I sewed each of the young girls out of fabric to emphasize that they’re only valued for the products they make. I showed them close together to emphasize the horrible, often cramped and unsafe working conditions. In the final part of this tryptic, I started by sketching many different hands of children and stitching them onto up-cycled fabric. I gathered fabric tags, signifying companies that utilize child labor. By placing the price tags on their arms, I attempt to demonstrate how companies view the lives of these children. Children are used as tools to attain and increase profits through low-wage labor. As someone fortunate to not be forced into these conditions, I feel it is my duty to spread awareness of this issue. |
Rosie Domerchie Grade: 12 Course: Photography 3 AP Title: Beauty is Pain Medium: Digital Photography Instructor: Hannah Elliott Artist Statement This piece ties together my interests in fashion, bone collecting, and photography. I love finding ways to repurpose bones and documenting them to show the beauty in death. The spine necklace is especially important to me because it’s from a baby deer, and through creating and documenting it I feel like I can give its short life more meaning. The squirrel jaw used for the earrings I found at Goucher College before a tour, but I’ve also found several squirrel skulls and jaws on an island on the eastern shore. I love the places bone hunting takes me. It’s always nice to take a break from the digital world and explore the outdoors. It’s also a fun way to get exercise. As my collection grows I’d love to make more interesting jewelry pieces and take more oddly beautiful photos with them. |
Jane Hudson
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Hands of Giants Medium: Black Ink and Watercolor Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement The piece “Hands of Giants” was born out of a prompt called “Handscapes”. I was inspired by the works of the surrealists. One of the first ideas I had when developing my concept for my composition was making trees out of hands. Imagining these great trees left over from beings far older and far bigger than humans. From that point it was all about photography and composition. Asking, Is this the best hand position? Should the hands be facing up or down? How many hands do I want to do? and, how should I organize them on the page? Once I had my images and my composition down, then began the process of deciding on a medium. “Hands of Giants'' was originally a black and gray watercolor piece. However, after laying down the values, I felt it needed to be pushed further, and so the India Ink was added. With the addition of the dark black ink in blocked out shadows and line works that only emphasized the texture and flow of the trees, the piece gained more dimension, mood, and the surrealistic quality of a true handscape. This piece was and has remained my favorite because the idea is so simple, however the putting of the idea on paper and bringing it to life with values and dimension and line work is very representative of the wonders of art as a whole; taking an idea and turning it into something physical and something more impactful. |
Joowon Ellena Lee
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Bloom Beautifully Medium: Colored Pencil and White Charcoal Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement The reason why I planned this painting was because I thought that the experiences and traces of life felt in people's hands are beautiful. While preparing for this work, I was inspired by my parents' hands. The wrinkles and protruding bones may look unattractive, but they are so touching and beautiful to me. Of all the body parts of a person, the hand is particularly meaningful because it is where everything begins. We think with our heads, but we always need our hands to start to act on what we think. I also like drawing and art, so it is hard to imagine life without hands. It is the body part that is used the most, and I think it is the part where the past years are felt the most. After my youth passes, I will look at my hands and think that I am proud and beautiful. The hands in the picture symbolize life itself, which we have made and the triumph over difficulties in our lives that begins and blooms beautifully in our hands. |
Emilie Liang
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Evolution Medium: Acrylic Paint Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement Exploring the furthest depths of my imagination and being able to perfectly capture it in a drawing is my main objective Although, I have no connecting theme among my current artworks, I have worked to direct my focus towards the beauty and coexistence of humans and nature when building my portfolio for college. This year through being exposed to different art forms, I have learned how one object can have many perspectives that evoke different emotions and sensations and developed an affinity for the aesthetic of parabolas. I have also found a new appreciation for photo editing and how it was able to completely transform a photo through filters, edits, and collages. My current process as an artist is to roughly plan out what I’m going to draw or create, and then to just have a jab at it and improve my technique through trial and error. Fueled by my insatiable curiosity and imagination, my journey as an artist has yet to end. This painting, titled Evolution was an emulation of my personal development and was a study of self. Though it is a bit stark, that is what I wanted to express. |
Aria Grace Ma
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Speak of the Devil Medium: Acrylic on Wood Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement Speak of the Devil is a reflection of the viewer and asks how they may be dissociated from reality based on internal biases that the self may not be aware of. The movement and composition draw attention to the eyes and how a person may conform their view of the world based on internal biases and subjective experiences without any forethought. The face is a morbid abstraction of how human minds and souls may feel exasperated with too much information. In our day of information constantly shooting at us, it can become intimidating and exhausting to be aware of everything going on. Speak of the Devil is an idiom that is typically used when someone physically appears in the middle of a conversation occurring between other people. In this case, the “Devil” is the internal bias that appears in conversations, debates, and discussions that the self may not be aware of. This “Devil” can be catastrophic not only in the development of individuals, but also whole communities. In a time when global issues are affecting the community level with rapid and disastrous impact, I implore the viewers to self-reflect their internal biases so we can all collaborate together on innovative solutions for problems that negatively impact our world. |
Bella Millen
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Shells in a Jar Medium: Charcoal Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement For this artwork, I was highly influenced by my interest in the natural world, and it became highly personal. These shells appear to be ordinary objects found in my house, and are aesthetically pleasing, but the unique textures and patterns drew me in. I knew I had to try to represent them. This piece took a long time to complete, as my motivation dwindled and I faced a slew of artistic problems. I had never used charcoal before, and chose a challenging and intricate composition. Artworks depicting glass, and translucent surfaces tend to captivate me, so I was inspired to capture the glass jar in my work. Not only is each shell unique, but they come from different geographic regions ranging from my grandparents’ home at Rehoboth beach to my grandma’s place in Hawaii. The shells contrast with each other in terms of appearance, type, and size, but also have distinct energies when you examine them or hold them in your hand. I used multiple charcoal techniques to create clear distinctions between different shells, and applied more realism to some shells than others. The variance of messy and neat style is intentional and, I believe, makes this piece more visually interesting. |
Katerina Talanova Grade: 12 Course: Photography 2 AP Title: Historical Conformity Medium: Digital Photography Instructor: Hannah Elliott Artist Statement Portrait photography is my favorite thing to shoot because you can show so much meaning through makeup, wardrobe, and expressions. I prefer to work alone with self-portraits because I find it difficult to instruct someone else to depict the perfect emotion, and I find that there’s less pressure since I can work at my own pace. This photo incorporates elements of the modern world, like a mask and gloves, and places them into a more historical scene. The gradient, unfocused background places the center of attention on the illuminated subject. I was inspired by Rembrandt’s paintings: portraits that utilize dramatic lighting and dark backgrounds in order to focus more on the model. I aimed to capture how someone from Rembrandt’s time might have reacted to the modern pandemic. The rubber glove is reminiscent of those historically worn by nobles. The subject is pulling their mask down; the contrasting shadow helps bring attention to their incredulous and irritated facial expression. |
Matthew Thomas Grade: 12 Course: Photography 3 AP Title: Optical Obscurity Medium: Digital Photography Instructor: Hannah Elliott Artist Statement Throughout my high school experience, I have had the opportunity to photograph a multitude of subjects, and to discover numerous new techniques to improve as a photographer. For this piece, “Optical Obscurity”, I wanted to capture a photograph with an emphasis on the human eye. After a long thought process, I made a decision to conceal a majority of my face using a folder. By covering a great portion of my face, as well as creating a shallow depth of field, I created a strong emphasis on the eye. An important aspect of this photograph's composition was the lighting. To create the appropriate lighting for this photo, I placed a lamp on a stand and faced the lamp to my face. The light created contrast between the dark areas and the eye. This piece was meant to convey the emotion of a portrait, while the majority of the face is covered. The idea that a little can show a lot was the main inspiration for this photograph. As I continue to photograph, I will use the knowledge that I have learned as well as my previous works to improve upon myself. |
Monika Tracy
Grade: 12 Course: Art IV AP Title: Metamorphosis Medium: Watercolor Instructor: Nan Collins Artist Statement The progress I see in my art is also reflected in my life. My motive with this artwork was to concentrate on creating art that evolves and changes with time. I thought the Monarch Butterfly would be the perfect subject, in that it experiences a metamorphosis. The butterfly is beautiful in every stage of its life and this can be compared to art. I used watercolor to capture the critical fragments of its life. I was inspired by Jennifer Tyers, who creates beautiful watercolor art influenced by nature and plants. During this virtual school year, I have seen physical and mental growth within my art, and at times it has been challenging. I feel as if I began as a caterpillar and emerged as a butterfly. |