From the South Orange Maplewood School District Fine Arts Supervisor:
Columbia High School students taking AP 2-D Design and Drawing put together an art exhibit, which began on March 24 and will close on April 22. The art exhibit is held at Domareki Gallery, and teacher Kirk Maynard described it as the perfect opportunity for students to show off what they’ve been working on in the class.
“This AP 2-D Design and Drawing exhibition is a showcase of work that students have created within my class as part of their technical development and conceptual development as artists,” he said. “This was fully curated and developed by my class, and it was great to see how students were able to bring their ideas to life as fully realized pieces which deal with subjects ranging from personhood and social justice to emotions.”
The students similarly appreciated the experience.
“One of things I love about being an artist in general is people enjoying my artwork. This is the first time I have been able to make things and have them be not just for myself and for my family,” Veronica Smith-Cooper said. “For me, the exhibition feels like a really great opportunity to present my artwork to anyone, and I really like that it’s to other students so my peers can look around and see what their classmates are creating.”
Smith-Cooper said her project is about expressing different types of freedom.
“For me, in my sustained investigation, all of my artwork is really based off of my own dream worlds and bringing them to the surface,” she said. “All of my artwork consists of freedom: in the form of free people in beautiful landscapes that you can’t have in real life but I can create on canvas. As for my sustained investigation, although it is about Adam and Eve, it is still in a utopian landscape I created.”
Another student, Alexandra Kerstan, said her project is about “showing different mental states and emotions through dreams,” as well as other states of consciousness.
“It is a roller coaster of emotions, all in our subconscious, and we often do not have the words to talk about it,” she said.
The exhibit also serves as a chance for students to express themselves through their work.
“To me, this exhibit is a chance to be vulnerable as a teenager and authentic as an artist. I don’t have many opportunities to share my art with my classmates so publicly and in some ways I find this level of openness unnerving and scary,” Silas Silverman-Stoloff said. “I am grateful for this exhibit because it is pushing me to be honest with myself as well as my peers, and I have found the process to be very rewarding thus far.”
