This empty canvas is about to be painted with flying colors during this semester for AP Art.
For those that are passionate about pursuing art at a higher level, The class contains the brilliant minds of creative thinkers. It is led by Mr. Vaughn, who has been teaching art for over eleven years at New Hartford.
“The curriculum is designed to be flexible, as the course is very independent,”Mr. Vaughn says, explaining that the direction of the projects is very different from the rest of the art classes offered at New Hartford..
Prior to starting their portfolio, students are given a warm up assignment, called the Multimedia Project. Students can use their artistic skills with no restrictions, constructing their works with a wide variety of materials in the classroom.
“You have to combine organic elements and a technical drawing in an aesthetically pleasing way,” Mr Vaughn states, demonstrating how creative thinking is involved in the project.
Fellow Senior Tyler Hyunh has been working on a scorpion combined with a vial filling machine for his project for many days.
He details why he chose the two subjects saying that, “The Scorpion ejects poison, while the vial filling machine ejects medicine and ink from a factory.”
Tyler Hyunh hot glued a fake syringe pen with a hanger rack to represent the scorpion’s tail, as he painted the cardboard body red with acrylic paint. Then with a black sharpie, he drew the details on the body, giving it more texture on the art piece!
Although he finished the project, he has some regrets.
“I felt like I could have done better on the paint job and materials on the project,” Tyler says, reflecting on the outcome of his project.
Different from his project, senior Beverly Rhode made a 3D solar panel combined with a sunflower.
The purpose of her project is to show how “solar panels take energy from the sun, as they rotate in the sun’s light direction, same with what sunflower’s do when in full bloom.”
She painted the sunflowers by using acrylics, as she cut the background design with the vinyl cutter, creating the shape of a solar panel. For the finishing touch, she added a picture frame, depicting depth in her piece.
It is interesting to hear about the reasons behind their multimedia projects–how different substances have the same abilities. The process of making these artworks is exquisite, and seeing the final product makes it all worth it.
Generally, students loved the project! Beverly described it as “a good warm up project, having us to push our creativity further.”
Tyler also agrees as well, since there are bigger projects ahead in the AP art curriculum to delve deeper into.
Mr Vaughn hopes that students see the value of the process is just as important as the final product. Fortunately, students did see that. Everyone has expressed their own artistic style in the project, paving the way for their AP Art portfolios. They learned that it isn’t about the finished piece, but more so the many tries it takes to get to the end point.
The future looks bright for the promising art students, as their creativity soars to new bounds like never before. Their AP Art portfolio is just getting started.
