Throughout Mods 1–3, many art classes were offered at Sequoyah’s high school, including painting, printmaking, installation, and sculpture. The art shown here, which showcases the materials and styles students have worked with, is a collection of pieces from these classes.
Ada Argueta – A Wrinkle in Time
“The objective of this piece was to focus on the hands and to increase the level of values a bit so that the wrinkles in the hands can stand out. In order to create a stronger illusion of dimensionality and depth, I had to shade the contours of the hand in a little bit of a darker tone than in the original image. Doing this gave a good understanding of the shadows and how strong the lighting presented itself on different parts of the hand. When shading, I shaded in the direction of the veins, which was usually a curved upward stroke. In order to have a smooth transition of shading I had to shade in the white charcoal with the black charcoal to create a light grey and from there I slowly started shading it darker. I chose this photo because I feel like it represents an ongoing memory of both my father and me. My dad has worked extremely hard to give me everything I need and want to help me succeed in life. I called the piece ‘A Wrinkle In Time’ because I wanted viewers to focus on the condition of each of the hands. My father’s hand is more worn out due to work compared to mine, which is smooth. I decided to position my hand in a way where he’s holding his finger to make it look as if I’m holding his hand during a walk and having to depend on him. I believe it gave the piece a tone of childhood and reliance. I did not have to do much editing to the photo since the positioning of the hand gave lighting that created very dark shadows in the hand, which helped me create a good dimensionality.”
Dahlia Kim Levy – Represent
“For my social justice print, I focused on lack of representation in media. As someone who is Asian with very limited representation in media along with a lack of proper portrayal, I know that I am not the only person who feels a lack or misportrayal in [the] media. Like me, many people don’t feel represented by their gender, sexuality, or race in many forms of media. I hope through this piece people can see how discriminatory media is and how it needs to be more inclusive to everyone.”
Harlow Lehman Rhodes – 2,900
“We were asked to create a final project using different types of mediums within printmaking. I wanted to make sure that I got to use different techniques, not just using what I felt most comfortable with. The title I have chosen for this is ‘2,900’, the number of children (ages 0-19) that are annually shot and killed, involved in school gun violence. This is important to me because you hear about all the children that are injured and killed, but to hear a number like that is really impactful. My intentions with this piece are to make people aware of how gun violence affects people. In this instance, I was specifically targeting gun violence in schools. There have been many school shootings in recent years, and this has affected how children and teens feel at school. Being at a public school for 9 years, we had to partake in lockdown drills every couple months. As a second-grader, having to hear someone telling us to pretend there is a school shooter, or pretend there is an unknown person on campus, is not necessarily the thing that you want to hear. We would have to lock the doors and windows and shove blankets under the doors. I didn’t really know what was happening, but it was definitely a scary experience.”
Malia Flores – Two in the Afternoon
“For this project, we were asked to paint a portrait of someone we are close to. I chose to paint [junior] Claire [Donahue] because I feel like we’ve gotten to know each other a lot more this year. The best conversations we have are when we take walks and talk about the things going on around us, and that’s what I wanted to represent with the busy background. Claire is also very thoughtful, benevolent, and [goes] with the flow, and I wanted to express that through this portrait.”
Mia Carrillo – Finding Fearless
“Finding fearless, is an 18 x 18 self-portrait in oil of me when I was eight years old. Inspired by Jen Mann’s Bubble Gum from her Strange Beauties collection, Finding fearless is monochrome in a bright pink to enhance the idea of bright childhood and bold confidence. I created this painting for myself to remember that for much of my childhood I walked through the world as if there were no boundaries. As I go into the next stage of my life and graduate high school, I don’t want to let fear consume me or stop me from taking exciting opportunities. Hopefully, this painting will remind me that I truly am fearless and that the bright girl painted is inside of me; I just need to help her come out sometimes.”
Ryan Dal Ponte – Dead and Dreary
“For this final Linocut, I wanted to create a large piece to show off all the skills that I have learned over the past two years. I originally wanted to focus on the Amazon fires, but as I did more research into other current issues, I began to think of other ideas. Towards the end of my research, I could not decide if I wanted to do a piece about the Amazon fires, ocean pollution, or the melting of the ice caps, so I decided to combine them all into one large panoramic print.”
Uly Spencer – 2004
“In this painting project, we were assigned to make a portrait of you or someone else and use it to show an unseen aspect of them. I decided to do a portrait of myself. I did it in the style of the dark psychological paintings of Lucian Freud. I wanted to describe my struggle with mental health in a very subtle way, using the thickness of the paint and the colors rather than explicit imagery. I was inspired by the thickly layered paints and dark colors of Lucian Freud, and I was specifically inspired by Head of a Young Irishman.”
