Like many other school events, our plan of honoring our senior artists students with a Senior Art Show in the Spring was unfortunately canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.  What still remains is the hard work and commitment put forth by our artists in the Class of 2020. Throughout the last four years, these students have been inventing a visual language that best defines their own life experiences and interpretations of the world. Although we can’t display that work physically in a public art exhibit, we would still like to show you a small sampling of each artist’s work and share with you their own interpretation of what art means to them.

Featured Senior AP Art Students

Cecilia Leopold

My concentration is an abstract version of how I see the world.  Ever since I was a little girl, I was immersed in nature.  My family would always go on hikes together and was constantly exploring.  I mainly use black and white because those colors allow me to create the intricate textures and patterns that are found in nature; the idea of black and white, the absence of color and the total presence of color coming together to form the world around us.

Zhenya Huber

My art is something that you could never see in the real world but still has that real world feel to it.  I use moments, thoughts, and issues that I have gone through as inspiration.  My hope for my art is that everyone can see a little of themselves and what they have experienced.

Brandon Roland

My concentration is human anatomy, the emotions of humans, and expressive lines.  The reason I choose this as my concentration is that I wanted to get better at drawing the human body and the different types of bodies and faces.  I learned from an art teacher in the past that once you master how to draw the human body, you can master drawing anything.  The expressive lines that come in my concentration are based on animation.  I like to express and exaggerate the poses of the people I'm drawing to get a feeling of movement in my characters.

Antong Lei

Many times, people cannot say what they really want to say.  Sometimes, people don't know what they want to say.  Once you know it, you will worry about other people's opinions.  Will others like or agree with me?  Will anyone really listen to me? So many times, there is nothing to say, but painting can say it for us.  Art proves to the world its thoughts and existence. It is the only way we express ourselves.

Trey Blevins

I try to bring meaninglessness to my artwork.  So often, if not always, people will litter their works with symbolism and subtle propaganda but that's not my usual vibe. Through watercolor, screenprinting, and most recently oil paints, I do my best to convey as little as I possibly can in the fun, most surreal ways I can muster. Commentary is for professionalism, chaos is for kicks.

Regan Holkema

My concentration focuses on human faces, nature, and color.  I worked to develop my own style and become comfortable in my own pieces and what I was creating.  For my pieces, I mainly used colored pencil to best express color and emotion.

Shengyuan Lu

My artworks reflect different aspects of myself: my hobbies, childhood dreams, or personal growth.  With every pen stroke, I thrive to integrate my personality and emotion into my designs which has become the key to make them quirky but charming. For my audience, I wish my art pieces could serve as pathways to my inner heart, advocating my beliefs, and broadcasting my voice.  I prefer various art mediums including watercolor, colored pencil, and digital image.

Meixuan Mu

My concentration is about my own story, my experience, and process of growing.
The mind I had, the feeling I had. I decided to record the moments of my past and open my heart. Let it be.

It has been an honor these last four years to walk alongside these wonderful students as they evolved into the artists they are today.  Becoming an artist is an individual process that, as their teacher, I have taken care not to encroach upon.  There is no formula to follow or mold to adhere to.  It is a process that can only happen through one’s own mind and unique life experiences.

It takes a special courage to express that individuality without any guarantee the world will appreciate or understand what is being communicated.  These artists of mine have taken that risk many times and have had the courage not only to evolve with their art, but also to fail.  These students have grown into the strong artists they are not only because of their successes, but also because of their willingness to struggle and push through the ideas that didn’t work to get to the ideas that did.

My hope for these young artists is that they will continue pushing through all of life’s successes and failures, knowing that what awaits on the other side is a stronger, more authentic version of themselves.  May these Patriot artists always remember where they came from and remember where they always belong.