With only a year to complete 13 pieces, the AP Art students’ full plate has come to a close. At the end of the year, students showcase the work they’ve done throughout their high school career at the AP Art show. This is a chance for family and the greater community to view their individual art pieces and hard work. 

“I mean you really get to do your own thing, you have complete creative control over it and it’s showing your stuff and feeling the satisfaction of a job well done,” Carolyn Bielski, the AP Art teacher for two-dimensional pieces said.

Each AP Art student creates their own ‘sustained investigation’ question to follow for the rest of the year. This theme allows the artists to create pieces that reflect their ‘answer’ or analysis of the question.

“I think the key is finding a theme at the outset when you’re first deciding it in August or September, that is wide enough that you’re still gonna like it by May,” Bielski said. 

At the end of the year, the AP Art students choose their top five pieces they’ve created throughout the course of the year, pack them up, and ship them off to Princeton, New Jersey for the AP College Board to review. 

The artwork enabled the artists’ sustained investigation to questions come to life. With collections of pieces that carry out the same theme, people could feel connected to the artists. 

“My theme was what makes you feel most alive. I had a very rough beginning to high school, so I wanted to make a theme that was going to have a more positive spin on it. I was trying to relate it to what I was going through at that moment,” senior AP Art student, Naomi Miles said.

Through different medias, Miles found this question challenging to accomplish with such little time. 

“The due dates were crazy-crazy soon, so creating a very thorough piece in 2 weeks was very hard, especially when you had 45-minute periods throughout the week,” Miles said. 

Artist senior Abigale Lawrence found a different question, which was related to her childhood, to investigate throughout the year. 

“My childhood was very important to me, a lot of weird but nice things happened to me, and I feel like it has really shaped me as a human being,” Lawrence said. 

The answer to this question is reflected in the unique pieces of art including a stuffed bear, laser-cut glasses, and the traditional hand-drawn work. But out of all her pieces, her favorite was dedicated to her grandpa. 

“I dedicate my drawing to my grandpa. I love my grandpa and he is my favorite person. He has always been there for me when I needed him,” Lawrence said. 

Senior Ava Graf has consistently used graphic design throughout this year to answer her question of ‘How can I show that individuality can be beautiful?’. 

“It’s something as I’ve grown throughout high school that I’ve realized that it’s really important to be your own person. I just thought it would be perfect cause like senior year, to just kind of represent that with art,” Graf said.

However, this class came with its struggles for Graf, challenging her own perfectionism.

“I am such a perfectionist. I wanted everything I made to be perfect and my best work,” she said. “That definitely became not possible because it’s like, you could only have something really great every few projects, so that was kinda hard.”

As senior year is coming to an end, Naomi Miles has one piece of advice. 

“If you think you can’t do art, try it anyway, because anyone can always learn,” she said.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Painting by Meghan Bessinger