Course Overview
AP Art & Design is a year long, Senior honors-level class that positions students for a career in art and design. This Advanced Placement course holds students up to standards and expectations equivalent to a first-year college art course. The course focused on the ongoing process of making art in a way that develops the student’s technical, conceptual, and aesthetic skills as well as problem solving and critical thinking skills. Students were expected to continually work towards mastery in their artwork through their investigation into technical, conceptual and aesthetic development, in both their primary medium and other mediums. Students had many opportunities for critique, reflection and to revise work to reach the goal of mastery.
Featured Student: Brandon R., 12th Grade
Featured Student: Brandon R., 12th Grade
AP Art & Design Portfolios
Nefertiti EarthMy portfolio titled A Letter to You shows the stage in early adulthood where you struggle between finally rebelling and raging at your past hardships versus letting go and finally coming to peace with where you are at in life. It shows both sides: the emotion itself and the reflection of those emotions.
The portfolio started off talking about how growing up in a single parent household affects people in their early adulthood emotionally. I decided that I actually wanted to have a more personal connection with the topic so I revised it. I wanted to visually show how it feels to “grow up” and deal with your emotions. The goal was to show that growth isn’t a straight shot, you’ll swing through different moods but it is all simply a part of life. The pieces were all inspired by music that I felt resonated with me personally. I feel like that is also what makes this portfolio so special. I brainstormed and thought hard on what emotions I've been dealing with personally like stress and frustration and visually expressed that through each piece. I also created a board on Pinterest and put all of my possible color schemes, overlays and poses I wanted to incorporate inside. Teacher: Evan Lockhart |
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Kennedy ReevesNational Art Honor Society
AP Photography How does the patriarchy affect women's mental health and sense of self identity? I choose this concept to unveil and create discussion on the topics of patriarchy and women's mental health ; how it is affected and how some women are mentally wounded by patriarchy. Within starting my photographs, I first decided to use the snapshot aesthetic style as coined by Nan Goldin in her series “the ballad of sexual dependency. This style was strict and loose enough for me to stay on topic but also grow and wander as my work progressed. I proceeded to use a regular camera but with an attachable flash coinciding with dim light to make my location's colors 10x more vibrate while still portraying the realism of the snapshot aesthetic. This helped me give my images a sense of normalcy as I placed myself doing relatively normal things in each shot. Teacher: Evan Lockhart |
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Brandon RussellNational Art Honor Society
AP Photography This sustained investigation is titled “(Black) love as touch”, and focuses on the beauty of black love in the african american community, while focusing on the sense of touch, which is seen throughout my pieces. These pieces were created between October 2020 and March 2021. The reason I decided to explore this topic through my sustained investigation was to shine light onto the amazing value of black love in a society that demonizes people simply for the color of their skin. A driving question I used throughout this investigation was “Do black people play a significant role in creating their narrative?” The conclusion I realized as I worked was that we do not. In traditional media, such as cable news like Fox, we hold no positions of power. When we are in these positions, which is rare, we are often pressured by our counterparts to continue to allow certain narratives to be pushed to the masses, such as black men being thugs and criminals. Teacher: Evan Lockhart |
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Kayla StottsAP
Personally, as an artist Including my beliefs and things that are affecting me should be shown in my art. I find photography as a way to express the feelings I can’t verbally say. In my sustained investigation, I sought to express my physical and mental feelings about online learning as a senior in high school and how it developed into an unhealthy relationship with my computer as it represents my huge workload. In the beginning of my investigation, I planned to focus on how distance learning affected children and contributed strongly to unhealthy internet habits. I wanted to explore internet culture, especially when it comes to being a part of fandoms and stan culture, but as time went on I realized that I can do something a bit more personal and not a concept that would be hard for me to convey. All my pieces represent a small story of my experiences with my first year of distance learning and how it has affected me mentally over time. I wanted to show the different phases of myself during this time of my life by showing the exhaustion and my body involuntarily shutting down. In my work, using slow shutter speed played a big part in expressing my feelings and articulating myself in my work. Teacher: Evan Lockhart |
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D'Janett TalleyAP
Whenever I create something, I want it to have meaning behind it. In my body of work, it’s easy to snap a picture and label it as one thing. During the pandemic, I reflected a lot on my mental and physical health. I needed to do something that would make me happy. In the past, I photographed dark subjects. They were very important to showcase, but after spending a year in the house, we all needed to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The pandemic changed how people looked, as well as how they felt about themselves. When your body changes, you look at yourself differently. Being a young black woman in today’s world, I wanted to remind myself as well as others about our magic. I wanted to tell a story using different shapes and sizes, because everyone is unique in their own way. I wanted to highlight the beauty of black women. When you tell a story, you have to cover different chapters, from beginning to end. In my story, each chapter is different. Beauty cannot be defined as one specific thing. So, you have to take in consideration that people have different features that are considered beautiful in their own way. Each image is different, because each person is different. My portfolio showcases the beauty in women. Teacher: Evan Lockhart |
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Shia JacksonMy theme was centered around how to make death look beautiful. What better way than with flowers? Each flower has a meaning that goes along with the piece. In this project I experimented with color pallets out of my comfort zone and found new ways to bring emotion and symbolize them in my art. It was hard finding different flowers that are all different and can be interpreted in multiple ways. My question was how can I make beautiful representations of death. By using bolder color and using them to set the mood of the piece.
Teacher: Jaclyn Young |
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Shashua RushdanMy pieces were on the "other perspective". I had my first 3 pieces set in a world that is getting flooded and how the characters respond to it. Beginning with a lady writing down 1/7billion (one person out of all people) as her town is being flooded. They are all supposed to co-relate but they are all blind to each other's perspective. The flood is supposed to represent the things life will throw at you. The point is that we all deal with things in a different way, and that just like in the images we are never that far away from each other.
Teacher: Jaclyn Young |
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Bryson Gaines
National Art Honor Society
Co-President Within my overall relaying theme of not only my investigation but also my finalized work was, "how I was to portray women's fashion throughout the ages that have remained a staple look not only in fashion but in women and fem peoples culture. Teacher: Jaclyn Young |
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LaVell Standifer, Jr.National Art Honor Society
The question that guided my research was, “What would the world look like over the next ten to fifteen years from my perspective.” I conveyed this through the changing of scenery, with every art piece being one year after the previous. With the addition of a look alike character seemingly taking a picture of the surrounding area. As a means to show my perspective essentially. In the pieces I used multiple forms of contrast, lighting, and shading techniques to convey the time, place, and events that are happening. I noticed over the course of these pieces that while it started off as destructive, it ended on a reconstructive piece. There was a point where I questioned how long destruction would truly last, but I felt that it would be over dramatic to assume it would be permanent. Thus, over time I changed how the pieces were paced and constructed. Going from a darker undertone to a lighter one. Leading to the last few pieces having lighter shadows or a mixed lighting for the background. Teacher: Tia Rogers |
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Alex AskewMany people have heard that mathematics is “beautiful” once you get to know it. I hear this all the time in award ceremonies and lectures. Yet, when the speaker provides his reason,
the audience begins to understand the beauty of mathematics from a figurative lens. But in what way can I make this quality literal? This leads me to my sustained investigation: THE BEAUTY OF MATH. I created a series of works that involved various topics in math spanning from algebra to calculus. Throughout my work, I demonstrate the overlapping principles of art in the field of mathematics. Throughout my investigation I had to find ways to generate the ideal function for my next art piece and improve the aesthetic of graphs by inscribing them with zentangles. I soon realized that in order to create more visually appealing graphs, I needed to make the functions more complex. In addition to this, I considered functions that could be used to generate 3 dimensional figures. This allowed me to present mathematical objects that have form. The risk in trying to do this was the fact that I was learning how to around the same time I drew these figures. But with practice, I began to capture better designs that satisfied functions that guided them. My exploration into the art surrounding math has allowed me to gain a greater appreciation for the tools that we often use only for precise reasoning. Teacher: Tia Rogers |
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Joshua ShelleyDuring the Sustained Investigation,I challenged the idea of making art that touched on dark topics that are represented in movies and tv shows.I wanted to focus on movies and shows in pairs to kinda back up my art using my art.I questioned what the movie/tv show was about and why I should create it or what is so significant about this movie/tv show.I wanted to focus on
practicing different elements of art in some of my pieces and interpreting what I know about some movies/tv shows.I challenged myself in pieces, doing different techniques that I usually don’t do, a different way to draw my characters, and incorporating backgrounds which I don’t do often.I also take the time the revise my art if needed and improve it so I can share my message better and improve the art itself.I revised my “The Letter” art piece and improved the lines that were used in it, more of the background, increased the height of the figure and worked really hard to show what the movie was about in one frame.In this Investigation, I wanted to experiment with different art techniques while also sharing my interpretation of “not knocking a book by its cover”, showing how people perceive media based on its format. Teacher: Tia Rogers |
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Alexis BassMy art pieces represent different identities of face and skin. I chose this theme to show others different figures of different skins and tones exploring this is amazing to see what it creates. The main features I focused on is the eyes , lips , ears , eyebrows, mouth, neck and nose. When creating I wanted to make a face with unique features. In society people feels insecure about a feature they may have. I believe your individual features makes you unique. Everyone has their own opinions on what is beautiful. I want the viewer to focus on the curves and figures. The variety in extremely big lips, big and small eyes, lighter to darker skin illustrates the beauty of diversity.
Teacher: Taylor Childs |
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DrayShawna YoungIn my sustained investigation I experimented with different fiber techniques. I wanted to explore different ways of fiber manipulation. Playing with shape and color in order to create variety, balance and unity. I mixed warm colors with cool colors in order to separate the foreground from the background.
Teacher: Taylor Childs |
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