Five art pieces in five months. The clock is ticking the second the semester starts, and each paint stroke on the canvas matters. This is the reality for the students who take AP Studio Art at Athens Drive and other schools around the country.
The goal of the class is to have the students create an art portfolio, which is split into two sections: Sustained Investigation and Selected Work. The Investigation consists of the inquiry question and any research the students perform for their art. The Selected Work is any art the student chooses to display for their portfolio.
Firstly, the students must create an inquiry question, essentially a thesis statement that guides their art, and base their five subsequent art pieces around the central theme they have chosen.
The process is better explained by the teacher of the class, Erin Day, “They are telling a story, and their work justifies their story/inquiry,” she said. “Students then need to write why they chose this question/statement to represent their work and then how they fulfilled this throughout their work.”
Following the inquiry, students then have the choice to select any of the art pieces they have created in the past school year that they believe best represent them as an artist, with no need for any sort of unifying motif.
One student who has been working tirelessly on her portfolio is Axzarah Mata, a senior. She said, “The process of my portfolio consists of a general theme, mine specifically being how the anatomical process connects back to my life, and creating each piece based on a layer (Soul, blood, skeleton, muscle, and skin).”
Mata revealed that her art was inspired by the multiple layers of the body, and her experience of taking Anatomy at Athens shines through in her realistic depictions of the human body. Despite the stress of the portfolio, the class has innumerable benefits for the creative souls at Athens.
“It forces students to slow down and really process their art, to document every step of the way, this even being their thoughts,” Day said. “It encourages students to truly think about their ideas and not simply go with their first thought, but to genuinely explore all options that could reflect their work the best.”
Because the class is at an AP level, students think critically about the art they are creating and are able to create art without the limits of assigned work that has a strict definition of what qualifies as “art”.
“The benefits of AP Art are complete freedom and support in what you create, and no AP exam,” Mata said.
The tight time limit on the portfolio is the main negative of AP Studio Art that students and teachers of the class alike can relate to. The teacher of the class believes the course needs to be edited.
“I would make it either a yearlong course, or have it be offered for the first semester,” Day said, “This would remove the pressure and give students the opportunity to really take a chance. Right now, students are simply trying to get it done on time, which limits their creativity.”
The time constraint that a single semester puts on students is linked to a bigger issue with all AP classes, which is the fact that the class must be taught within a semester, and the course ends in May. It is very difficult for students to put forward their best work under a time limit and students feel that puts them at a disadvantage. However, each student perseveres and boldly create pieces of art that embody their creativity and passion.
“Art makes me feel very free, being able to creatively use my imagination to bring something to life that before only I was able to see,” said Mata.
