During the spring of my junior year, I watched the TV show “Pose”, which provides a lens into the Drag Ball culture of the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s. The colors, makeup, and liveliness of the performers were so striking to me, and I wanted to challenge myself to capture that expression in my art. While I searched for images to inspire my portraits, I was totally in awe of the hard work and attention to detail that goes into every outfit, pose, and expression: these balls are a manifestation of life and identity in its most vibrant, bold, and raw state. It strikes me that this unapologetic form of beauty and the right to take up space is still restricted today because of the discrimination that LGBTQ+ members of society continue to face.

Throughout this project, I was worried that my own identifiers would prevent me from fully capturing the essence and beauty of this culture that was, at first, unfamiliar to me. But as I was struggling with this thought, my younger sibling told me that “just because it’s not your culture doesn’t mean you shouldn’t educate yourself about it and appreciate the time and beauty put into it”—which is exactly what I hope I have achieved through these images.

My independent project series is a five-piece project that depicts a girl interacting with five different wild cats. The cats are a tiger, a leopard, a lion, a mountain lion, and a bobcat. Each cat represents different things in different cultures, shown background colors and how each cat is interacting with the girl. For example, green is often the color of new things—such as the leaves of a flower or a tree in the spring. Since the lion can be a representation of wisdom, I used a green background to represent learning new things. I chose this theme because I have always been interested in wildcats, especially the bigger species, and I have always wanted to pet or be close to one without it attacking me. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could show each creature interacting with a girl as a representation of different emotions. 

Throughout my entire arts career at St. Andrew’s, the majority of artwork I have made is oil paint on large canvases. I’ve always felt more comfortable with large work spaces; however, since Spring Break began, I’ve embarked on a new challenge involving tiny canvases and acrylic paint. My series for this Arts Weekend is entirely painted on footwear. This series has allowed me to focus on smaller details and intricacy in a way like never before. I have learned to appreciate each brush stroke because on such a small canvas, every drop of paint has a purpose. Furthermore, the amount of patience I have gained from this project is immense. Moving forward from this series, I hope to keep that same intensity and intricacy even when working on larger pieces. 

The quiet and intimate Middletown I once knew is no longer. When I was younger, sitting in the combine with my grandfather and watching the rows of corn fall into the header and fill up the grain tank felt like a luxury I would be able to experience forever. My mind couldn’t even conceive the possibility of the comforting and familiar farmland turning into a small-town commercial hub. Middletown is where I grew up and the memories I have here are static images of the past in a growing town that looks towards the future. In my project, I wanted to show how the town’s image of a future has changed the real Middletown that many people loved.

Throughout this year I have made art that is related to my personal experience. My images are memories that bring me joy. Each piece shows a certain part of my identity. One is an image that reminds me of family, the Degas dancers because I have always found them elegant and calming, and finally the dragons because of my love of the mythical and mysterious. These are just some of the things that I find beautiful and that I have enjoyed creating in my own personal way.
 

For this series, I wanted to create pieces that were a connection and representation of my entire life. I have lived in a couple of very different places and I wanted to showcase that through my homes. These include houses from Delaware all the way to the camper van I lived in when I was in New Zealand. I used oil paint and a lot of texture to give as much life as I could to these paintings. 

My grandmother’s green car was passed down to me when I was 16 and she had become too weak to drive it. I was beyond excited to have a car, regardless of its unique color. I totaled the car the summer before my junior year, which was a particularly difficult moment as it took place only a few years after her passing. I hadn’t realized how special she was to me until she was gone, and, once the car was gone too, it felt like I had lost a large part of my connection to her as well. Less than a year before she passed I lost my uncle, making the year particularly hard for my mom's side of the family. The car, my uncle, and my grandmother mean the world to me and to my family, which is why I have chosen to explore these events in my life through art. Although these moments have been sad and painful, the joy and hope we have found since has taught me a lot and exploring them artistically has helped me better understand my feelings and channel them in a positive way.

This collection of pieces is really special to me, not because they are the prettiest or most technically correct. I would say they are very far from it. However, they are special to me because they were the first pieces that I created without the guidance of my mentor, teacher, and friend Mrs. Elizabeth McGiff. I dedicate this collection to her because they represent a culmination of everything that Mrs. McGiff strove to teach me. In making this collection I took risks with shape and color, I challenged myself, I faced difficulties with the ceramic process (kilns are so hard to use), I fell out of love with ceramics, I went back to the basics, I asked for critical advice, I failed, succeeded, and failed again. It is common for people to look at a piece of ceramic art and deem it to be simple and, therefore, somehow less impressive; however, this process proves that it is anything but simple. Despite this artistic process has been grueling, frustrating, and upsetting, it was also fun, enlightening, and gratifying. Looking back, I would not have wanted to change a single step of it. 

For my past drawings, I always focused on a snapshot or a specific, static moment of a story. So for this independent project, I wanted to try something different by telling a continuous story, and I chose to tell my own story. During the first eighteen years of my life, my family moved a lot, and I changed many schools. Every place I’ve been to is special to me, so I chose the places that are the most significant to me to put them on canvas. The first place is the park right across from my home when I was in elementary school. I went there with my parents and friends almost every day. The second place is my middle school; I was there for only two years, but I made some of my best friends till today. I tried to use different colors for the trees to represent the timeline. The yellow in the first painting represents my time in elementary school when I was childish and carefree. The second painting has orange and red trees because the colors show my excitement and growth. It was my first time trying oil painting; it was challenging, yet it was interesting to work with the combination of oil painting and pencil drawing. I was going to continue with this combination for the next places. Although I couldn’t finish this series the way I wanted to, I’m still continuing to draw the next places with watercolor.

Over this past year, I was very much drawn to the past and the difference in time periods. For my first project this year, which was shown at Parents Weekend, my collection gave off the vibe that it was taken on an older film camera and was a collection of photos of places that I have grown up with. My second major project was for the Winter Gallery Opening and I was inspired by the ’50s and ’60s. That probably had to be the biggest and most challenging project because it was shot in a studio with many models for the project. In the end, I loved how the photos turned out.

For this final project, I was inspired by the Lumineers "III" album and the way that it focused on people,
buildings, and stories from forgotten and abandoned towns. This wasn’t my original idea for my final
photo project and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how these photos were going to turn out, but in the end, I’m
glad that my idea changed. I have always loved history and learning about history so when my dad said
that he was going to take me on a “tour” of hidden places in the county that we live in, I was all for it. It
all started as a way to get me out of the house before the “stay at home” order was put in place. This
collection of photos is a collection of old, abandoned, and forgotten houses, barns, and other places that
are tucked away from the rest of the public or are not as obvious to the eye. What I like about these photos
and how they turned out is that when you look at the photos, you are immediately taken to the past and
can create a story right then and there.

I hope that you can create your own story from this collection of photos and jump back into the past!