AP art projects on display Friday
Displaying a unique dedication for art, FUHS dancers Isa Calvo, Juliette Fiber-Ostrow and Gracie Holbrook performed in two shows Thursday. Before arriving at the auditorium for the Spring Dance Concert, the trio performed in the campus art gallery for the AP Drawing & Design Pathway Showcase.
The Dance painting was designed by Visual Artists Blair Cuevas, Kekoa Kim, and Aubrey Aguirre along with dancer and choreographer Isa Calvo, to an original work of music created by the Calvo family. Together students analyzed the music for mood, and emotion, and worked to interpret the piece through art and design principles including color, value, rhythm and movement. These were then translated into choreography and then the piece was performed for a live audience before the show, with Calvo, Fier-Ostrow and Holbrook as “living paintbrushes” applying the paint throughout the dance to the canvas and to each other during the piece.
Students and staff can view the results of the experimental Dance Painting along with about 70 other AP art students’ projects created by about 40 artists on Friday, April 25 in Gallery 201.
The show was also hung in cooperation with Fullerton College’s Gallery design program to achieve a contemporary but professional gallery look.
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173 FUHS dancers + 17 teachers to perform Friday
IB Art Gallery
Students from IB art showcased their portfolios in a gallery showcase on April 10. Students were tasked with creating art pieces using different mediums, all connected to a theme of their choice. Here are just three of the many talented artists who were showcased.
Junior Matty Hotch embarked on a three-week journey in their IB art class to put together a unique clay sculpture. Hotch chose the topic “metamorphosis” to explore. “I wanted to touch on how trauma can change the brain. But I did it in a more literal sense,” Hotch said.
After much trial and error, Hotch created a sculpture of a head with the brain visible. For the brain, they used glazed and painted air dry clay. Hotch also included a worm in the brain, using the same glazing method. The head was formed using dusty, unglazed ceramic clay. The two types of clay create an intense contrast between the two.
Junior Alexandra Valencia used her project as an opportunity to make a political statement. Her artwork, Bullet for Bonzo, criticizes former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The title is a play-on-words after the film Bedtime for Bonzo which stars Reagan himself.
In her collage, Valencia wrote out lyrics from the song “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” by the band Ramones in the background of the poster. The song was written out of frustration towards Reagan after he visited a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where Nazi soldiers were buried. There, Reagan made the statement: “[The soldiers] were victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” Valencia said she was disturbed by Reagan’s implication that the Nazis were victims of the Holocaust, calling his statement “blatantly wrong”.
Everything about Valencia’s piece resonates with how she feels about the current political climate in the United States, especially her inclusion of the lyric “You’re a politician, don’t become one of Hitler’s children.”
“The piece is blatantly vulgar, and I don’t really have any shame about that. I think that art is supposed to evoke emotions,” Valencia said. “Whether it’s taken as offensive or it’s enjoyed, I know that the piece that I made served its purpose and it proved the point that I had wanted it to make.”
Junior Tommy Stecher, appreciating the freedom they feel in FUHS arts, centered their artworks around traffic cones. “I appreciate how many different horizons there are,” Stetcher said. “I love that I can just push the bounds of stuff. There’s no real restrictions holding me back and I can be my creative self.”
Stetcher said they were inspired by their background having grown up in a creative household. They felt they were always faced with encouragement from family in their artistic endeavors. Just like their family, Stetcher said that IB encouraged them to explore new avenues of their creativity and artistic voice.
