Emilia Savini
Reporter
As the first semester of the school year nears the end, AP studio art students are choosing concentrations to focus on for the rest of the school year. Art teacher Lisa Floryshak-Windman’s AP studio art class focuses on developing skills and ideas in 3D art, which will enable the students to fully immerse themselves in their own series of projects.
Because AP studio art is a full year, college level course, Ms.Windman has high expectations for her students’ work ethic and commitment. “This course is rigorous in the sense that it requires quite a bit of thought processing and a lot of work outside of class,” she said. “They are asked to think in a very different manner that requires more critical problem-solving.”
In preparation for the second semester, students must choose their concentrations, which they will explore in twelve 3-D pieces.
A concentration is a specialty chosen by a student to focus and base their second semester work on. It is also a major aspect of their full-year portfolio, which will be submitted to and scored by the College Board Rubric of Concentration Studies at the end of the year. “The theme has to be strong enough to carry the work, it shouldn’t be one that is readily realized. It has to be something that is very in-depth and meaty,” Ms. Windman said.
As students decide which concentrations they wish to pursue, they must look back on their past interests in certain mediums and subject matters. “In the past I have enjoyed working with oil and acrylic paints on canvas and doing paintings of portraits and figures,” senior and Advanced Studio Art Student Olivia Healy said.
With this interest, Olivia hopes to dive deeper and hone in on a specific part of painting, “For my concentration this year, I’m using a yellow pallet for my paintings. Last year I mostly worked with blues and purples so I wanted to take the opportunity this year to explore something different,” she said.
Senior and AP 3D Art Student Mckenna Crowley was also influenced by past experience when choosing her concentration. “Overall, for three dimensional artwork, I enjoy jewelry the most. I find it to be the most structural, which I love,” she said.
Her passion for this subject matter led her to choose a jewelry-related concentration. “I’ve decided to focus on weaponry, due to the vast amount of controversy and feelings it brings along with it,” Mckenna said.
With the course focused on 3D art, the students are able to work with unconventional materials. When doing a pre-cursor exercise earlier in the year, senior Margaret Ettinger became interested in the idea of using various materials to create artwork for her concentration. “We had an assignment earlier this year where we were given a box of materials and were asked to use it as inspiration for our “Breadth” sculptures,” she said. “For this assignment, I created sculptures from clothespins, straws and discarded books; it gave me experience with materials I’ve never worked with before.”
Looking towards second semester, Margaret said she hopes to channel this interest of mixed mediums into a specific theme for her concentration. “The theme I want to follow in this section is the idea of “tunnels,” and I want to use a wide range of materials to convey the theme in a fun and new way”.
Because the students’ concentrations are so diverse and individualized, Ms.Windman hopes that the process of choosing a specific theme and following it in depth will allow students to expand their respective abilities. “I hope they come out of this process with a different perspective on their work, knowing that they can dig much deeper and dance around that same central idea,” she said.
